The poetry box at Vestas Blades (wind turbine manufacturer) has now been up for several weeks and poems have been coming in at a surprising rate. The idea is to find interesting ways of reproducing and displaying some of them around the Vestas site. This little one was the first to drop into the box. It has been carved on a stone which we will set into a verge or flower bed somewhere near the factory.
In exchange for giving my dad a hand installing his sculpture (see below) he helped me get the second bronze plaque with a bus stop poem on it into place Apes Down Farm, Calbourne. The poem of the same name laments the evident lack of apes in the area. It has been set onto a big slab of stone which we dug into the verge. This was harder than it sounds because the ground was very stony, but it worked out in the end. Hop on the bus and have a look!
On Wednesday Sam and I went over to the Arts & Business Awards ceremony in Portsmouth. At the door of the new Aspex Gallery we were greeted by a saxophonist who was able to play in the rain while standing on top of a tall pair of stilts, which I felt must be worthy of some kind of arts award in itself. Inside, there were lots of guests milling around, examining an exhibition of tiny cut-out birds and light-sensitive cuckoo clocks.
Because the project to put poems on buses and at bus stops isn’t complete, I hadn’t expected it to win anything, but to my delight it was given the Arts & Business Community Award. Really, the trophy belongs to Southern Vectis, but we’ve got it for the moment. I talked to the artist who made it and she warned me not to put it in the sun as some others of hers have exploded. This makes it even more exciting to have won it while at the same time feeling like a good reason to pass it on.
Following several hours of whizzing angle-grinders and hammer drills, the dust settled in/on Oakfield outside Premier Stores to reveal the first poem to be installed as part of the Bus Stop Poems scheme. The project has been made possible by Arts & Business. The ode, written by Clea Barton, details all the wonderful things to be found in Oakfield, leaving one in little doubt that it is unnecessary, even foolhardy to venture elswhere. While this is probably a bit off-message with respect to its public transport sponsors Southern Vectis, it did seem to have the approval of those waiting at the stop. There are nine more bronze plaques to be installed around the Island.
As the organiser of Island 2000’s poetry scheme, I’m pleased when members of the public get involved.
We recently ran a competition to write poems inspired by the Island’s 1500 bus stops - the top 10 poems being cast in bronze and set into the ground at the relevant stops. Last week, the winners were announced in the County Press and on Solent T.V. I naively underestimated the impact this would have. This morning, cycling in to work, I noticed queues of people waiting expectantly at several East Cowes stops, clearly hoping to be among the first to set eyes on the poems.
I saw several Japanese tourists waiting near Osborne House, while 100 metres further down the road at The Swiss Cottage stop, a mother with three small children were camped out. Perhaps most heart-warmingly, a group of hooded youths had gathered at the bus stop by the East Cowes Town Hall, clearly high spirited in anticipation of the arrival of Margaret Prior’s poem ‘Useful Old Umbrella Tree’. Not wanting to dampen their spirits, I did feel duty-bound to let them know that the actual installation will probably not take place before April, but to my surprise, though they took the news with some incredulity, they remained steadfast, waiting by the bus stop. I returned to East Cowes town centre this afternoon to buy a sandwich and found that the youngsters, not taking any chances, had had the initiative to organise some sort of rota system and had been replaced by two pensioners. What enthusiasm! How nice to see young and old working together and to think that they have been brought together by poetry.
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