This year, our photo archive team have produced a beautiful calendar using photographs from our historic collection featuring the people of Penwith, including this photo for July of the True Love boat built by Mr Ellis on Camberwell Street in 1906.
The calendar is priced at £10 and you can purchase it from the library. We are also happy to send calendars in the post with a small additional fee for postage.
Our new range of Christmas cards are now available to purchase from The Morrab Library.
This year, there are five new card designs, capturing various views and inspirations of the library from a number of different perspectives.
Single cards – £1.50 each
Three cards of any design – £4.00
Five cards of any design – £6.50
We are happy to send you your order in the post for a small additional fee, if you can’t make it in to collect them.
Our first card shows a snowy Quay Street in Penzance in the 1950s, an image from our historic Photo Archive collection. The emulsion damage to the negative serves to enhance the chilly atmosphere in this photo. This card is now sold out.
Our next is a more recent, and quite rare, image of the library surrounded by snow, captured by our library assistant Harriet on the 18th January this year
Harriet also created our third card, The Morrab Gardens Christmas cats, inspired by our oft-seen furry visitors!
Library Assistant James has also contributed a design, inspired by a Christmas card in our Lamorna Birch scrapbook collection, an exciting new donation to the Photo Archive in 2024
We welcomed library member Faye Dobinson as our artist-in-residence in 2024, and asked if she might create an exclusive Christmas design for the library, inspired by her time with us. She created this beautiful cyanotype of holly and ivy using plants from the surrounding Morrab Gardens.
Every month at The Morrab Library we host talks in the Reading Room for library members and non-members alike. The programme is as eclectic as the Library’s collection – from stories of standing stones to the Bumblebees of Cornwall – and meander through Literature, Poetry, Art, Geology and a host of other fascinating subjects in between.
Often, the writers, academics, poets and artists we invite to speak at the Library generously let us record their talk so we can share them with a wider audience online. You can browse the selection of recorded talks here.
Some of our brilliant speakers also use the Library’s archive, newspaper and book collections for their own research. We like to share a “Reading List” to go with each talk recording, in case you would like to follow up on the talk by borrowing related titles from the Library or delving into our archives.
In October 2024, Jak Stringer gave a light-hearted, multi-media performance delving into the writer Wilkie Collins’ formative years and his rambles around Cornwall.
After discovering that Wilkie Collins had toured Cornwall in 1850 and written a travel journal, Jak Stringer felt inspired to follow in his footsteps. She wanted answers to questions; why did the people of Looe eat rats, the women of Saltash clean boots and the folk on Scilly never open windows.
Rambles Beyond Railways; Notes in Cornwall Taken A-Foot by Wilkie Collins – Non-fiction – Jenner Room.
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins – Fiction (fiction can be found in the room with the Reception desk).
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins – Fiction
The Dead Secret by Wilkie Collins – Fiction
No Name by Wilkie Collins – Fiction
The following suggestions are not currently part of the library’s collection but if you have a copy that you would like to donate to us then please email enquiries@morrablibrary.org.uk. They may be available to borrow from the public library too.
Wilkie Collins A Life of Sensation by Andrew Lycett
Brief Live: Wilkie Collins by Melisa Klimaszewski
Jak has also share a couple of useful websites to refer to.
On Saturday 26th November we announced the winners of the Patricia Eschen Prize for Poetry 2024. The overall competition was judged by award-winning poet Katrina Naomi and the new Sonnet Prize was judged separately by Jodie Hollander, who is based in Arizona. You can read more about the judges here and read the full shortlist here but we’d like to tell you more about the competition winners this year.
First Prize | ‘American Eclipse Sonnet’ by Miruna Fulgeanu
First prize was awarded to Miruna Fulgeanu for her poem ‘American Eclipse Sonnet’ which you can read here.
Katrina said “‘American Eclipse Sonnet’ stood out for me very early on. I admired the poet’s taut language, fine imagery and their confidence in choosing to write a 15-line poem and state ‘this is a sonnet’. There’s a bravery in this, someone prepared to take risks, which is important in writing. The poem has the feel of a sonnet, it holds itself like a sonnet but with a little expansion. The quiet of sleep being compared to ‘entering a blackbird eye’ is wonderful. This poem is way more than ‘OKAY’. I’m delighted to choose ‘American Eclipse Sonner’ as the winning poem in the Patricia Eschen Poetry Competition. It’s a poem that offers more on every reading.”
Miruna Fulgeanu is a Romanian-born poet and translator based in London. Her work has appeared in Poetry London, The Yale Review, perverse, The Rialto, Berlin Lit and Basket among others. She is the winner of the 2023 Oxford Poetry Prize, and a member of the Southbank Centre New Poets Collective 2024-25.
Second Prize | ‘The Whales’ by Julio Trujillo
Second prize was awarded to Julio Trujillo for his poem ‘The Whales’ which you can read here.
Katrina said ” I read many, many poems in response to the sea, The Whales, which I’ve awarded second prize, gave me surprising new perspectives on the ocean. Here’s a poem where waves choose whether or not to make decisions, and where sound is all important; we learn that whales are ‘titanic baritones’. I loved the energy, sonic exuberance and momentum of ‘The Whales’. This is a poem which kept calling to me in a way I couldn’t ignore. “
Julio Trujillo was born in Mexico City in 1969. He has been a publisher for the last 30 years, in charge of literary magazines, cultural supplements and the publication of many books. He has written ten books of poetry and one of chronicles of life in Mexico City. All his books are in Spanish but he’s preparing an edition of selected poems translated to English. He has also begun to write directly in English, with not too catastrophic results! He moved to Cornwall three years ago, where he lives with his wife Lucy and his newborn son, Max.
