London City Poem

The artist American artist Jenny Holzer was commissioned to present a series of poems to mark Samuel Beckett's centenary, as a part of of the Beckett Centenary Festival at the Barbican. Each night for 8 days she projected a number of poems against London landmarks, such as City Hall, Somerset House on the Strand and the Barbican.

Writings from Beckett and a selection of works by celebrated poets, were cast as light projections onto well-known London landmarks, allowing light and text to flow over the cityscape, creating an extraordinary visual experience.

This series of light projections is part of a programme by Jenny Holzer called ‘For the City’, which took other cities too, such as New York (to be published on Inspiring Cities later).

In London, she projected poems by several poets. The Poem Projected in the above picture was written by the 1996 Nobel Prize winning Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska. Printed in bold is the text in the picture.

Source: InspiringCities.org

Epidemic in London

The Ghost Map
by Steven Johnson

But however secure and well-regulated civilized life may become, bacteria, Protozoa, viruses, infected fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes, and bedbugs will always lurk in the shadows ready to pounce when neglect, poverty, famine, or war lets down the defenses.

- Hans Zinsser, Rats, Lice & History

Where do you find the conjunction of epidemiology, mathematics, anthropology, and Victorian history? You do in this enlightening book, The Ghost Map, subtitled "The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World". The subtitle is not an overstatement for this is one of the best books about the history of science that I have read. Steven Johnson provides the details of an episode in the improvement of scientific understanding that makes you wonder that such improvement ever occurs. Just as important as the scientific story are the connections the author makes between it and the history of the growth of cities with the impact of disease and its control on the possibilities for further growth.



"Cities are tremendous engines of wealth creation and culture, but the political stereotype is that they're leeching off the mainstream and the countryside," Johnson said. "Actually, the opposite is true."


The background of certain key contributors, both medical and political, along with such contextual information as the history and literature of the times, 1850's London, adds to the wealth of information that makes the story of this Cholera epidemic worth reading. I enjoyed each chapter as I learned about an important chapter in the history of science.




The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson. Riverhead Books, New York. 2006.