National Gallery Podcast

Last month I was one of a group of poets commissioned to write new work to be used in a bonus track for May's National Gallery podcast. The theme is "Night at the Museum". In preparation for this I had the honour of strolling round the gallery after closing time. The night lighting is heat sensitive so they would come on when we walked into a room, and go out again after we walked out. It was beautiful and spooky, especially when I saw Stubbs' Horse silhouetted in an adjacent room.

To listen to it, (only about seven minutes long so it should be painless) follow the link above or download the bonus track directly by right clicking this link for the mp4 file with images or this link for a sound only file. My poem is called"Goodnight Vincent" and I appear about 3min 30 sec into the bonus track.

Just for posterity here's the transcript for the poem they chose

Goodnight Vincent

Vincent,
your cocky chair nearly had us,
almost a dare rather than an invitation.
You skew perspective,
pitch that hard clay floor into our faces
and yet those roots reach out
from the box of onions,
prove that the truth, the will,
cannot be contained.

A blunt offer,
yet still an invitation,
Please be seated, minus the please.
We reciprocate with a bi-millenial
money tainted gaze,
scanning for some emo-porn
omens of tragedy rumbling beneath
thick smears of beaming yellow.

Perhaps it is more fitting
that when the floor no longer squeaks
with the gait of rubber soles,
after the day’s last echoing whisper
signifies the constant failure of words…

Lights out.
Photons cease their frantic dance
with no retinal rods to catch them.
I like to think that your invitation still stands
though it is the silence, the stillness, the darkness
That accept it.

Niall O’Sullivan 04/07

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