We worked with the National Centre for Writing to do a call out for poets and to select Norwich based Jenny Pagdin to produce a site specific poem which explores the lives of women in Norwich across the ages.
Norwich was England’s first Unesco City of Literature and the new building is located by Benedicts Gate which is one of 12 historic gates in the Medieval Town Wall.
Jenny's poem is etched into 12 separate panels and feature the names of all the 12 historic gates to create a narrative drawing on the city’s long history.
Entitled Sisters of the Gated City, the poem opens at King’s Street Gate in the 13th century, where anchoresses could opt to be bricked into cells attached to a church for years. It moves on to the 16th century when Dutch and Flemish travellers migrated to Norwich, with the poet choosing Brazen Gate as their entrance point into the city. Pagdin’s poetic time machine also visits local heroine Mary Chapman who founded Bethel Hospital by St Giles’ Gate in the 18th century and depicts 20th century suffrage at St Benedict’s Gate. She concludes the odyssey in the present day as children play by the river near St Martin’s Gate, the final of 12 brief stops along the history of Norwich, each charted by a different entrance to the wall.
Jenny Pagdins poem inspired a sculptural commission for the development by artist Joseph Hillier which takes the image of a woman with 12 gate images inlayed with gold leaf. The small sculpture is sited above the poem in a new plaza and garden surrounded by the new architecture.
