Poet in Residence

This weekend, Saturday 13^th and Sunday 14^th June, I’m at the Open Garden Squares Weekend . This is an annual event where 200 garden in London (many usually kept secret or private) are opened up for exploration. This year the Poetry School has placed 16 poets in selected gardens. I’m the poet-in-residence at Bunhill Fields, near Old Street Station, a former Dissenter’s burial ground and home to the graves of the fantastic writers William Blake, Daniel Defoe and John Bunyan.

Today was the first day of my residency. I spent the morning and afternoon wandering round the gardens, exploring and talking to the visitors. The fantastic things about this garden is the way the past and present seem to merge once inside…

The garden was once a huge burial site, and even today more than half of it is graveyard. The name Bunhill itself likely comes from Bone Hill, an allusion to the way the ground is swollen by the dead. One estimate I heard today is that there are close to 200,000 bodies buried beneath the grass and trees, often many bodies buried on top of others. I spent some of today working on a poem about this ever-expanding crowd, called ‘Roomates’, that I will complete and share tomorrow.

The garden is home to many strange stories. I found a headstone covered in musical notation, which made me wonder whether in the future all our graves might be accessorised with ringtones. I discovered the inscription on the tomb of a woman who died after being “tap’d 66 times, had taken away 240 gallons of water, without ever repining at her case”. I wandered around many locked graves, wondering if the chains, railings and padlocks were still meant to protect the sites from grave-robbers, or whether it’s the other way round and it’s the living who need protection from the dead.

And then there are stories from the present. I spoke with some visitors who were trying to fit in as many gardens in as they could in one day, and others who had come here alone in pilgrimage to the grave of the great visionary poet and painter William Blake, buried here in Bunhill Fields. I talked to people who stood for a long time in front of the graves, and others more interested in the ongoing battles between pigeons and squirrels between the plane trees. I also met people who walk their dogs every day on the grass here, or pass through on the way back home, or simply stop to get a minute’s rest (or enjoy a can or two of cider with friends).

All of this has really inspired me. As well as the burial practices, I’ve been writing about William Blake’s presence here, the idea of protest and dissent in nature, and even the streetlamps around the park. I’m planning to finish those and read them out tomorrow, so if you’re around Bunhill Fields, do pop by and see this wonderful little place for yourself.