when the water runs it claps

On the structure

Half grown over

It sounds endlessly

The garden is one of the most diverse in the region.

(from https://le.ac.uk/botanic-garden/about-us)

I like to think the gardens mimic a house with rooms that bring forth different feelings and ideas - the modern statues perhaps appear as visitors or concepts with thoughts and feelings. I could base my poetry collection on the idea that each poem is a different ‘room’ in the garden. Green houses are also quite literally rooms and are a great concept for dividing poems by theme.

(from https://www.struttandparker.com/knowledge-and-research/the-strutt-parker-guide-to-edwardian-architecture-landscaping#:~:text=Edwardian%20landscaping%20trends&text=Gardens%20were%20characterised%20by%20the,ranged%20from%20formal%20to%20wild.)

Exploratory write:

Maze

Tireless stone bars runs rabid

Endlessly

Little feet stamp all over

Stood by the bench when told

To take a picture

In my pink dress up I

Show the boy next to me one of my teeth

Flat leaf vines and tiny florals that are wilder than the green houses

(How much maintenance)

Birch triple

Some parts are not contained (edge lands)

Canopies and lumping sculptures

Picnicking friends not in the rain (damp grass)

Ballerina garden

Some plump too

Little spins

A stone box of straight bulbs

October is like spring retired

Leafy hello on the wall like a plush ledge

Ivy says hi underneath

The house is white glass rectangles in perspective

Non stop

Factories for sun growth

Pipes and chains in innocent cream

Mosses pushed against the paint clouded glass

Warm temperate house welcomes you in

With a latticed drain

And neat little sandy stone pathing

Little bobble leaves escape from the corner

Watering layer on the stones

Water tapping under the pipe

Sweet greens in here

Need caressing with drips and shines

Baby citruses

Gel filled green pockets (what is the green cell here)

Seaweed green electric

And summer floral

The succulent’s purpose

Is to retain

People put in it’s retain in this house

Come visit and grow me tall

(Revisit: Chlorophyll, In the cells)

(From: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/chlorophyll/)

WARNING

the plants in this green house have thorns

DO NOT TOUCH

DO NOT RUN

BE CAREFUL

You’re sandy and large beautiful green

Spiked refuge

If I came across you in the desert

I’d have to split you open

Your climate fills my lungs

Hello princess arms in over growth and tangle

Suffering princess

Eve spiked too (girls suffer)

Cactus suffering from them selves idea

Dramatic waving and growth

‘Harder for me’

Buzzing death flies

In cloud unison

Spin so much in

Spike spirals

And reminds us that we’ve managed to grow (in this climate)

Ones become so large and floral in basic terms

Others spill out in microscopic detail

Some bell gloves

Some violet sweet knots

(Flowers as women)

Coffee tropica

On your morning table pressed by me

Did you know someone who grew in a tropical environment?

Was her name Arabica

Or ginger girl

Or pepper corn

Resting on structures

Based on skin

Filling, brushing the stone bowl

let nothing of it go unrecorded,

map it as if it were already passing.

Look at it with the inside of your head,

look at it for later, look at it for ever,

and look at it once for me.'

I could alternatively create memoir-based prose about my experiences of visiting the gardens as a child through to adulthood and how perceptions change of place based on age and experience.

'The most fruitful relationship with place seems often to involve a
degree of intimacy and of distance.’ (p.13)

Through Trees 1 - Zoe Skoulding

The Ground Aslant: An Anthology of Radical Landscape Poetry (p.135)

they came, at last, to be masters

of it all; to take up the lives

mapped out for them.'

(From:https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/in-month/april/greenhouse,-conservatory-and-houseplants)

if I shout in,

I am only as wide

as the world's aperture

but listen! if you listen

I will move you a few known sounds

in a constant irregular pattern:

flocks of foxgloves spectating slightly bending...'

(p. 21)

Do you do no harm?

You flicker. I cannot touch you.

I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns.

And it exhausts me to watch you

Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.

A mouth just bloodied.

Little bloody skirts!

There are fumes that I cannot touch.

Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?

If I could bleed, or sleep!

If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!

Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,

Dulling and stilling.

But colorless. Colorless.

I write poetry to reveal a strange power in my surroundings.