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Many years ago I worked on an Infectious Diseases Unit as a nurse during the 1980s AIDS epidemic in London. Whilst researching Trauma Theory and the nature of traumatic witnessing for my MA I revisited some of that time and the snatches of memories from certain moments witnessed. It seemed to draw a parallel with what I imagined staff were witnessing and working through during the current pandemic. I contacted my old teaching hospital, Addenbrookes in Cambridge, as a possible collaborator.

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Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) had been working with acclaimed poet Sean Borodale in encouraging the hospital community to contribute their written voices to an anthology of poems entitled Beyond the Mask. I have been printing old fashioned letterpress prints using some of the lines from their very moving poems about experiences of working during the pandemic, along with their name.

 

They have been created on an Albion Press which has been printing since Victorian times. The wear on the individual wooden letters creates a particular character. There are often letters missing from certain trays and mixing of fonts adds to this aesthetic. There are four designs which each have a limited edition digital print run of forty. 

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