Born in Moorgate in 1795, John Keats trained at Guy's Hospital before turning to poetry in his early 20's. A statue of Keats, which sits on a bench on King's College London's Guy's Campus around the corner from Science Gallery London, became the subject for our MOUTHY creative writing competition: Give Keats a Voice!

Out of many excellent entries, Tom Jordan's monologue was the winner. Below, Tom reveals snippets of Keats' new voice and gives insight as to how he tackled the challenge of putting fresh words into the doctor-cum-poet's aged mouth.

How do you go about finding a voice for one of the world’s most celebrated poets? Quite a challenge – but a really enticing one.

I was familiar with Keats’s poetry, and I was aware that he died young, in Italy – but I didn’t know the details of his early life story or his connection with Guy’s, so my first step was to do some research. I was fascinated to discover that he’d trained to be a surgeon, but then had the determination and passion to leave that respectable, secure career path behind to follow his writing dream.

Then I thought about the statue itself. It’s such a great, engaging sculpture; the young Keats sits in a quiet spot, deep in reflective thought, drawing inspiration from the world around him, channelling and crafting those ideas into his notebook. It invites you to take a seat on the bench next to Keats, and to strike up a conversation. So I thought about the three questions I would ask the young Keats, if I had the chance. I’d want to know:

What drove you to make such a monumental, life-changing decision to abandon your medical career?

Why are you back here at Guy’s today?

What are you writing in your notebook?

I imagined him in the fledgling stages of his career, coming back to Guy’s shortly after he’d left, to find his muse, full of enthusiasm and excited by his new freedom to write. And I also wanted the listener to really feel like they were interacting with him – and for them to have the satisfaction of giving him a hand to create one of his early poems.

Of course, I’d managed to make the task more tricky for myself by only discovering the competition, via Talking Statues on Twitter, a couple of days before it closed – but in a way that helped, leaving no opportunity for over-deliberation, rewriting, pondering, procrastinating or doubting. I took a long lunch break, did the research and then just wrote – hoping, just like the Keats statue, that inspiration would strike…

You can follow Tom on Twitter @MrTomJordan.

Members of the public are invited to visit the Guy’s Campus to hear the statues speak for themselves. To activate the statues’ voices, simply swipe your phone on the QR-coded plaque next to each statue. There is no cost to the user and the statues' voices will be live until autumn 2017.

The Talking Statue of John Keats was commissioned by Science Gallery at King’s College London as part of MOUTHY: INTO THE ORFICE and produced by Sing London. The statue is part of Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity art and heritage collection.

December 14, 2016

Finding a voice for Keats