Mixed Borders

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Mike Sims Garden: survey What might you have felt on your way here? That getting here would be easy / hard. That you might take a wrong turn from the station and be late (don’t be late!). That Friends wait for you. Excitement / anxiety / concern / calm. (Which of these, if any, speak to your condition? And if ‘the letter killeth’, what’s the use in a poem?) Please tick Please delete as appropriate How big windows invite your brain into a garden. How a tidy head needs seeds and an untidy one space. That you might ever pray. Other ______________________________________________ And what now, now you are in the garden? Wanting just to lie here, the bluebottle on the back of your hand, your unfound emptying. Please tick Of the fur in turf, its warm flank. How maybe you should rest more in a glade. Of the bleep in a buttercup, beam in quince. Where a green thought in a green shade might lead. How the yew tree draws the graves towards it, modest graves like nuts in the grass, their sinking down and limbering up to bloom and soften. That the cotoneaster is a giant spider – beware! That what wavers is only thought unhindered unfettered undisclosed. Of walking the headland of the cedar’s shadow. Of your grass-netted weight and the silence of wood consolidating its fibre, from its blind-tapping, thoughtful root to its topmost, last-made, aspirant shoot. Other ______________________________________________ This poem was inspired by a residency at the Winchmore Hill Friends Meeting House garden, June 2015, organised by the Poetry School and the London Parks and Gardens Trust. Mike Sims is a member of Forest Poets, London E17. 52
Natalie Shaw Garden: Fenton House Garden I gave visitors different garden-themed poems to take with them while they looked around the garden. I also invited people to finish off different sentences about being in the garden – ‘If this were my garden I would …’, for example. I’m working on some poems using all the different observations that people made - both in writing and while talking to me; and will be back at Fenton House for apple weekend in October. 53
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Page 3 and 4: Mixed Borders Poems from the London
Page 5 and 6: ? Introduction - 7 Ann Perrin - 11
Page 7 and 8: ! HOW DID OUR GARDEN GROW? You plan
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Page 11 and 12: Ann Perrin Garden: Postman’s Park
Page 13 and 14: The handkerchief tree I sit under t
Page 15 and 16: Some read their poems there and the
Page 17 and 18: Pop-up garden in Canning Town For L
Page 19 and 20: Clarissa Aykroyd Garden: Red Cross
Page 21 and 22: Ellen Cranitch Garden: Christchurch
Page 23 and 24: The Acer and the Agapanthus The Ace
Page 25 and 26: Hilaire Garden: Morden Hall Park My
Page 27 and 28: Garden Swap Shop Who’ll swap comm
Page 29 and 30: Ian McEwen Garden: Arlington Square
Page 31 and 32: The Symmetry Breakfast Song Bilater
Page 33 and 34: John Grant Garden: Osterley House G
Page 35 and 36: Garden Poems A garden enclosed is m
Page 37 and 38: Julia Bird Garden: Nomura Internati
Page 39 and 40: A GUIDE TO THE ELEMENTS 1. Water Th
Page 41 and 42: on the wharves across the river, th
Page 43 and 44: three: the birds of prey in charge
Page 45 and 46: Mary Dickins Garden: St Mary’s Se
Page 47 and 48: What it takes? It took struggle and
Page 49 and 50: Chilli Pepper Rap We’re red hot c
Page 51: life” (Corinthians 3:6). In one w
Page 55 and 56: Penny Hope Garden: Red House Garden
Page 57 and 58: Trellis Honeysuckle weaves itself i
Page 59 and 60: The neighbour's cat, nameless intru
Page 61 and 62: Roomates (at Bunhill Fields) Sure,
Page 63 and 64: Sara Benaim Garden: The Olden Commu
Page 65 and 66: Turn a silver key in a green door i
Page 67 and 68: kind. Streams of visitors poured th
Page 69 and 70: Perennial Cornflours in the Barbica
Page 71 and 72: She is the nest’s thought weaving
Page 73 and 74: with red-rimmed eyes, full of hints
Page 75 and 76: Churchyard Birds For centuries, roo
Page 77 and 78: William Henry Barrett Garden: Eastb
Page 79 and 80: Galencials 79
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Mixed Borders

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