Poems for the wall is a project which Hyphen-21 has been managing and overseeing for over twenty years. The poems are formatted as posters and made available online free of charge for public display. The common space we first envisaged was the healthcare waiting room. Later demand came from schools and libraries.
The project has just completed a new collection of poems called Poems for Rising Ten. This is aimed at children of around ten years old, approaching the end of their time in primary school.
There are 25 poems in this new collection, each one accompanied by art work. In most cases, the images are not literal illustrations as such. I think they offer something richer than illustration, carrying or suggesting the spirit of the words, rather than prescribing shapes for them. They are by Rachel Stevens who has given her work free to this project.
These richly eloquent poems have now been uploaded on the project’s website.
Through most of October 2022, the new collection was launched as a small exhibition in a quiet country church. The image above shows them as they looked in that place. They were enlarged to A3 size and printed onto foamex board.
Years Five and Six from the local primary school came visiting and the children seemed impressed and responded in kind.
Here are some initial close-ups of the poems on display, taken by smart phone : https://www.facebook.com/photo/fbid=7949865511750928&set=pcb.7948868918517254