London charity funder appoints poet-in-residence
Howard Lake | 4 June 2024 | News
The first ever poet-in-residence tasked with celebrating in verse a major London charity funder and some of the capital’s most iconic bridges has been appointed.
Hackney-based Cecilia Knapp was chosen from over 170 applicants to land the job with City Bridge Foundation, the owner of Tower Bridge and four other Thames crossings.
The 31-year-old will draw inspiration from the ancient charity’s role as London’s biggest independent charity funder, and the work of the organisations it funds. She will hold the position, believed to be unique among bridge owners, for one year, supported by the foundation and its partner The Poetry Society, the leading voice for UK poetry.
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Cecilia Knapp, City Bridge Foundation poet-in-residence, said:
“It’s really exciting and creatively fulfilling to be able to take on a completely new role and to work with the foundation to design what the job is and what it can do for London. It’s inspiring to see how many amazing initiatives the charity funds across the capital and I’m looking forward to using poetry to connect with and celebrate those communities.
“A bridge is a poetic concept – the idea of connecting people – and poetry is a great connector, so using poetry to talk about bridges, and the people that use them, feels like a natural fit.”
Bridges to be celebrated in verse
During her year in office Cecilia will write poems about Tower, London, Southwark, Millennium and Blackfriars bridges, as well as the foundation’s funding work and wider issues affecting the capital.
She will also perform her work at events and be tasked with developing poetry-themed community and educational activities.
Shall I compare there to a London bridge?
Giles Shilson, City Bridge Foundation chairman, said:
“We were absolutely delighted by the number and quality of applications we received for this position, which are testament to the strength and diversity of the poetry community in London and beyond. Apart from the power of her poetry and her years of experience, what greatly impressed us was Cecilia’s strong vision for the role and how her poetry could reflect our work in bridging London and connecting communities.”
Brighton-born Cecilia began her poetry journey 12 years ago after attending poetry workshops at legendary Camden arts venue The Roundhouse.
She has previously served as Young Person’s Laureate for London and resident poet at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and had her first collection of poems, Peach Pig, published two years ago.
Her work will be published on City Bridge Foundation and Poetry Society social media channels and on the funder’s website and on that of the Poetry Society.
City bridges in literature
- London Bridge is Falling Down, one of the world’s most famous nursery rhymes, deals with the dilapidation of the original mediaeval stone bridge. The fund set up 900 years ago from tolls, rents, bequests and other income is still used by City Bridge Foundation today to maintain its bridges, ensuring the nursery rhyme won’t come true or, if the worst did happen, the bridge could be replaced at no cost to the public purse.
- The Victorian London Bridge opened in 1831 appears in TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, regarded as one of the most important English language poems of the 20th century, in which Eliot compares City commuters crossing the bridge to the condemned souls in Dante’s Inferno – a feeling many long-time commuters heading into the office on a Monday morning will be able to relate to.
- American hip-hop artist Fergie topped the Billboard Hot 100 with a track called London Bridge. In a schoolboy error made by many tourists, the music video featured nearby Tower Bridge, which has led to the modern phenomenon of oblivious TikTokers twerking to the 2006 hit on the wrong bridge.
- Tower Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge feature in Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel Neverwhere, set in the magical underground realm of ‘London Below’. Tower Bridge actually does have a spooky subterranean space – its famous bascule chambers, where the bottom end of the bridge’s see-saw mechanism descends when the bridge is raised to let shipping go past.
- The ‘Iron Bridge’ – the forerunner to the present Southwark Bridge – is a haunt of the titular character in Charles Dickens’s famous novel Little Dorrit, and is also mentioned in the opening line of Our Mutual Friend. Dickens knew the bridge well from growing up in the nearby Marshalsea Prison, where his father was an inmate.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.