Cardiff Creative Writers
14 May 2012
,Objects are evidence of somewhere, something, or somebody and as such all have stories to tell.
Recently a class of adults studying creative writing at Carduff University attended a workshop here with me in the Clore Discovery Centre. They took on the role of a curator and wrote their own creative labels for some of their favourite objects in the gallery. Here are a few examples:
Iron-Nickel Meteorite (Approximately 4.5 billion years old)
I wandered lonely, in a cloud of fragments, beyond the Martian orbit, since the beginnings of the Solar System some four-and-a-half billions of years ago. A passing satellite, en-route from Earth to who knows where, disturbed my orbit, and I fell towards the distant sun. Later, I felt the pull of Earth, and spiralled down into its gravity well – faster and faster until in fiery glory I blazed across the sky, a meteorite. Though reduced in size, I fell to earth. A fragment of the ancient history of the Solar System – a messenger from outer space – here I lie in The National Museum Collection.
David Edwards
What is it? Popular wrong answers include a drinking vessel or a paperweight!!
It is an axe head. Bronze Age man hafted it to a wooden handle and used the D shaped loop on the side for strapping. Butchering, wood-cutting and self-defence are among possible uses for this versatile tool.
Mike Dolan
A snakestone fossil
thought to be magic,
I was a cephalopod
with head and foot fused.
In life I relied
on plain hydraulics
a siphuncle curled
like a twirling straw
adjusted the pressure
in my chambered coils,
let me rise and fall
as I dodged ichthyosaurs.
Anne Bryan