We’re sending out the 2024 Menu of Poems today!
Our team at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre are busy packing up the beautiful new Menu of Poems this morning. They’ll then send them to community hospitals and day care centres across West Cork.
Menu of Poems has served a helping of poetry on the hospital meal trays of Ireland since its conception in 2008. Each year, ten thousand copies of a short anthology of poetry are distributed throughout Irish hospital wards, waiting rooms and other healthcare contexts for patients, visitors and staff to enjoy. Award winning Irish poet Jane Clarke edited this year’s selection. The menu features one of Jane’s poems, ‘The Yellow Jumper’. ‘Perhaps the World Ends Here’ by Joy Harjo, and ‘An Empty Barn in the Midlands’ by Eva Bourke also feature.
Jane says of the project, ‘It’s a pleasure to share three poems with you today. I hope they’ll arrive like shafts of sunlight. There’s no need to study them, no need to look for hidden meaning – just read them a few times, maybe aloud to hear how they sound. See how they make you feel, what memories they unfurl, what pictures they evoke. Poetry doesn’t solve problems and doesn’t take away pain but most days it helps me connect with people and nature around me and makes me feel more alive.’
You can listen to the poems at the Saolta Arts website . You are welcome to send any comments or feedback to saoltaarts@hse.ie.
Menu of Poems is a project of Arts and Health Co-ordinators Ireland, managed and produced by Saolta Arts and kindly supported by the Health Service Executive and Poetry Ireland. Arts for Health Partnership Programme is a proud supporter of Menu of Poems.