Mixed Borders

Ian McEwen
Garden: Arlington Square Gardens
Arlington Square Gardens is a public space which has been taken on by a
vibrant community gardening group. I wanted to make the poetry
accessible to everybody visiting or helping, while at the same time trying to
encourage a deeper appreciation of the garden.
There were three strands to what I did. I invented a short (three line)
poetic form, the ‘Arlington’, which could be displayed on A6 label holders
dotted through the garden. 18 poems were written and laminated in
advance, each taking a feature of the garden as a kicking off point. I
encouraged people to come up with new names for trees in the garden,
which they could write on plant labels, and committed to turn the
contributions into poems in time for Sunday. I held two scheduled
readings and a few ambushes. On Saturday the reading was a walkabout
visiting the ‘Arlingtons’ around the garden. On Sunday we featured the
Poetry Choir, which performed a voice piece based on the Latin names of
trees in the garden, the four poems that I had produced from Saturday’s
tree naming and a mixture of Arlingtons and earlier work. The ‘Ambush’
readings were mainly prompted by the arrival of symmetry breakfasts to
distribute, which suggested a symmetry breakfast poem that I was able to
perform to some of the breakfasters and a few others who gave me the
chance (i.e. could not run fast enough).
Main lesson? When the west wind doth blow, don’t forget the Blu Tack.
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