📖 Book Review ~ Ten Poems about Museums from Candlestick Press

Candlestick Press
2024

Thanks to the publisher for my copy of this pamphlet

In these vivid poems selected by David Clarke we enter museums both real and imaginary to discover a host of beguiling artefacts.

Museums manage to contain whole worlds. They can show us life as it was lived in past centuries or prompt us to imagine how the future might unfold. Some of the objects in a museum may be workaday, but they have a remarkable power to express deep truths about our human lives. In the ‘room of clocks’ at the British Museum:

“Time thickens here, revolves,

regards itself in mirrors;

almost, each minute holds its place.”

from ‘Visit to the British Museum’ by Frances Horovitz

What characterises every museum is the ability to inspire a sense of wonder and possibility. Museums are places we should cherish and these poems demonstrate and celebrate that compelling fact.

Poems by Alison Brackenbury, David Clarke, Glyn Edwards, Suzannah Evans, Helen Farish, Thomas Hardy, Frances Horovitz, Robert Minhinnick, Tom Sastry and Lesley Saunders.

Cover illustration by Jane Burn.

📖 My Thoughts...

I love a good museum, be it some grand establishment, or a tiny local treasure tucked away on a back street somewhere, there is something quite magical about searching glass cabinets for that glimpse of our long ago past. I remember my very first museum, it was a school trip to the British Museum in London. The whole excursion captured my imagination, from the exciting journey by train from the North West ,and my first ever visit to our capital, the magic still remains.

This fine collection of ten poems captured my imagination in the same way, from its stunning cover and the Wedgewood blue of its end papers, to the fascinating content and the reminder that in visiting museums we are looking for a glimpse into the lives of those who have gone before and who have laid the foundations of the lives we live today. I remember being with a group of primary schoolchildren as they explored domestic items in a local museum, items which would have been in common use in the early part of the twentieth century, and enjoying their questioning minds I reminded them that one day items they take for granted will become artifacts in a  museum. Time passes, but things remain.

"Bobbin, Hook and tools my father's 

farming uncle might have had a use for.

Crazed china, stamped with coronation heads

Green bottles dulled by patent medication.

Mangles. Smocks and dominos. A copper

jelly mould shaped like a sleeping hare"

From The Museum of Lincolnshire Life by David Clarke

I find that the lull after Christmas is a perfect time to visit a museum and we are so lucky to have so many to choose. This lovely collection of poetry has certainly whetted my appetite for a visit to a museum but if that's not possible then Ten Poems about Museums is the next best thing, or perhaps give 'instead of a card' to someone who loves a good museum.

About the Publisher

Candlestick Press is a small, independent press publishing sumptuously produced poetry pamphlets that serve as a wonderful alternative to a greetings card, with matching envelopes and bookmarks left blank for your message. Their subjects include Mountains, Clouds, Walking, Birds, Wine and Happiness. Candlestick Press pamphlets are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, galleries and garden centres nationwide and available to order online.

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