Links for BBC Radio 3 Poet in Residence: - Listen Up!
- Twenty Minutes.Sample commissions:
- Feature with Seamus Heaney: terranauts.
- Working with orchestras.
Imperial War Museum [first Poet in Residence] + Multicaptions / LiterARTure
[also see The Poetry Society site]Summary for SEARCH AND CREATE: The Imperial War Museum.
It's rare for poets to present their work among artefacts of national importance. Rarer still that poetry should occupy a central place in a national museum's educational programme and public displays. And yet, unless you were an attentive visitor, or child, you could walk straight past it.
Mario forged a small slice of history by becoming the first and so far (2013) only poet to reside at the IWM. Not surprisingly for a former scientist, he used his time there to observe visitors observing the artefacts. He struck on the idea of writing and locating poems throughout the site so as to fundamentally challenge how children and adults perceive those objects.
Rather than being presented ostentatiously, the poems have to be found. One poem imitates the action of a sniper; another asks you to solve the riddle of what you're looking at; a third hoodwinks you into offering yourself up, prostrate, to an oncoming tank. These poems are themselves snipers, of a sort. They fly just under your radar, or drop serenely like depth charges that might at any moment explode your attention.
A worksheet encourages visitors and schoolchildren to write their own poems in response. So successful was this initiative that it has remained in force across two decades, and was even translated to the Old Trafford site of IWM North where Mario's poems are stencilled onto the walls and jostle provocatively with captions. Visitors are often surprised by these installations, energised by the visual and emotive impact of this strangely powerful and hauntingly innovative work.
London Borough of Havering
Mario with the British Council. . . biography & discussion.
- Oxford Brookes University - Click here for the RLF website
- Humour and Purpose. . . Click here to read the Royal Literary Fund lecture
** NEW ** Click here for Mission Possible: The Study Skills Pack
. . . an outstanding resource for essay & exam preparation.
. . . a unique science-based resource for writers & teachers of all ages.
(youth activities on the written and spoken word) in the national scheme for London 2012
residency delivered 9 July 2008.
"I saw the wonderful work that Mario had done with the Imperial War Museum... the opportunity
came up... I jumped at it." Jackie Edelman, Learning & Access Officer.
NAWE Writing on Location educational residency [MLA Council / British Library] LinC Project 2010.
Commission for major interactive soundscape/ poetry installation spanning the Millennium Bridge (London 2012 Olympics).
Eco Expo - SUSTAINABLE FUTURES
