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.