Summer Courses at City Lit & ‘Humumentizing’

This summer I’m pleased to be part of the extension of courses at City Lit reaching into the field of science. City Lit is London’s centre for adult learning, offering part-time and short courses in a huge range of fields.

In July, I’ll be leading an exploration into ‘London’s Curiosity Cabinets’ as well as offering a Medical Humanities course.

More here on London’s Curiosity Cabinets.

More here on Medical Humanities.

These courses are for anyone, though I would especially encourage those in the medical profession to take a look at the Medical Humanities course.

I’m also pleased to note that the Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, Dr Marek Kukula, is going to be running a summer course on astronomy, and Wellcome Trust Public Engagement Fellow, medical historian Dr Richard Barnett, will be giving guided walks & lectures on the history of medicine in London. Go to City Lit Courses and click on the ‘Science and Nature’ section for more.

I’d like to flag up a rewarding outcome of recent Medical Humanities teaching: For the third year in a row, I was invited by Giskin Day, course co-ordinator for Imperial College London’s Medical Humanities, to give a workshop on poetry and medicine to medical students. For part of the afternoon, I introduced them to the marvellous, unique book – what I would call an art book - A Humument, by Tom Phillips. There is an excellent review of it here: ‘Double Act’ by Adam Smyth, LRB Oct 2012.

So far, I’ve found students really enjoy being introduced to and creating projects using the idea of A Humument; my Global Health students also responded enthusiastically to it this year. In fact, it’s become a verb: we ‘Humumentize’ a piece of writing that is medically relevant, combining the art of Phillips’s ‘Humumentizing’ his selected novel (A Human Document, from whence the title ‘Humument’ comes,) with the medicine of a medical text. With Giskin’s class, we used extracts from Gray’s Anatomy, including images.

Imperial College London Medical Humanities students at the 2013 International Symposium on Poetry & Medicine, London. Students: K. Bettany, R. Davies, P. Davis, C. Kowa, J. Lee, Z. Tai

A group of students from the class then decided to take pieces from The Francis Inquiry (an essential and  harrowing report on the failing of care in the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust – I recommend the video on the above link,) to create ‘Carers or Criminals? The Francis Inquiry in Humuments,’ which they presented as a poster at the 2013 International Symposium on Poetry & Medicine.

They said that by focussing closely on selected elements of the text, and ‘pulling out’ (or ‘excavating,’ as Phillips says, like a geologist or sculptor,) fragments of text that stood out to them, they were able to interpret the writing in a way that they hoped brought out the essence, or most important, or most poignant parts, of it. I pointed out how this act – shaving away all the words they felt were not absolutely necessary – was a type of poetry, and one of the students called it ‘found poetry’.

The students also mis-interpreted something in a very positive way: referencing the original title of Phillips’s treated novel (A Human Document,) these Medical Humanities students felt they were ‘discovering’ the ‘human documents’ within the Francis Inquiry: the human stories, and stories of humanity, that otherwise might have been lost amidst a sea of mistakes and pain in danger of blending into one anonymous voice of discontent.

This is a rewarding outcome and encouraging early experience in my teaching, and I’m  proud of the students for their creative thinking and work. It is important to remember that any text we take up and ‘treat’ must be respected and that its original intent not be lost, but I think that ‘Humumentizing’ a work can allow all of us to shed new and important light on something that might be dense, technical, or difficult to approach in the traditional manner. It is also creative and fun, and these aren’t elements to be cast aside lightly – the students working on this project will always think of The Francis Inquiry in a uniquely critical way. Well done.

Opera di Cera debut at the Gordon Museum of Pathology

Photo by Tanya Marcuse.
Anatomical Venus, Florence, Museo La Specola.

An audience of medical professionals, medical students, and medical historians will be the first to hear performed poems from Opera di Cera, the verse drama that was a winner of the 2013 Templar Poetry Pamphlet Awards.

It is an honour for the play to debut in the Gordon Museum of Pathology, which has restricted access due to human remains within.

‘Indigo and Dragon’s Blood’ 

will take place in June at the Gordon Museum of Pathology, where we will hold a performance & discussion based on the anatomical wax models of La Specola. 

With Wax Modeller Eleanor Crook, Medical Historian Anna Maerker, and the marvellous actors Rachael Black & Keith Hill.

The evening is sponsored by King’s College London Public Engagement & the Wellcome Trust.

If you are a member of, or in training for, the medical public, and would like more information about attending the event, contact me!

‘If you don’t like the weather…’

Reading at the SPL.

Everyone jokes that, in Edinburgh, ‘if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute’. We say the same thing in New England. However, I have to say that I don’t think I’ve experienced quite the dramatic and rapid meteorological changes that I did over the past few days: rain, hail (proper chunks of ice,) and sun, all at the end of April! Maybe this was appropriate for a reading of Science Fiction poetry?

