Penning Perfumes: when scent and poetry mix

First published for the Guardian's books blog at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/jun/14/penning-perfumes-scent-poetry

Penning Perfumes: when scent and poetry mix

A new anthology inspired by perfume is a reminder of how important smell is to literature

Remember the international scandal Fay Weldon caused when she did a deal with the Italian jeweller Bulgari to write diamonds into a novel, The Bulgari Connection, in exchange for a healthy cheque? Not even a pointed east London eyebrow was raised by the most recent engagement between literature and luxury goods, which came to fruition at a London poetry event this week.

The event was to launch an anthology called Penning Perfumes, which has brought poets and perfumers together to inspire each other's work. Poets wrote in response to mystery fragrances (with their composition revealed on the night), while perfumers created new scents based on poems written for the purpose.

In a basement bar, a small, well-dressed crowd gathered to smell strips of card imbued with fragrance. Their host, the camply stage-named Odette Toilette, opined about the history and qualities of the perfumes. The venue was The Book Club, near London's Old Street station. The event, a monthly occasion called Scratch + Sniff, which bills itself as "an intoxicating blend of literary soirée meets perfume sampling meets social club". Just a regular pub evening then.

This Scratch + Sniff event was somewhat different, though, as it doubled as a launch party. Between Odette's olfactory introductions, poets took to the stage to read. Audience members wafted the appropriate scent strips beneath their discerning noses as Charlotte Newman, Tim Wells, Amy Key and others stepped up to the mic in turn to describe their individually assigned fragrance in verse.

The experience was quite overwhelming. Smells swirling around the room were simultaneously characterised within language – soap and parma violets morphed into an urban pixie, orange blossom notes became fruity pillow-talk, and liquorice coloured the sky a deep maroon.

Poetry is sometimes accused (even by those within it) of obscurity and a lack of engagement with worldly realities. Events such as this one could be similarly criticised for wafting on a perfumed cloud a few inches above normal life. But this isn't how it appeared to strike those in the room.

Experiencing scents and words at the same time led to a level of rapt concentration in the audience that I've rarely seen at other events. Perhaps this is because the Penning Perfumes project reminds us that smell is a democratic sense: everyone can have an imaginative response to scent. It can be highly cerebral, but it does not have to be. It goes all the way from an expensive bottle of perfume to the free-for-all of everyday odours.

For the perfumers present at the launch, this is already a truism. One explained his satisfaction at finding that his partnered poet characterised the scent just as he himself had imagined it. After hearing Tiffany Anne Tondut's poem, The Rabbit is Dancing in the Garden – in which French and English lovers exchange sweet riens – Angela Flanders, the creator of the scent Ambre Noir, heartily agreed that "The best way to learn French is on the pillow".

While the olfactory sense is sometimes overlooked in day-to-day life, it has always provided inspiration for poets. The Penning Perfumes anthology opens with the 2005 poem, My Mother's Perfume, by Pascale Petit. Emily Dickinson's poems are so loaded with fragrance that she has provided the scent industry with a whole perfumery of names for their products.

What is your favourite scent-inspired work of literature? Olfactory influences are not always obvious, as this poem from the anthology shows:

The Rabbit is Dancing in the Garden
by Tiffany Anne Tondut
(inspired by the fragrance Ambre Noir by Angela Flanders)

You give me
    le jardin and le lapin. Untying
with my tongue, I try:
    le lapin dans le jardin.

    "Oh?
The rabbit is dancing in the garden?"
    No, the rabbit is IN the garden.
"Ah! Zhen pronounce it 'dohn' not 'danse''
    you laugh.

 Ce soir
you mock my le's and la's, catch out
    my stuttering accent as I
process into compounds, into
    stems.

    Then
merci pour les corrections…….I blush,
dispersing blooming pheromones
of scent, evoking lingerie…

……….its girlish spread…………….
……….of budding…………….
    print………................................

arousing words I needn't say,
   enough
      to make you twitch.