THE ANTIDOTE

I have a work in progress on the Haddon Library's blog. It's a page for the products of the writing workshop that was the library's contribution to Cambridge University's Festival of Ideas.

That workshop was a collaboration with the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Workshop leader Sue Butler asked participants to write imaginatively in response to books from the Haddon and objects from the Museum.

As of this posting, the blog is a lot thinner than the work Sue led us to. But here's something I prepared earlier that goes with the subject of museums. Written 2002, published in St Matthew's parish magazine Streetwise in 2005.

THE ANTIDOTE

Simple procedure you may use
if you are minded to reduce,
when looking at another age,
the psychic risks of heritage:

nostalgic thoughts are well cured when
you know the way things were back then
is more than half the way that they
took to the way they are today.