A project exhibited at the Poetry Society Gallery, London, and as part of the one man show, Drawn to Words, at the Portico Gallery, Manchester, (1998).  

At the time, the newly introduced lottery scratchcard was a highly familiar piece of ‘artwork`. Every day, more concentrated attention was devoted to it than to any painting or poem; its garish collusion of word and image scrutinized and studied only to reveal a false promise of problems solved, a financial respite or a fresh start.

For this project I invited twelve poets to write short pieces to be produced as individual Poetry Instant Scratchcards. The poets involved included Chris Agee, Sean Body, Gerald Dawe, Maura Dooley, Katie Donovan, Ian Duhig, Roger Garfitt, David Hart, Brendan Kennelly, Paula Meehan, Adrian Mitchell and Matthew Sweeney. Each discarded scratchcard was ‘re-valued’ and individually mounted and presented in a shallow glass case to museum standard.

The project was further developed as part of the Manchester Irish Festival. For two days, Noel arranged for the poet Roger Garfitt to be in residence at the Central Library. He worked with readers, visitors and staff, inviting and enabling them to capture their ‘lottery dreams’ in the form of a three line poem. The poem was then relayed to the library design team who immediately printed it as one of Noel’s Poetry Instant scratch cards. The finished piece was then presented to the visitor before they left. The quality and diversity of the work was remarkable.