Midsummer in the City

Hot, hot days and nights, and the city in turmoil with terrorist events and the terrible fire in Kensington have made it impossible to celebrate this midsummer. I hope the Open Garden Squares day in Markham Square offered a small space for reflection, with leaf-poems fluttering in the gazebo and garden-lovers finding verses planted in the borders alongside the delphiniums and philadelphus. After weeks of immersion and writing, I found that the garden had inspired a surprising amount of poems, with more still at the development stage. 

I felt very privileged to have the opportunity to 'reside', research and write in this secret garden square - thanks to the residents, The Poetry School and Open Garden Squares. I learned a lot more about making the most of a residency. In particular, for me all the most important inspirations came from the people I met there. Chance remarks by François, the gardener, about the small treasures he has dug up in the beds over the years - a marble made of marble, a sea-washed pebble - threw me back into the historic and prehistiric past of the site where now there is a garden, little pieces of people's personal histories attached to the place... a pet bird buried under a tree, a treetop visible from a Heathrow-bound plane.

I'm also continuing work on a poem sequence inspired by the leaves I brought home, pressed and ironed to make poem leaflets. The leaves have given me a light, airy way to write; I'm still chasing them.