It’s a great pleasure to be able to spend the next six months as the very first Writer in Residence for the Royal College of Nursing. My role is part of an exciting new project with the RCN Library and Archive, called Service Scrapbooks, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The grant will enable the RCN to digitise its collection of First World War nursing scrapbooks and create an online resource showcasing the long lost stories of nine nurses who served during the Great War.
I will be here every Wednesday exploring the exhibition and WW1 archive, running workshops, talking with people about what they have found, and supporting members and the public to write their own poems. By the end of the residency I hope to have edited an anthology of poetry submitted by people that have responded creatively to the exhibition’s stories and photographs.
