The Stone Men of Newcastle
Daniel Hinds (UK 2022)
14 min
The Stone Men of Newcastle is a sequence of poems told through the eyes of The Commuter, the speaker and poet-figure, as he encounters the statues of Newcastle as part of his daily life working in the city. The sequence takes in Sir Antony Gormley’s vandalised Clasp sculpture, the St George and the Dragon war memorial at Eldon Square, another monument for the First World War, The Response 1914, and the Mercutio statue in Newcastle’s Theatre Royal. The Stone Men of Newcastle concludes with a consideration of the future figures we will immortalise in bronze and stone. The sequence enters into the current debate, typified by the Rhodes Must Fall movement and the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol, on how we engage with art and history in the form of statues. The statues sometimes co-exist uneasily with their setting: they are surrounded by the distractions of modern life, represent a past impossible to compete with or at odds with our values, and are vulnerable to defacement. Yet, they can also be sources of inspiration, beauty, and connection to the past, sites of contemplation as well as conflict.
Writer Daniel Hinds
Cast: Dan Pyre and Stacey Ghent
Lead Audio Production Partner: Naked Productions
Partners: BBC New Creatives, Tyneside Cinema, Arts Council England, BBC Arts.