Image Text Image

Poets and artists

Nick Pearson

I am a poet. I think collaboration with other poets and artists is an exciting way to develop new approaches to form and subject in my work.

Poems - Rock and Fossil Festival Exhibition September 2009

Lapworth Museum Stillborn
While researching rocks and fossils I visited the Lapworth Museum of Geology at Birmingham University. This fascinating museum contains some high quality fossil specimens and I was struck by one labelled ‘Stillborn Baby Reptila Jurassic'. This seemed to be a very precise, authoritative statement and started me thinking about the meaning of preservation and how it informs our understanding of evolution.


Justin Nicholson created artwork influenced by this poem.

Listen and read ‘Lapworth Museum Stillborn'.

Word Search
Linda Nevill and I discussed the geological processes of compression and sedimentation and how this might be interpreted in prints and poetry. One strand of the discussion was around how words might change over time, how they might break up or metamorphose into something completely different like rocks do. This initial discussion influenced the concept of my poem.

‘Word Search.’ In writing it I also had in mind the 19th century geologist Roderick Murchison who frequented the Dudley area and gave lectures on his theories to packed audiences in the limestone caves.


Linda Nevill created artwork influenced by this poem.

Listen and read ‘Word Search’

Interview with a Trilobite
In a previous Image Text Image exhibition I was interested in the insect sculptures created by Rob McGuinness, specifically what he describes as their ‘suggestive characteristics.’ Fossils have very distinct forms, none more so than the trilobite. This insect-like creature has always been a famous name in the Wren’s Nest nature reserve and in my poem I wanted to bring its imagined personality to life within a contemporary context. Rob also makes connections, through form and colour, to contemporary street cultures.

The trilobite also makes an appearance, in one guise or another, in the work of other artists.



Listen and read ‘Interview with a Trilobite’