Third Prize | ‘Aged twenty-nine she buys her first running shoes’ by Abigail Ottley
Abigail Ottley was awarded third prize for her poem which you can read here.
Katrina comments, “This poem has a strong narrative and restless arc, which perfectly fits a prose poem. The poet takes us on several journeys, journeys of learning and of metaphor. The sense of place is evocative, the sense of moving on powerful. I found myself running alongside, willing the narrator on.”
Abigail Ottley writes poetry and short fiction. Over ten years, her work has featured in more than two hundred and fifty magazines and journals, most recently Twisted Ink and the Cornish edition of Inkfish. It will also appear in the inaugural issue of Aspier magazine. This year, Abigail placed second in the Plaza Prose Poem Competition and won the Wildfire 150 Flash Award for the second year running. Twice commended in The Page is Printed and What We Inherit From Water, as well as commended in the Welshpool Poetry Competition, she is both a Pushcart and Best of the Net Nominee and a member of Cornwall’s all-female Mor Poet Collective. Her debut collection will be published by Yaffle’s Nest in May, 2025. Abigail lives in Penzance.
Sonnet Prize | ‘After the biopsy’ by Kyle Potvin
The Sonnet Prize was awarded to to Kyle Potvin for her poem ‘After the biopsy’ which you can read here.
The Sonnet Prize judge, Jodie Hollander, said, “What impressed me most about this winning sonnet was the seemingly effortless movement of a compelling narrative within the structure of the sonnet form. The rhymes were natural and unforced, and served to both heighten and lighten the emotional impact of the subject matter. Accessible and compelling within a beautiful musical structure, this poem thrust its reader into a powerfully immediate emotional experience. A true gem!”
Kyle Potvin’s debut full-length poetry collection is Loosen (Hobblebush Books, 2021). Her chapbook, Sound Travels on Water, won the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. Kyle’s poems have appeared in publications including Bellevue Literary Review, Tar River Poetry, Ecotone, Verse Daily and The New York Times. She is a peer reviewer for Whale Road Review. Kyle lives in the USA.
Throughout 2024, ceramicist Rebecca Harvey and poet Lucy Sparrow have been working on a collaborative artist residency at The Morrab Library. Their work has responded to the setting and is a dialogue between their respective practices: poetry and porcelain. When visiting the Library, you may have read Lucy’s poem, ‘a living library’ etched into Cornish China Clay slip on the window of the Rees Room, or paused in the Literature Room to read ‘The Archivist’.
These pieces are still on display and have now been joined by two further installations in the Art Room and Natural Sciences Room.
In the Art Room (on the ground floor), you will find a new and rather unique sculpture ‘Porcelain Sound Box’. For this piece, the pair were joined by Lucy’s son and composer Fintan O’Hare.
The ‘Porcelain Sound-Box’ is constructed from discarded ceramic fragments chosen from Rebecca’s studio by Rebecca and Fintan, with the aim of finding objects with particular sound qualities and resonance. These are struck by electric motors with the order of the sounds loosely based on conversational interaction; each motor gradually increasing or decreasing in speed, and continuing, interrupting or imitating the previous sound. The work requires the listener to press the START button to initiate a sequence of sounds. Each sound sequence lasts a few seconds and is different each time it is played.
Lucy has accompanied this piece with a haiku. She says:
“Cornwall has had a long association with the China Clay industry and The Morrab Library has a large collection of primary and secondary sources relating to this subject. In addition, the use of porcelain in musical instruments dates from around the 8th century. Being Cornish, and with a keen interest in music and local history, I relished the opportunity to spend time in The Morrab Library exploring these subjects and to create a poem that focussed on the resonance of sounds within porcelain and linking it to the environment from which it was originally sourced.
The accompanying poem is written in the form of a haiku, and the few carefully chosen words aim to compliment the complex dynamic art work from which it took inspiration. As the poet I saw this fragile interactive sculpture tapping into the hidden voice of granite. I am very grateful to the support of the librarians at Morrab library and their curation of a wide range of texts relating to the subject of Cornish China-clay in my research for this piece of work and to my co-collaborators Rebecca and Fintan.”
There is a notebook beside the installation to write your thoughts, feedback and comments about the piece.
Upstairs in the Natural Sciences Room, Rebecca Harvey has installed a bowl, made of a piece of bark, mounted on a wooden plinth. She is asking members and visitors alike to write, on the piece of paper provided, why they think The Morrab Library is a special place and leave it in the bowl.
She writes:
“The Morrab Library is often described as a ‘special place’. Do you have a favourite room? Or thoughts about what makes The Morrab Library special to you? Please contribute to artist in residence Rebecca Harvey’s research into the popular phenomena by writing your thoughts on the pieces of paper provided and popping them into the bark bowl below”.
Rebecca will then make these pieces into a Morrab ‘thought book’ which will be on display towards the end of their Residency in December.
Mary Cahill MA runs a very popular Shakespeare class at The Morrab Library on Wednesday mornings from 10am-12.15. She has a limited number of vacancies in the group and the classes will start on Wednesday 2nd October. Come and enjoy a close read and deep exploration of the context, ideas and imagery of Shakespeare’s plays. This term the group will be looking at Measure for Measure and Coriolanus. No previous experience required or expected – just come along and enjoy.
Cost: £90 for 10 week term. Contact Mary Cahill to reserve a space: cahillm037@gmail.com