Space, Royal Observatory Greenwich Poetry Book

Gaby Morgan is an experienced anthologist and here has produced a wide-ranging collection of poetry to celebrate the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. The titles of the book’s sections give a hint of subjects of the poems she has selected: telescopes, and the history of the Greenwich telescope itself; the moon, the sun, the planets and the stars; people who have looked up at the universe and what they have made of it; and the immensity of time revealed to us in space. In short, from here to infinity and beyond. It is an impressive gathering of poets from Sappho, through D.H. Lawrence, Louisa May Alcott and Thomas Hardy to present day voices like John Rice, Chrissie Gittins and Kate Wakeling, if I may invidiously pick out a few from the throng. The collection is not advertised for young people, although the introduction from the Deputy Head of Astronomy at Greenwich suggests that they are the intended audience. There are poets here who did not knowingly write for young people alongside those who certainly do, but such is the skill of Gaby Morgan’s selection that very few poems, I think, would be beyond a poetry loving teenager. And there is skill and care in the arrangement, too, as viewpoints, reactions and registers switch from poem to poem and subject to subject, sometimes complementing one another and sometimes contrasting. There are poems here you might know and some that you won’t, particularly those that have been commissioned for the collection, and there are many that will stay with you. My only misgiving are the black and white illustrations enclosed in broken lines that, unfortunately, look like an invitation to cut the pictures out. Illustrating the history of the observatory and many of the pioneers of astronomy, they are always relevant, but seem to me to have a lack of visual impact to match the poems they accompany.