Landmark Poetry: places and spaces

What is the course about?

This one-day in-person literature course will consider a range of poems that are inscribed upon material surfaces other than paper, (sculptures, statues, built and natural environments) both in London and around the UK. What happens when we encounter a poem as a landmark in a public space? What happens to the space because the poem is there? Such poetry functions as both public record and public art.

Poetry set into civic spaces can express perspectives that are marginal or missing in traditional cultural representation. The poems we explore create opportunities for questioning - they unlock stories from multiple histories associated with that space – be it Fen Court and commemorating the abolition of the Trade in enslaved people, 2007, or the submerged rivers of London, or the Great Surrey Canal now paved over, the Bronte sisters’ moors, or the Forth Bridge workers who enabled the building of the Queensferry Crossing. We shall consider how poetry commissioned in/on statues, sculptures, and monuments offers an alternative form of testimony, commemoration, and ongoing opportunities for public recognition – either of the poet commissioned, or of the subject of the commission, or of the space in which the commission is located. These Landmark Poems can expand the horizons by which to consider poetry’s form and function and as a form of monumental and public art.

Biography: Deirdre Osborne has a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London. She was Professor of Literature and Drama in English at Goldsmiths, University of London 2004 - 2024 and is currently a College Orator and an Associate Lecturer for the Open University. A Visiting Fellow in Decolonising and Postcolonial Literatures in English at universities in New York, London, Madrid and Palermo, her current research involves ‘Landmark Poetics’ - critical approaches to poetry not on the page but on material surfaces (clothing, buildings, pavement, rocks, monuments and plaques).

What will we cover?

Who is excluded from public and civic commemoration? What is the effect of reading a poem in a public landmark compared to ‘on the page’? What opportunities are there for ‘double vision’ – looking at an artwork and reading a literary work, and what effects does this produce? Can a poem restore certain histories and/or make us see associations in fresh ways? Is a poem a route to a certain form of archiving?

We will explore two Landmark poems by Jackie Kay, the Brontë stone, ‘Anne’ (2018) located between Thornton and Haworth in Yorkshire. Kay joins writers Kate Bush, Jeanette Winterson and Carol Ann Duffy to respond to each of the siblings and the Brontë legacy. Her second poem ‘Queensferry Crossing’ (2020) is set into Gordon Muir’s bronze sculpture ‘Bridge of Pages’ on the Forth Bridge and is also present in braille, one of the few commissioned braille poems in the world. We will then compare Dorothea Smartt’s latest commission by Tideway of nine short poems set in the nine Thames Tideway Tunnel ventilation columns for London’s “super sewer.” In the tidal tales that the submerged London rivers inspire, Smartt works with the ways in which water is the bearer of memory, the portal to and from Empire in Britain’s history, reaching back to Londinium when Britannia was a dominion of ancient Rome.
The UK’s most commissioned landmark poet, Lemn Sissay has three significant landmark poems in London: “Shipping Good” (2012) set into the pavement outside Greenwich Light Rail Station, “Lock and Quay” (2016) which is laid into the edging of a pathway of what was once the Surrey Quay canal and now replacing the Grand Surrey Canal’s former towpath and “The Gilt of Cain” which is set in and around Michael Visocchi’s sculpture, a sculpture that Murdo Macdonald describes as “a public commission to design a memorial artwork to commemorate the bicentenary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade” (2008).

What will I achieve?
By the end of this course you should be able to...

-Develop an awareness of the power of a poem to transform public and civic space.
-Engage in close readings of the poems on the page in comparison with how they appear in/on the landmarks or sculpture, considering how multi-art approaches add to meanings and interpretations of poetry.
-Examine how marginalised voices in history and literature can be restored through poetry in landmarks and civic spaces.

What level is the course and do I need any particular skills?

This is a course for anyone who loves reading poetry, thinking about monument culture and art in public spaces. No particular skills are needed, just an openness to thinking about how poetry is as much a source for finding out about history as any formal archive.

How will I be taught, and will there be any work outside the class?

There will be short informative lectures and visual presentations for context, but the focus is upon readings of the poems and small group discussion for feeding back ideas and observations.

Are there any other costs? Is there anything I need to bring?

Printed extracts and visual materials will be provided by the tutor.

When I've finished, what course can I do next?

Look for other poetry courses on on website under history, culture & writing/literature/poetry at www.citylit.ac.uk.