The Bone Library

Jenni Fagan was the Gavin Wallace Fellowship writer in residence at Summerhall from February 2019 to February 2020. During the Fellowship, she worked on a new book of poetry, The Bone Library, and a new novel, Luckenbooth. She also wrote a series of texts for the walls of the building and engraved texts onto bones.

When Jenni Fagan was the poet in residence at Summerhall, she spent many hours wandering around the building trying to find unseen stories. On one of those days, she discovered The Bone Library—a small corridor leading to the Dissection Room, which is now used for gigs.

Fagan spent hours lifting boxes of bones down to her study and then the following year — teaching herself how to engrave them with poetry she had written in her residency, paint them and then fill the engraved areas with gold.