Description
Astute, precise, and unsettlingly calm, Accessioning is an index of lives encased in museum glass, and then brought to life.
Through poems about fossilised fruit seeds and the sofa where Emily Brontë died, Wetton questions how we curate the lives of those living and dead in a pamphlet about looking, processing, and memorialising. Whether considering preserved wedding-cakes, a non-existent art exhibition or a human scream, these poems speak to the impossibility of containment and question our ability to map and categorise.
This is a pamphlet of poems about the stories that we tell ourselves, the memories that we construct, and the ways that we value and devalue people, animals and objects alike.
Praise for Accessioning
‘I like my poetry accessible and concrete, and… this book gives me those rewards. I especially liked, “Posting Index Cards Home” which ruminates over seaside views and worries, and the amusing “Commissioning a Map” which interrogates different ways we might create maps. “Private Tour” too is just wonderful: no, the writer’s mother is not allowed to lie on the sofa where Emily Bronte died. Printed on lovely thick paper in card covers with that beautifully illustrated front cover, Accessioning is a real little treat.’ – Liz Dexter, Adventures in Reading, Running, and Working from Home
