The Cerith Wyn Evans Poetry Jukebox

To celebrate the start of the Cerith Wyn Evans exhibition, we turned Gallery Two into a Poetry Jukebox this Saturday. The Poetry Jukebox is a unique live literature event, specially developed by De La Warr artist and writer Wendy Ann Greenhalgh for the season. The Jukebox allows Pavilion visitors to choose a poem on the theme of light, beauty and heat from our instant, online poem hunter - and then hand it over to Wendy and her team - for a personalised, live and unrehearsed performance inside the gallery.

Visitors picked poems as diverse as the beacons in the first poem of AE Housman's 'A Shropshire Lad' and Ken Nesbitt's light fearing father in 'I Think My Dad is Dracula!' And we ended the day with a performance of Cecelia Weir's 'Lights On, Lights Off' as the giant columns of Cerith Wyn Evans' S=U=P=E=R=S=T=R=U=C=T=U=R=E slowly turned themselves off and on.

"It really works," said one visitor. "They say a picture's worth a hundred words, but sometimes it's hard to know what something's saying, but the poems helped to say it."

The lyricism of Cerith Wyn Evans' work and the medium of poetry, are certainly a great match, and Saturday's Poetry Jukebox was very popular. How often do you get your own personalised poetry reading - performed just for you - after all? We'll be running the Poetry Jukebox again on Saturday May 19th - so if you missed it this weekend, then come along and join us next time. This event isn't just for poets, writers ... or grown-ups! Bring your kids along and let them choose a poem too!

Many thanks to poet Jac Cattaneo, who also joined Wendy to give readings on Saturday.