Bowerbirds, balloons and poetry make Festival of the Mind launch party a success

The Festival of the Mind got off to a mind-blowing start on Thursday 20 September with a day of celebrations in Weston Park.

Giant eight foot Bowerbird ‘bowers’ enticed visitors just as they do the female Bowerbirds, and the concourse was adorned with brightly coloured ‘flock wallpaper’.

Despite the traditional British weather, many people turned out to sample the culinary and cultural delights on offer. Simon Armitage, Professor of Poetry at the University, picked two winning poems on the theme of space from a field of over 170 entrants, and launched them into space in a balloon from the roof of Weston Park Museum.

See what one of the winning poets, Lykara Ryder, a PhD student at the University, had to say below. And read her poem by clicking on the link at the end of this story.

Of Lykara's poem, Simon said: “What I really liked about the poem was that it took the view from space from above the earth, reversing the brief we gave them. It was about a human situation in a cosmological context. I’d really like this to become an annual event, to grow into a national poetry competition.”

Festival of the Mind continues over the weekend and into next week. Full programme of events.

Window Seat on a Night Flight by Lykara Ryder

Beneath the sight-stealing white
mist, the lines of light
that mark the land are burned, like sun
spots, into my eyes until the horizon
smudges out. So
this grid of humanity below
has me puff and sigh, full of wonder
as crystals of water
chillingly robe
lives that span the globe
and days that cross continents.
I dream until descent of posted parcels, Army
boys coming home, the debris
of broken homes being flung
across the sky, now strung –
just like these lights – crosswise
above the earth below my eyes

The Thought of You in Another Country by Lewis Haubus

The way you only repainted your finger nails
once the colour became completely picked away
was predicted by Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s moons.
Using eclipses as clocks, half a billion miles away,
a telescoped table was drawn from satellite shadows
repeatedly marking fabric old as gods.
Then, for twenty-two minutes, the moons wentmissing,
and the thought of you living sandaled inside another country
drifted over movements and motions
until someone suggested the delayed stretch of travelling light
and the increased distance between two objects
could make it appear as if nothing was there.