Poems for…the wall

This is a collection of 52 poems all on the subject of waiting.

Just before the millenium, the (now late) poet David Hart was asked by the Arts Council to commission 50 contemporary UK poets to write a poem each about waiting, on behalf of this project. The 50 included two Poets Laureate, one present and one future. The poems were intended for public display in healthcare waiting rooms around the country, in community health centres and in hospitals. The poems would seek to offer suitable words, displayed on the waiting room wall, which spoke directly to their readers’ present experience, as they sat together in the waiting room. In those days, the project as a whole was still called “Poems for the Waiting Room”…

The few months in which David was putting the collection together were immensely exciting. For a short while, all at the same time, fifty creative individuals around the country were immersing themselves in this same topic. And they were producing work for sharing with a whole population, all of whom must come together at some point, in waiting.  Several years later, I invited David to write a report on his commissioning/ante-natal exercise and here that is. David was as much priest as poet and for me his poet self was deeply informed by, and even bristling with, that in him which was priestly. In a way that was always and utterly fresh, those two aspects often merged. His rather wonderful report carries some of that being, I think, although I was perhaps foolish to wait too long before requesting it. Some of the details and wonder of that commissioning time had faded from memory a bit, by then. Waiting is an art. You can get it wrong sometimes.

The extra two poems in the collection are by David and myself. They were added at my suggestion. Not commissioned, they were freely given, out of sheer delight and deep absorption in the waiting idea. I sent David several of mine to choose from, but rather than select one he combined more than one into an entirely new poem. I’ve called it “Across the Way.” For a while I felt a bit as if I had been cut into different pieces but once my psychic stitches had been removed, I came to love the poem. I did not feel qualified to judge David’s work, so I think a friend of his settled on “Put the Clocks.”

Thanks to the Arts Council for their support and to all the poets who contributed so richly. I should give a special mention to Debjani Chatterjee, as David also does. She not only contributed her own poem, but acted as translator for several others.

To see some examples of the poems and of their appearance, click on the images below and they will expand :