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Penny Hope<br />
Garden: Red House Garden<br />
I was very happy to be allocated the Red House garden in Bexleyheath for<br />
my poetry residency. As former home of William Morris, the venue had<br />
such a rich history and potential for thematic exploration. Prior to the<br />
Open Gardens weekend, I visited the garden a couple of times and did a<br />
guided tour of the house. I did some research in the Reading Room, made<br />
notes as I sat in the orchard garden, and chatted to the gardener - who<br />
showed me some old plans of the garden from the time of William Morris'<br />
residence there. I soon realised how intimately the house and garden were<br />
related, and various themes began to emerge concerning inner and outer,<br />
memory, patterning and design, as well as notions of 'home'. I was<br />
simultaneously staying with a friend who had a beautiful garden and an<br />
elderly cat – thus an additional poem began to emerge which was not<br />
directly related to the Red House garden but certainly arose from my<br />
general explorations of the garden theme and my thoughts about how a<br />
blind creature might perceive and experience a garden and its scents.<br />
On Sunday 14 th June, I was present at the venue for several hours. Since it<br />
was drizzly, the Events Manager helped me set myself up inside the house<br />
itself. I had brought with me a 'poem trellis' – a piece of portable garden<br />
trellis which I made into a display of poems and images (including poems<br />
by William Morris, contributions by fellow poets and visitors, and some<br />
poems of my own). The 'Trellis' was one of the first wallpaper designs<br />
created by Morris, so this had a particular kind of significance. I had<br />
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