New John Keats Sculpture Unveiled on Square Mile’s London Wall Development

A public sculpture of the poet John Keats has been unveiled this week close to his birthplace on Moorgate in the City of London on what would have been his 229th birthday.

Keats was the son of an ostler at a City inn and livery stable called The Swan and Hoop, which stood a few dozen yards south of the modern-day Moorgate station.

An original plaster cast of a life mask from the City of London Corporation-owned Keats House in Hampstead was scanned and digitally enlarged to provide the form for the finished sculpture. British sculptor Martin Jennings’ artwork is an enlarged bronze cast of the life mask - taken when Keats was 21 years old – and mounted on a raised stone plinth above a slate base inscribed with words from his Ode on Indolence ("My sleep had been embroider’d with dim dreams;/My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o’er/With flowers").

Keats’ sculpture is Jennings’ latest creation and follows his previous London statues of former Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman at St Pancras station and novelist George Orwell at BBC Broadcasting House.

Former City of London Corporation Alderman Bob Hall conceived and funded the project and has now donated the sculpture to the City Corporation. His gift follows his previous patronage of a sculpture of poet John Donne by artist Nigel Boonham outside St Paul’s Cathedral and extends the public celebration of great poets born within the Square Mile.

“There couldn’t be a closer portrait of Keats than the mask of him that was taken during his lifetime, which I have enlarged and cast in bronze," said Martin Jennings. "This apparently dreaming head seems apt for his birthplace, while also illustrating the state of mind he sought for the writing of poetry. I hope that, in a busy thoroughfare, this quiet sculpture will give people a moment’s pause, while also drawing them back to the works of one of our greatest writers.”

Former City Corporation Alderman and donor of the sculpture, Bob Hall said: “Both John Keats and John Donne were born in and worked in the City of London and it is important to commemorate each of these outstanding poets by sculptures in the public realm in the city of their birth, for all to see. The sculptures also acknowledge their ground-breaking poetry, which demonstrates the extraordinary breadth and richness of the English language.”