Collected Poems

Sing Her Body Gold

—as part of the 2023 Picture Gallery

Composer-in-Residence Partnership

Royal Holloway

University of London

First published in 2023 by Royal Holloway University of London

Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX

All rights reserved by the creative writers featured in this collection

This collection has been compiled by Nathan James Dearden 2023

The Picture Gallery Composer-inResidence Scheme at Royal Holloway is a ground-breaking residency in which successful student composers from the Department of Music have their musical responses to the Picture Gallery and some of its wonderful paintings performed by an invited ensemble each year.

This residency is a professional development programme for music creators of the Department of Music to receive specialist, industry-standard workshop sessions and tutorials, working collaboratively with invited artists, ensembles and tutors to create new works that are premiered as part of the International Concert Series

These new compositions are the result of a special collaboration between the College’s Arts Collection Team and Nathan James Dearden, Director of Music Composition at the Department of Music.

For its sixth cohort, six music creators from the Department of Music and six creative writers from the Department of English received the opportunity to work with the Choir of Royal Holloway and their conductor Rupert Gough through a collaborative and immersive workshop process exploring new music for voice.

The resulting poems written as part of this special partnership have been set to music, and have been compiled here for your reading and reflection.