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Feast & Fast

The Art of Food in Europe, 1500 – 1800

Food, Glorious Food! Creative Writing Workshops

Helen Taylor ran 3 bespoke creative writing workshops at the Fitzwilliam Museum on 30 January 2020, 8 February 2020, and 15 February 2020. As Helen’s introduction explains, these explored our complicated relationship with food using the Feast & Fast exhibition as inspiration. Thirteen new creative works resulted and are published here as texts together with images of the exhibits from Feast & Fast that acted as visual sources of inspiration. In most cases the authors also provided audio files of themselves reading their new works out loud.

Introduction to the workshops

Helen Taylor

And soon, mechanically, oppressed by the gloomy day and the prospect of a sad future, I carried to my lips...

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The Pineapple

Reggie Thomson

Ladies and Gentlemen, gather round. Thank you for coming to this exhibition. By way of introduction, I’m Reggie, and I’m...

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Intimations (Nature Morte)

Rebecca Watts

The knife’s gone but the lemon’s cut rind uncurling whispers he was here soft skin caught falling sighing he was...

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Beast Tongue, feast tongue.

Paul Holland

Beast Tongue, feast tongue. Or PRONK, An acrostic inspired by Jan Davidsz. de Heem (1606-84) Polyglotal throttle of calves Reset...

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Eating

Paul Holland

I will act on my food. Eyeing it, spying it. To sniff, whiff, and kiss aromas; The old nose factory...

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Interior with Still Life

Claudine Toutoungi

I left my eye on top of the sideboard. It had no complaints. It wanted a breather. It wanted to...

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Fossil

Paul Holland

Sibilant twins wrapped in a stone foil Squirming, working to the surface To be gouged and gauged. Then to lie...

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Adam and Eve in Paradise by Johann König, Nuremberg 1629

Sebastian Blackie

In the beginning he ground the earths by hand to make the colours. God knows creative work takes time when...

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Nautilus - two poems.

Paul Holland

I Living fossil,  Silver slivered, Endless spinner  Through time To the buoyant beyond. II Naughty Lloyd’s Silver lip Cannot be...

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The Miracles of San Francesco

Catherine Olver

The fifteenth-century San Francesco passionately dislikes Tesco. When he became a monk he swore that he’d be good and pure...

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Harvest Jug

Sebastian Blackie

That girl was always making. Hers was clay country. Down by the brook that ran through the village of her...

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The Bird Trap by Pieter Brueghel the Younger

Paul Holland

Oily snow clings to roofs; Perused by two ducks, flying high Above a frozen river which Unites the banks of...

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Nightfishing

Deborah Smethers

She is on their side tonight. A flattened pearl escaping the clutches of the dark While boats slide free, across...

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Jan Weenix’s - Dead Game and Fruit

Janet Hujon

that one hind leg caught in a snare hampering his leap back to freedom splayed against a tree trunk he...

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