The Course

Here is a poem by Gill Green inspired by my course Writing From Artefacts which took place last week.

The three day course was part of the Edinburgh University Open Studies Summer Programme. Each morning we visited a gallery or museum, before spending the afternoon writing.

Amongst other things we encountered boxes of bones at the Edinburgh Museums Collections Centre, vaccination shields at the Museum of Childhood, phrenology heads  at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and a wolf fur at the National Museum of Scotland.

It was all great fun and the participants produced some brilliant poems and short pieces, as well as bringing their own objects from home for us to ponder including a dirty pebble, the Bruce Springsteen Golden Circle wrist band, a handcrafted book cum map, a bottle full of sand, a tiny tin, a turquoise Buddha from Vietnam and a set of laburnum seeds.

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