Russell Jones and the wonderful Scottish Poetry Library hosted a handful of readers and a short film, all to celebrate Edwin Morgan’s poetry, and the anthology (edited by Russell,) Where Rockets Burn Through.

It was particularly nice to see many familiar faces at the SPL – the last time I was there was to read from Darwin’s Microscope in 2009! Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar, read, as did Andy Jackson, who performed a wonderfully touching poem based on the ‘Clangers’ characters (I had to have this explained to me and then was shown film clips of this children’s TV series later in the evening, just to be sure I understood how influential this show was to a particular generation! The fact that I loved Andy’s poem and performance nonetheless speaks highly of its ‘translatability’.)

Pippa & Andy read ‘The First Men on Mercury’.

Pippa Goldschmidt and Andy co-read ‘The First Men on Mercury’, which brought out the fascinating and unsettling shift that happens as the poem goes along. Ian McLachlan and Claire Askew read entertaining and very different sci-fi and also quite ghostly pieces. The reading was broken with a short, eerie film by Dan Warren based on Morgan’s poem, ‘In Sobieski’s Shield’ – I found Dan’s explanation of climbing into abandoned bomb shelters to film particularly interesting when he introduced the film. Watch it here.

I took the plunge and read ‘The Loch Ness Monster’s Song,‘ which was inspired by hearing Dr John Holmes perform it wonderfully back in 2009 as part of a reading from his book, Darwin’s Bards. It’s a challenge, but I was very pleased when not a few people expressed their thanks afterwards – so it seemed to go well. The poem is a pleasure to read again and again, and difficult to read aloud (try to roll those ‘r’s!) I interpret it as if the Loch Ness Monster has popped its head out, takes a look around, gets quite peeved that the Diplodocus is getting all the attention, and sinks back under the water…

It was special to be able to congratulate Pippa Goldschmidt on her novel, too, which was launched the night before (I was sorry to miss the launch)! The Falling Sky, published by Freight Books, looks beautiful and I was pleased to buy a copy while in Edinburgh. Pippa used to work as an astronomer, and I met her through our mutual friend, the Royal Observatory’s Public Astronomer, Marek Kukula. Pippa and I are pleased to be able to commiserate and celebrate while writing novels about female astronomers – mine historical, hers modern.

Congratulations to those involved with Where Rockets Burn Through, and thanks to The SPL and Russell for a lovely evening.

Rockets for Edwin Morgan, Scottish Poetry Library

If you find yourself in Edinburgh on 25th April, join us at the Scottish Poetry Library for a night of science-fiction poetry – and learn just what kind of poetry ‘science fiction poetry’ means…

Read more here.

New and established poems, by new and established poets!

Forthcoming, Autumn 2013…

Forthcoming collection of poems by the Nevada Street Poets. Cover photo by Marcos Avlonitis. Illustrations by Cassie Herschel-Shorland. Published by Valley Press. Introduction by Don Paterson.

A pocket horizon is an instrument used for navigation: a small, smooth, darkened glass providing a reflective surface from which to take bearings with a sextant, when one’s view at sea is shrouded in fog or mist, or when the true horizon cannot be seen.  In Pocket Horizon, an array of objects drawn from the collections of the Whipple Museum in Cambridge and Wellcome Collection in London serve as points of navigation for the Nevada Street Poets.  Pieces from a Masterclass with leading poet Don Paterson developed into the poems collected here.

Along the way, we glimpse stories and histories of models varied as horses’ teeth and a clockwork orrery depicting the universe. There are fragile, hand-made glass fungi, and the glass prism used by Newton in his ‘Crucial Experiment’. A parade of amputees marches the reader past a case full of artificial limbs, as one of the first clocks in Britain tolls the hour. A wave machine immerses us in the currents of human love, and votive models murmur questions from the past. Each poem is paired with artwork by Cassie Herschel-Shorland. Pocket Horizon is a book of excursions into the human mind and body, and the story of the world we feel compelled to map.

New Light for Old Horizons

There is no doubt that one of the best parts of my work as a freelance poet, writer, and teacher is the opportunity to meet and collaborate with people in the arts, museums, and education who love and believe in what they do, and most of all, who want to share that knowledge and access with others. On Tuesday, I returned to the imposing rooms of Blythe House, where Science Museum Curator Katie Maggs treated me and photographer Marcos Avlonitis to the chance to photograph not one but two ‘pocket,’ or ‘artificial’ horizons.

Photograph: Marcos Avlonitis.
Object: Science Museum, Pocket Horizon.
(Artificial black glass horizon with fitted case, made by L.I. Casella, Hatton Garden, City of London 1865 – 1871.)
Gloved hand: my own!

