Poetry Picnic

On Sunday 9th May a loyal audience braved the chilly weather to see some stunning performers at Poetry Picnic at Culpeper Community Garden. Here are some snaps of the performers (taken by Cath Drake).

The performers were :
David J

Cath Drake

Miriam Nash

Denrele Ogunwa

Jill Abram

Nathalie Teitler

Rachel Rose Reid


and
Naomi Woddis

This Beautiful Hoodie

For the last month I’ve taken part in something called the 30/30 challenge which means I have been writing a poem a day for the entire month of April. You can read a garden inspired poem I wrote earlier this month here.

A few weeks ago I stuck a piece of paper on the back of the loo door (!) at the garden and asked people to add their favourite words. As part of this month’s poetry challenge I have found myself writing more nonsense and surreal verse. Given such an eclectic mix of words it seemed perfect for some nonsense poetry. I have added the words and their definitions after the poems.

This Beautiful Hoodie
inspired by dadaism,
emerges from a frantic tea-hut.
Sexy girls are sowing
verdant seeds, ecstatic
with propagation. All this
hard work creates
a molten oasis of testa
and cotyledon, nuturing
the brain-dead; a lurch
towards schadenfreude.
JJ2K10 feels lush for food,
especially kale. How mendacious!
It’s a hop, skip and a jump
to the curmudgeon. Satisfaction
is ostensible, the plumule osmotic.
What takes root will do so
fatuatingly and, like this
flower, will bloom and bloom

Shorthand Philosophy
The need for escape never escapes us.
There’s some comfort to be found
in a tea hut, doing the crossword
with the windows open, rain falling
in sheets. Or, on a beautiful day
like this, when nurturing yourself
feels like the first building brick
of the rest of your life.

Words and Definitions
Root, JJK210, brain-dead, inspired, verdant, seed, sowing, food, lush, hard work, satisfaction, ecstatic, molten, oasis, beautiful, sexy girls, kale, tea hut, nurturing, flower, frantic, hoodie, fatuatingly.

Osmotic – of or relating to osmosis; “osmotic pressure”.
Schadenfreude – pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.
Propagation – the spreading of something (a belief or practice) into new regions.
Mendacious – telling lies, esp. habitually; dishonest; lying; untruthful: a mendacious person.
Plumule – part of a seed embryo that develops into the shoot, bearing the first true leaves of a plant.
Curmudgeon – a crusty, ill-tempered, and usually old man.
Testa – protective outer layer of seeds of flowering plants.
Dadaism – a European artistic and literary movement (1916-1923) that flouted conventional aesthetic and cultural values by producing works marked by nonsense, travesty, and incongruity.
Ostensible – outwardly appearing as such; professed; pretended: an ostensible cheerfulness concealing sadness.
Cotyledon- the primary or rudimentary leaf of the embryo of seed plants.

White Flowers

White, originally uploaded by Naomi Woddis.

I thought I would share some more lovely spring time flowers growing at Culpeper. In the last few weeks everything has changed and that cold long Winter feels a very long way away.

Blossom

Blossom close up, originally uploaded by Naomi Woddis.

This may look lovely in a photograph – sadly technology has not advanced enough to catch this blossom’s beautiful fragrance.

What Gives

It may be chilly but there’s no hiding from the fact that Spring is finally here. Blossom is out on all the trees and, at the garden, the tulips and daffodils are beaming and magnificent. Today is Scarlett’s Urban Food Growing project. I arrived too late to get my fingers muddy and instead just enjoyed tea and biscuits. Each Wednesday more seeds are planted. Today included how to grow potatoes in a bag. A green jute one from a pound shop is all you need, the size of a small carrier bag. Fill it with compost and a potato, cut slits in the side and wait for the spuds to grow.

April is a special month for us poets. In the United States it’s National Poetry Month and poets all over the world) take part in a writing discipline called Poem-A-Day. Each day there is a prompt – today’s is to write a 100 word poem of ten lines, making ten syllables a line.

So what better to combine my weekly visit to the garden with this poetic challenge.

What Gives

Once this land was fallow, bombed out buildings
made London a post-war playground. We grew
up in rubble and dry mud, playing ‘hide
and seek’ behind broken bricks, shattered glass.
Now the soil’s as rich as coffee, freshly
brewed. Tulips are top pocket handkerchiefs,
potatoes grow in jute bags, beans flower
in six foot plots. There’s always more growth here.
Two boys sprint from their friend, who counts to ten,
and knock over a table. Nothing changes.

