Foundling Tales

The poet Subhadassi was the Foundling Museum’s writer-in-residence throughout the autumn of 2007. He took stories from the Museum as a starting point for his own writing, and used them to inspire local students and residents to create their own unique work, combining text, photography and performance. 

A selection of works by Subhadassi, students at Westminster Kingsway College and La Sainte Union School, and young people from Somers Town involved with the project Scene and Heard can be seen below.

Subhadassi was commissioned to write a new piece of work inspired by his time at the Foundling Museum:

Home

And Jesus said unto him,

The foxes have holes,

And the birds of the heaven have nests;

But the Son of man

Hath nowhere to lay his head.

Luke 9:58

In the old café

he couldn’t assume that anyone

would understand what he wanted to say;

how vowels fell out of his open mouth.

Through the window

he watched shadows on the plane trees spread upwards

as October sun bent towards Heathrow.

A tarnished bronze disk:

St Ethelburga and St Swithin.

Orphan of time and place

he sat in the sibilance of six o'clock news;

read a worn-out newspaper in greasy air.

The waiter ministered to his needs.

The food was typical and fast.

A squashed silver thimble;

initials inscribed in mother of pearl.

He chewed amid the ebb and flow of sirens

knowing his hunger would never be sated.

It got him up, walked him out

into the streets – that time of day

when pavements never seemed wide enough.

Some of the rush flowed underground.

Pink silk heart;

Bright red wooden box.

His thoughts darkened doorways

shadowed with cigarette butts,

sleeping bags, cardboard boxes.

He made it to a bus stop, waited for his number.

There were so many reasons

he thought himself lucky.

Six cut glass drops;

a key without a lock.

At the end of his toil he found a threshold

and crossed it.

Met by a smile in a place

that he would, for a while, call home.

                                                         Subhadassi

ESOL students from Westminster Kingsway College worked with text and images to create a stunning exhibition for the Foundling Museum Café, hosted November-December 2007.   The images from the exhibition are reproduced here.

Foundling Tales was part of the Arrivals programme; a major events programme celebrating the opening of St Pancras International and the arrival of the first Eurostar. The project was managed by literature consultancy UrbanWords.