We had the chance to actually dust off these enchanting objects for a photo shoot which will eventually become the cover of our poetry pamphlet, Pocket Horizon. While I talked with Katie about possibilities for readings at the Science Museum, Marcos snapped away, brimming with enthusiasm about the objects – ‘It is such an honour to get to photograph these, that people will get to see them when they otherwise would be hidden away,’ he said, and I was thrilled that everyone felt they were equally enriched by the experience, that it was far more an just a job to do.

Coincidentally, whilst coordinating Pocket Horizon - including our workshop with Don Paterson and the Nevada Street Poets, a second workshop at the Wellcome Club, liaising with Cassie Herschel-Shorland (who is doing the art for the pamphlet,) and communicating with Marcos & Katie to arrange our photo shoot, not to mention emailing with our lovely editor Jamie - my bedtime reading has been the fantastic romp of a book, Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon. Researching information about pocket horizons suddenly made me realise that my ‘reading for fun’ and latest project overlap in a very obvious way, reminding me that my ‘work’ and ‘pleasure’ are one and the same, as any lucky writer would have it.

There’s a good, basic website here about navigation and cartography. Regarding celestial navigation, it mentions: ‘In the Northern Hemisphere, latitude was determined by measuring the altitude or angle of the North Star, Polaris, from the horizon, with finely scaled brass instruments called octants orsextants. Determining the altitude of Polaris on land required another instrument called an artificial horizon since the true horizon is generally obscured.’ If your curiosity is piqued, you’ll be pleased to learn that we’ll have more information about pocket horizons in the book, which will be out this year.

Cambs 24 Interview

You know how author photos are always about 20 years old? And then you meet the person and it’s kind of odd? This is a recent photo for my Templar poetry pamphlet, Opera di Cera.

I was recently contacted by Leanne Moden, writer for Cambs 24.

Her blog focuses on ‘those passionate about poetry and fiction in the East Cambridgeshire Area,’ and some of my work has been based in Cambridge.

Leanne was enthusiastic about hearing details of all my latest projects, Cambridge-based or not, including poetry pamphlets Pocket Horizon  (forthcoming, Valley Press, 2013) and Opera di Cera (forthcoming, Templar Poetry, 2013).

It also turned out to be a rather sweeping tale of my work to date, and where all of this writing, teaching, and coordinating might be heading…

Read the interview here.

‘Opera di Cera’ a winner of Templar iSHOTS 2013 Poetry Awards

Templar Poetry announces this year’s pamphlet winners.

I’m delighted to announce that my verse drama about anatomical wax models has resurrected itself. A selection of 16 poems from the full, unpublished 40-poem verse drama has won the Templar Poetry ’iOTA Shots’ pamphlet awards for 2013. Opera di Cera will be published and launched at the Derwent Poetry Festival in November of this year.

Particular thanks are due to Dr Anna Maerker, my research advisor on the historical aspects of the project, and Dr Richard Barnett, Sarah Westcott, and Lorraine Mariner for acting as editors for early drafts of the work. I must thank Richard for the title, too, which I think is a vast improvement from my original working title, ‘Venus Heart’. Opera di Cera literally translates as ‘wax work,’ or ‘work of wax,’ and is a fine embodiment of what the poems, written in the voices of five characters, hold in store.

Inspired by the anatomical wax models at La Specola, the Florentine Museum of Physics and Natural History, which opened in 1775, Opera di Cera draws on real historical characters and events, blending fact with Pygmalion myth. The drama focuses on the creation of the ‘Anatomical Venus,’ a famous, life-sized female figure who comes apart (or is ‘dissectible’) to reveal a foetus in the womb. The Venus has received the most attention, historically, of all wax models, for her beauty, her uncanny realism, and the academic feminist debates that tend to rage around her.

Joanna Ebenstein of the Morbid Anatomy blog frequently features the anatomical Venus. Last year, the Last Tuesday Society hosted an exhibition about the Venus, curated by Ebenstein and including pieces by wax modeller Eleanor Crook. In a strange coincidence, I also had the opportunity, in early stages of research, to meet Sarah Simblet, anatomical artist, and hear her story about the influence the Specola waxes had on her as a student.

One of the characters in Opera di Cera: The anatomical Venus.

I spent a year researching Opera di Cera with Anna’s help, basing my initial reading on her book, Model Experts: Wax Anatomies and Enlightenment in Florence and Vienna, 1775 – 1815. Anna kindly gave me her manuscript before the book was even published.

I spent most of my time in the Wellcome Library researching the history of wax models, reading about 18th century recipes for the pigments that tint wax, and digging up graphic descriptions of bodysnatching, abortifacients, and vivisection. The work of present-day wax modeller Eleanor Crook provided an invaluable resource. Much of the poetry was also inspired by the photographic collection of ‘Wax Bodies‘ by Tanya Marcuse.

