It’s a long time since this project had some news to announce.

Covid surely played a part in this long silence. For more than twenty years, Poems for the Wall has been turning poems into posters and offering them for free display in public settings. They might have something human to add in those places, an empathic word. Demand for them was world-wide and pretty consistent. But then came Covid, putting indoor public space out of bounds for months. Human assembly had become dangerous and – for some – life-threatening.

But there’s another aspect, as well, longer lasting. For years, the places where these poem-posters most commonly appeared were class-rooms and healthcare waiting rooms. And that, in turn, meant that the project relied on someone working in these places having enough time and mind-space to hear about the project, decide to adopt it, and organise the poems’ local display. I believe that, since Covid, that sufficiency of time and mind-space has been lacking, in the fields both of education and healthcare.

There may have been other factors, but I believe that this is the main reason why, in recent years, demand for this project’s material has fallen away to almost nothing. Until recently. Conditions, agencies, elements in the landscape, do keep changing – perhaps initially out of the reckoning. And then suddenly something breaks surface, connection is made and a new shape is added to the landscape.

Libraries provide an example of what I mean. Yes, there have been significant funding problems in recent years. But also some shape-changing in line with technical and social and educational developments. Libraries have become more like social and cultural centres, offering a whole new range of activities. Distinctions once clear are now less so. The popular word ‘hub’ begins to apply with some accuracy to buildings once associated just with books and desks and study and hush.

Just before Christmas, an organisation called ‘Libraries Connected’ advertised this project to its members. Since then, libraries all over the country have registered on this site. At the time of writing, I know very little more than that, except my own pleasure that perhaps we are heading back into circulation, the international and connective words of this project’s poems heading back into the conversation.

Rogan Wolf, Project Director