Hidden Treasures

The Museums Service teamed up with our Hampshire Poet for the National Year of Reading, Alison Orlowska, to display an array of Hidden Treasures from their extensive collections alongside lines of poetry to aid enjoyment and inspire the viewer to create their own verse.

The lines are here to be enjoyed by all.

Sailor Suit

Arranged by careful hands which pause with love
to linger in their folding, that small pile of cotton drill

Board Games

Match your skills to Sir Francis Chichester’s solo world endeavours
as your dreaming Sunday pleasures turn to the exacting sea. Your move -

Fungi

Wrenched from damp earth, dried out, coffined in perspex;
once they had a smell, a feel, a taste.
Brown bloom rising in witness, whispers it

Painted Swimsuit

That face - mild, of indeterminate gender
swims out of the blue, passes slowly over.
But how shall it not dissolve?

Learning to Read

Victorian ABC
Yelps of bewilderment from Janet and John painfully copying
Pride Goeth Before Destruction
while bossy little schoolmasters jack-jumping from their boxes,
terrorise Roger into eating his Red-Hat

Insects on Stamps

Don’t Stamp on Insects
Insects, butterfly and moth, wings of Royal Mail
solemnise the letter post - who dare to call it ‘snail’’

Toby Jugs

By Jingo, they sit stalwart, bristling with purpose
in the cabinet of some patriotic parlour, refusing defeat.

Insects in Archaeology

As Above, So Below
The sacred beetle in the rolling of his dung
mirrors the great god who gives his shoulder to the sun

Lantern Projector

Pictures born of light, of glass
delivered from that hot metal belly
somehow; cunning as magic