It’s an honour to become part of the tradition of artistic response that has arisen around the Specola waxworks, and wax models in general. I’m particularly interested in how the artists who respond to the wax models tend to be women.

Taking a unique opportunity to house-and-cat-sit for three months in the South of France last autumn and winter, I wrote an early draft of Opera di Cera and was greatly inspired by the sumptuous markets and sensual landscape of the Côte d’Azur. I rounded off the trip for my birthay in January 2012 with a pilgrimage to Florence, to La Specola itself, going there more than once, spending time with the real waxworks and the real Venus. The waxworks are on display today much as they were in the late 1700s, the time in which I set the verse drama.

It is extremely encouraging to be one of the three winners of this year’s Templar iOTA Shots poetry awards. The fact that an excerpt from a verse drama about 18th-century anatomical wax models can win an anonymous poetry prize reinforces my belief in the work, and in my general ambitions for ‘science poetry’!

Pocket Horizon

The object in the photograph is tiny – the little kit beside it, unrelated, is a pocket set of drawing tools. The black surface reflects the gilded scrollwork of a larger object to the right, out of the frame. But the little black disc set on three legs is a pocket horizon, used, once upon a time, for navigation.

A proper pocket-sized history of the object will be included in a forthcoming poetry pamphlet, Pocket Horizon, with new poems, artwork, and an introduction by Don Paterson.

The round, dark, reflective object on the right is a pocket horizon in the Whipple Museum.

Pocket Horizon has grown out of a fantastic workshop with Don, who generously met with a group whom I’ve had the pleasure to be part of for the past four years.

The Nevada Street Poets – Mick Delap (River Turning Tidal,) Lorraine Mariner (Furniture,) Sarah Westcott, Malene Engelund, and Dominic McLaughlin – all accomplished poets, all widely published in magazines and anthologies, and some the founders of their own successful poetry ventures (Mick was a founder of Magma, and Malene co-edits the Days of Roses Anthologies) - joined me in writing poems about objects in the Whipple Museum. Our guest poet is Richard Barnett, better known as an historian (Medical London; Sick City; The Book of Gin,) and a talented poet in his own right (winner of the Promis Prize, & published in Templar anthologies, amongst others).

Together, the seven of us spent an afternoon with Don discussing our new poems, in an intensely focussed and very fruitful workshop last Friday.

Part two of the project will see us tackling objects in the Wellcome Collection in a similar manner over the next two months.

Valley Press will publish Pocket Horizon this year, and I’m delighted to say that Cassie Herschel-Shorland will be our resident artist, drawing images of each object to accompany the poems.

We’ll be planning launch events around the pamphlet, so stay tuned…

Happy 2013!

Sunrise over South London, 2 Jan 2013.

Happy Christmas and New Year to everyone! I hope you had a restful or fun holiday time, or both. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I could sleep until spring. This morning I was awoken by a glorious sunrise. I enjoyed it for a minute, and then went back to bed. Nonetheless, it felt like a serendipitous way to start the year.

It’s the first time I’ve spent the holidays in London, and I’ve enjoyed a most British Christmas: climbing St. Paul’s (where I saw graffiti older than the US of A,) having brunch at Roast overlooking Borough Market, touring my favourite place in Greenwich, the NMM & ROG, exploring the Science Museum, sharing good food, drink, and laughs with friends, seeing the latest Alan Bennett play ‘People,’ visiting familiar faces at the National Portrait Gallery, and wandering around London, my favourite city in the world.

I’m lucky to be able to spend this time like a proper at-home tourist. I’m also very pleased about what’s to come.

In January, a special project is going to host my poetry group, the Nevada Street Poets, in a Masterclass Workshop with Don Paterson, guest Poet in Residence at the Whipple Museum in Cambridge. This is very exciting, and as it develops, you shall hear more.

Work in progress by Nicola.

The Naked Muse, my in-progress memoir about my experiences as an artist’s model, has piqued interest from a few literary agents whom I was lucky to meet at Christmas parties, and I shall be arranging pages and a proposal to send to them for consideration in Jan and Feb. Happily, I cracked my goal to write 100 pages of TNM before Christmas, and wrote 105 pages.

My mentorship with Cinnamon Press will begin in January as well: Cinnamon’s editor Jan will consider my manuscript of Double The Stars (a historical fiction about astronomer Caroline Herschel) and we will work to edit it throughout the coming year.

I’ll also begin to consider edits on Atlantic, my poetry collection that will be published by Cinnamon Press in 2014.

Please stay tuned for updates on all of these projects and more throughout the coming year, and may you all enjoy a productive and peaceful 2013.

In front of Caroline Herschel’s ‘sweeping’ Newtonian Reflector at the Science Museum.