A week later at lunchtime I passed a sign in the grass saying NO LANGUAGE GAMES while walking to hear Sean Borodale read from his astounding Bee Journal at the Museum of Classical Archeology. 

The next event was at the University Library at teatime with Gillian Clarke and Imtiaz Dharker both fresh from teaching a workshop with young Peterborough students who were so galvanized by the experience that they clapped enthusiastically after each poem. 

The following evening was at the Fitzwilliam to hear part of the emotive dramatic poem ‘Pink Mist’ by Owen Sheers after which he mentioned that in years gone by summer sunbathing on the roof of the Fitz was a popular pastime for staff.  Finally last Thursday at 6:00pm we gathered for Jo Shapcott’s compelling radio verse play ‘Erebus’ at the Polar Museum in a room with an enormous polar bear skin splayed on the wall next to a fierce sign: CAUTION Do Not Touch This Pelt.

Not only has the poetry been inspiring but the museums have come alive in new ways. All the events are free, there are many more to come, check the Thresholds website regularly.

I climb the steps and look over the parapet of the store into the main gallery. A figure of Nike, her wings broken to smithereens: these are survivors, certainly, from a great length and depth of time. But it’s the anonymous figures which I keep returning to, the ones with no story of Hermes or Athena or Nike.

I have a brief, enlightening conversation with a doctoral student at the museum desk about Early Minoan culture; I read for hours in the library on the subject of psyche, of thumos (spiritedness), and then return, passing the great scene from the Eleusinian sanctuary of Demeter and Kore giving Triptolemos the secret of grain.

The process of casting results in a small loss of detail, a mere percentage, but discernible nevertheless. I can’t help assessing them for quality of casting, noting air bubbles and seams; before going off again to root around in the classics library underneath the gallery for the trails of stories; the figures they represented; the temples they came from. In my second week the need to keep in mind stories and places melts away. I think more about the acts of faith which made these casts manifest, and of what survives, the intentional finding of the figure by the stone mason’s skill; the commission behind each votive statue, each Kore; the wars which destroyed temples and cities; the burial of statues as rubble or infill; the marks of excavation in our own time. What is still active? On the Temple of Zeus at Olympia’s East frieze, there is a man sitting in the way of Rodin’s thinker. He has no neck, no throat, the right half of his head is missing, yet his profile is crisply intact. A new meaning is possible; the potential is terrifying.

In truth, I am bewildered by the sheer possibility of the room. There is something anarchic about so many postures of the human imagination in one physical space. But each one of the figures is utterly quiet. What I realise, quite steadily over the course of  days is, it is light which animates and renders them cinematic; it is a theatre for light.

Sean read from Bee Journal and his earlier long poem about a walk through London. Listen to a recording ‘Winter Honey’ below and download more of Sean’s poems on our resources page.