Thresholds

Carol Ann Duffy Poet Laureate

Welcome to Thresholds an exciting new poetry project supported by the University of Cambridge and Arts Council England in Cambridge Museums and Collections.

I have invited ten of the best UK poets writing today to take part in an unprecedented and extraordinary series of residencies at the University of Cambridge. This is a stunning level of commitment to poetry and poets and to young people who want to develop their writing.

Each poet will spend time in their museum or collection exploring the collections and working with young people, helping them to develop their critical thinking skills as well as their writing. The ten poets have also been commissioned to write a new poem informed and inspired by the collections.

Seamus Heaney once said “Poetry is more a threshold than a path, one constantly departed from, at which readers and writers undergo, in their different ways, the experience of being at the same time summoned and released.”

This project will summon you to poetry, and to these many remarkable and beautiful museums and collections through events, exciting interventions, online discussions and new writing. All you have to do is walk over the threshold....