The Poetry Cubicle's founding aims are to explore, interpret, document, preserve and archive 'poetry' in its myriad, and hybrid, forms, expressions and states, and to provide access to such artistic expressions through the physical and digital realms to as wide an audience as possible.
It creates, produces and curates interdisciplinary multi-arts projects which concentrate on exploring the physical and theoretical boundaries of what a 'spectator / observer'; 'participant / reader'; and 'artist' accept and define as 'poetry' in a 'live art', 'performance' or 'dissemination' context.
The Poetry Cubicle was founded and based at The Frontier Gallery in Norwich (UK) from 2002 until 2003, operating as a weekly poetry installation, performance, lending library and poetry space. In October 2002 after gaining a Millennium Award (from the Millennium Commission) the organisation concentrated on expanding its key installation and project: the Library.
In 2003 the organisation's Project Manager and Lead Artist, Sara Wingate Gray, successfully gained an Awards for Artists from Arts Council England - East. The award enabled the organisation to produce and promote a touring performance of poets & poetry to Amsterdam International Poetry Festival and to curate a month long installation at The Frontier Gallery, involving over forty local artists, musicians, poets and writers. The installation was then taken on tour to Glastonbury Festival (UK), and appeared as 'The Poetry Cubicle Marquee' in the Theatre & Circus Fields (an expanded version of the installation which first appeared at the Festival in 2002), garnering critical acclaim and launching the TV, radio and performance careers of several poets it represented.
From 2004 - 2005 the organisation's projects incorporated several educational elements, including a three month inter-generational performance, creative writing and publishing project with twenty school children and senior citizens from Hethersett (Norfolk, UK); as well as providing 25 live installations and performances, involving over 100 writers, artists and musicians; curating a two week live performance, poetry and music installation as part of the Norwich Fringe Festival (2004); and curating in association with BlackBox Theatre & HowlBackHum the live installation & performance programme for Norwich Fringe Festival in 2005.
In May 2006 the organisation embarked upon its most experimental and dynamic project yet: 'The Itinerant Poetry Librarian', employing our Lead Artist as "The Librarian" and sending her off with a rotating selection from our Library collection, with a mission to couchsurf the world in order to provide the world with free access to a fully operational public lending library of "Lost & Forgotten" poetry.
The Poetry Cubicle currently comprises a Library and Digital Archive, a repository of Poems and Poets, both dead and alive, and takes as its mission the exploration & promotion, and the documentation & preservation of poetry as it may exist in both the physical and digital worlds.
Interested? Come Join Us.