Wednesday 18 January 2012

windows for Robert Burns

From a press release by Jean Atkin of Word Sparks:

"Hundreds of poems will be on display in venues across Dumfries from this week as part of the Burns Windows Project. Inspired by Robert Burns’ occasional predilection for writing verse on window panes with a diamond ring or stylus, local artist Hugh Bryden and David Borthwick, lecturer at the University of Glasgow in Dumfries, came up with the idea of inviting contemporary poets to submit their own work for display as window poems. Poets were sent a sheet of clear plastic and a pen, and asked to write a poem which spoke of their own time ‘in a transparent way.'


"But David and Hugh had no idea of how the project would take off, with The Burns Windows Project attracting almost 200 poems submitted from as far afield as the USA, Belgium and Switzerland, as well as submissions from some of Britain’s top poets, including Jen Hadfield, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, Jean Sprackland, Andrew Greig and many others. 

"Hugh and David are members of The Stove, a collective of artists and creative people involved in regenerating the former Happit store in the High Street as an arts venue. The poems are a part of the Stove’s inaugural events weekend on January 27–8, part of the Big Burns Supper, with thirty of the best poems to be projected from the building during the Burns Supper extravaganza, with almost a hundred others on display in the windows."