08 February 2002
The scheme, launched by poet laureate Andrew Motion in the less-than-poetic setting of a hospital in Croydon, will see 40,000 packs containing 100 poems sent across the country to adorn walls in hospitals, doctors' surgeries, dentists' waiting rooms and health centres.
The verses are a combination of well-known works by poets such as Shakespeare and Ted Hughes and 50 newly commissioned poems, some in Gaelic and Serbo-Croat, on the theme of waiting. There are plans for poets to give readings in waiting rooms around the country.
NHS Estates and the Arts Council each contributed £10,000 to the £30,000 project. The organisers are still looking for a backer for the final third of the funding.
Rogan Wolf, the freelance social worker whose charity Hyphen-21 is behind Poems for the Waiting Room, said: 'Even if they only make waiting rooms a little less desolate then the poems will have achieved a great deal.'
PFfeb2002