Green and Blue

Spring is here at last and the garden is very busy, the blossom is out and everything is blooming. It also means that the pond is now full of baby frogs, forty at the last count. Nature is efficient as ever and not all of these tiny green babies make it. There were two young girls visiting today and finding a dead frog, they named and buried him and put flowers at his graveside. I was inspired to write this short poem after finding what they wrote on his headstone

Green and Blue

There is always work to do. Today it’s the burial
of Freddy the Frog, who lost the numbers game

with Mother Nature and is now an ex-amphibian.
In pink wellies and stripey socks, the Easter holidays

are for running in the rain and a funeral. The words ‘Freddy,
Rest in Peace. We love you very much’ on the headstone

The beginning of Spring

Silverleaf and crocuses, originally uploaded by Naomi Woddis.

I visited the garden yesterday and was overjoyed to find some colour after a long and cold winter.

Sometimes it’s Good

The weather is very changeable today. I walked around the garden and took note of the new flowers blooming. From the office window I spied a visitor sitting on a bench and thought about all the ways people use this lovely green space in the heart of London.

Sometimes it’s Good

to just have somewhere to come and sit.
Whatever the weather, the rain hangs

like a rumour about to break. Even though
the sun was its usual show off self just a moment

ago, flirting with miniature irises, letting
the primroses know just how much it loves

their yellow shining hearts, nothing succeeds
like the slow galumph of clouds.It does not matter.

You take out your licorice rolling papers, fashion
a much needed cigarette, inhale, taking it all in,

the abrupt change of the weather, the eagerness
of this spring’s crocuses, the shoulder shrug of last

seasons helibores. You are numb to the call
of business hours. This garden is a sort of church

for those who need not pray in words. Who
would have thought the beginning of rain, tea

in a chipped mug and a fag would make
you feel so damned happy?

Ode to a Tea Hut

The tea hut is the hub of all activity at Culpeper. I can say with certainty the kettle is always on, tasty soup often being heated up and plates of cakes and biscuits more elaborate than any tea party. I decided the newly decorated tea hut needed a sonnet and spent an afternoon at the garden asking people what they would like to see in the poem. Their words and phrases have contributed to the poem below.

Ode to a Tea Hut

There’s a tribal gathering at the hut
where we drink from an endless pot of tea,
eat home made biscuits, make a sling and chuck
soup from our veg, clean the sink endlessly.
At the tea hut, we chat, eat, hide from rain
scrape mud from boots, know what it is to share,
It’s winter now but Spring will come again
and when it does we’ll feel like millionaires.
It is the beating heart of Culpeper,
where we come to after a hard days dig
it’s the January to December,
the first bloom of Spring, waiting for the twig
that will bear blossom or scent on the branch.
It’s all things to us, it’s our song, our dance.

Winter Haiku

Still
The air is still, birds
are silent, the heating’s off -
beginning of spring ?

Yellow
In this wet garden
leaves are yellow from the rain,
and the squirrels hide.

Purple
On the balcony
the french lavender resists
the wintery cold.

Then
In younger winters
I’d pretend this steamy breath
was cigarette smoke.

Rain
Bicycle puncture
in the rain. A long walk home
then a welcome bath.

Snow
Schoolchildren silenced
by snow fall. Cars slowly grind
to a halt – night falls.

Scent
Remembering Spring,
the garden’s scent of pink roses
outside the kitchen.

Music
The street is quiet.
I work to music, my foot
tapping as I type.

Almost
A dry day – the sun
behind thin clouds is still felt
on the back of necks.

Birth
Looking for the signs
of Spring – then hear the good news
Baby Arthur born !

Sunday
Last night’s party still
in full swing, not even rain
can stop the music.

Shine
Sun shines on yellow
crocuses, the french windows
wide open – Spring’s here !

Cloudless
Not a single cloud
in today’s sky. My friend Neil
meets me, jacket-less.

Clean
Cycling in Crouch End,
the sunlit clock-tower looks
cleaner in this light.

Eggs
Breakfast with Rachel,
scrambled eggs, conversation,
light making shadows.