Pentad by Bill Herbert and Colin Hagan

The artwork

Found outside the Philip Robinson Library, Pentad is an intriguing text-based work in which small bronze pentagram forms embedded into the ground are enclosed by seating. Within each pentagram, five poetic lines swirl into a centre point. You can start the poem at any point and follow it around to enjoy a layered verse experience. 

Creator Bill Herbert said of the piece, “Pentad is in two parts, the first being a text-based section with five lines of verse spiralling ‘inward’ to a centre point (or rather the font size is reduced as the words approach the middle). The text is designed to be approached from any direction and read from that point around.

“The second, pleasingly accidental, impact of this piece is acoustic. If you speak while standing in the centre of the circular seating set around the pentagonal paving, your voice takes on a resonant, almost gong-like echo.

“Gradually, text-based art is beginning to play a role in punctuating and perhaps even uniting the Newcastle University campus.”

We are often asked: “what does the paving outside the Philip Robinson Library say?” So, we have transcribed one reading of the spiral poem below:

barely written here 
how feet learn by degrees 
the trial of trails, world’s route 
a whorl, a fingerprint 
poised on the dawning page 

The artists

Pentad was created by Bill Herbert, a Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and graphic designer Colin Hagan.

Herbert is a highly regarded poet and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is responsible for a number of physical poetry installations across the North East, including a poem engraved in stainless steel in Grainger Town and a text gallery projected on the side of the Percy Building. He has lived in the North East since 1994.

Hagan produces graphic designs, including 3D objects and typographic prints, from his studio in the Ouseburn Valley.