It was no small feat for the judges to select just seven poems from the more than 200 submitted for this year’s competition. Each judge had a list of many other wonderful entries they loved but couldn’t quite find their way to the final selection.
The poems published here represent a range of styles, themes and object choices representing both the breadth of entries and depth of the Science Museum Group Collection. These poems contain imagery evocative of other times and places, bringing objects to life and imbuing them with new meaning and stories. In some cases the objects were familiar to the poet but given a new dimension, for others the object was an unknown, but the writing process allowed new appreciation; to see the object on a completely different emotional and intellectual level.
These poems were praised by the judges for being well-crafted and skilled in their use of poetic techniques, but above all they were selected because they were memorable. They were the poems that we couldn’t help but talk about when friends and colleagues asked about the competition. Each says something original, delivered in a way which feels fresh. In short, they are all excellent poems in their own right, let alone excellent poems about Science Museum Group objects.
We hope you enjoy these poems as much as we did, congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone who sent us a poem to read!
A massive thank you to our wonderful panel: Jonah Wilberg from the Science Museum and Alice Trow from the National Science and Media Museum. In addition, we had two fabulous external panel members: Anita Ngai, poet, artist, and MFA candidate at Manchester Metropolitan University and Jack Cooper, London-based science communicator and poet, whose poetry has been used in educational resources to teach about metaphor and cellular migration. A special thanks to Glyn Morgan, who acted as panel chair and guided a very considered, thoughtful panel discussion.
Happy National Poetry Day 2024!
Astronaut wanted by David Braziel
Tethered in traffic, eyes on home,
her world turned on those words
snapping a crack into her universe,
opening a step up to a new view.
Her answer slingshots her to Russia,
new languages and new science,
then out, escape velocity, into space
exploding into into a weightless peace.
She returns luminescent, charged
with the splitting heat of re-entry,
earthed, she is always out of sync,
too many sunrises lit her eyes.
Only the suit shares her timeline,
she would slip it on again and fly.
Motherlove by Fiona Theokritoff
When I was pregnant,
two pairs of nail clippers
sat on the bathroom shelf.
One pair belonged to me,
the other was for her, still inside
me, stretching those tiny hands.
With nails that one day
would need cutting.
Midsummer’s day saw her shoot,
pink and furious into the world.
And there they were: ten finger nails.
Tiny. Perfect. Terrifying.
The baby nail clippers yawned,
enormous. Her nails grew.
I traced the curve of them with my fingers,
tiny blades to scratch her perfect face.
I caressed them with my teeth,
then nibbled them off
in a rush of love.
The baby nail clippers went unused
to the charity shop.
Bowl from Hiroshima by Erica Hesketh
The first thing I notice is your lip,
meandering where it had been straight.
I want to touch it but I’m afraid to,
knowing it is a raised scar.
The smoothness of your inside surface
is a surprise – thin blue strokes
trailing towards your belly like grass
growing upside down into white sky.
Witness to a genocide,
you have taken on the beauty
of a sea-tossed shell,
growing close to your namesake
– porcelain, porcellana, cowrie –
etymology leaping backwards
from a sudden, blinding light.
If I put my ear to you
would I hear the tolling
of a new geological age?
140,000 humans obliterated.
At the centre of the blast
temperatures reached 7000°C,
making short work of a city
made of wood and paper but
only slightly melting your glaze.
The sand and stones pressed
haphazardly into your sides
give you the aspect
of an abandoned sandcastle –
one could almost believe
a little boy had done this, playing
on a clear and windless
August day.
Christmas 1988, and the most anticipated gift of all time by Kate Diamond
Rimmed speakers
to press my ear against
deciphering lyrics
scribbled into a notepad
mostly incorrect
Sturdy handle
to haul it onto my shoulder
touring the house
until mum says to save the batteries
they cost a bomb
Extended aerial
attempting to capture
that long wave radio station
with much static
and little success
‘Roller’
emblazoned on the tape deck
because I can’t skate
but my friend Mel
has been to the roller disco twice
Dials to adjust
mono and tone
which I turn with
scientific precision
and zero understanding
13 years old
DJ, pop star,
entertainer
This is the coolest
I have ever been
Mouse Embryo by Rachel Jung
Your skeleton, blue with chemicals,
is kept in the name of science;
six-toed, fluorescent, suspended,
the ultramarine outline of your ribs
has the look of weeds caught in an underwater current,
vein-purple, and even-spaced as gills.
Resembling a watery bluebell, topsy-turvy,
you’re a somersaulting fossil in miniature.
You could be microscopic, you’d fit on my thumbnail,
moon-creature, jar-dweller.
Preserved like an onion in brine,
thin as glass, almost immaterial
in your luminosity.
I can see through your bones,
as though lit up by TV static.
You’re between one thing and something else.
Kept a baby, kept unborn;
engineered – translucent as an X-ray.
You’re still: as in motionless, not moving,
as in continuous, still here.
Retirement Home by Angi Holden
He gazes beyond the window panes,
blindly tapping his fingers on the table
as if running them across a keyboard.
He can’t recall what he had for lunch
but remembers with perfect clarity
the arrival of the desktop,
its sleek cream case, its glassy screen,
the tray of five-inch floppy discs.
Strange how quickly the once-admired
becomes outdated, obsolescent, just like him.
How suddenly recollections distort
as memory corrupts.
The only certainty: that every box of data
becomes inaccessible.
To a Critic… by Lemma Dore
I’m sorry to say, catalogue clerk, that of the two of us
it is you who are uninteresting
I remember when I breathed in tropical skies and breathed out wood
the day my hinges thrilled like a sunset
there is still sand stuck between my teeth
I inspired intense interest in my gestation
great care taken to balance the opening swing, the closing click
they fleshed me out with cork and cotton wool
distilled concentration as they poured hope down my throats
Could you, my anonymous judge, be counted upon to make a bad situation better?
I’m a little cupboard of comfort
just the slide of my drawer is a sigh of placebo
the luxury of lacquered necessity taking a complaint seriously
I was always where I should be
and loved for it
Has anyone ever uttered prayers as they fumbled at your catches
gasped as they thumbed your neck
moaned as you splashed forth exactly what they needed?
I thought not
What does your label say:
Ribbed chest, disappointed front, containing eight thoughts (3 original) and some other dissipating atoms
How often does anyone exhume you from the archive nowadays?
Where is your voice now?