https://thegardenzine.co.uk The Garden Zine Thu, 30 Jun 2022 13:18:10 +0000 https://thegardenzine.co.uk en https://thegardenzine.co.uk/Untitled-Page Mon, 21 Mar 2022 22:52:54 +0000 The Garden Zine https://thegardenzine.co.uk/Untitled-Page THE GARDEN click on the icons to enter the different projects <img width="1352" height="1948" width_o="1352" height_o="1948" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/09d3ccd94f630c3131686296685997d3767114f864f2732ee6ebe61aab83bf13/Garden-Zine-visuals.jpg" data-mid="143249268" border="0" alt="The Garden Zine" data-caption="The Garden Zine" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/09d3ccd94f630c3131686296685997d3767114f864f2732ee6ebe61aab83bf13/Garden-Zine-visuals.jpg" /> <img width="2633" height="1729" width_o="2633" height_o="1729" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/13c719b039afeb46fa082577d66f163df98f99717e90d92f5a3d69061748b670/maps-layered.gif" data-mid="145810307" border="0" alt="spaces(in)BETWEEN" data-caption="spaces(in)BETWEEN" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/13c719b039afeb46fa082577d66f163df98f99717e90d92f5a3d69061748b670/maps-layered.gif" /> <img width="5284" height="5362" width_o="5284" height_o="5362" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7fac27b890ff99fd31fd3cc7a643d54b1c991aea257e9c34b2d7afad2d1be0dc/UNDERGROWTH.jpeg" data-mid="137116735" border="0" alt="underGROWTH" data-caption="underGROWTH" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7fac27b890ff99fd31fd3cc7a643d54b1c991aea257e9c34b2d7afad2d1be0dc/UNDERGROWTH.jpeg" /> <img width="1899" height="721" width_o="1899" height_o="721" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bcf23dce4cd7328ce6847f02eb60c430e92fad8a5ca0476f2b7c09647da04428/live-and-dye-logo.gif" data-mid="146372498" border="0" alt="Live &amp; Dye Garden" data-caption="Live &amp; Dye Garden" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bcf23dce4cd7328ce6847f02eb60c430e92fad8a5ca0476f2b7c09647da04428/live-and-dye-logo.gif" /> <img width="2048" height="1369" width_o="2048" height_o="1369" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3e775a80a3a3abc2917f237ec7b3656b05f1f59a5a7945029764cf7f5059df85/digging-deep.jpeg" data-mid="147688665" border="0" alt="Digging Deep" data-caption="Digging Deep" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3e775a80a3a3abc2917f237ec7b3656b05f1f59a5a7945029764cf7f5059df85/digging-deep.jpeg" /> <img width="3947" height="2515" width_o="3947" height_o="2515" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c16717decfa4fe20fa6b462337360e5b0765da22a287cfb45c97344d47a5077f/feather-HD.jpeg" data-mid="137116979" border="0" alt="The Avian Garden" data-caption="The Avian Garden" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c16717decfa4fe20fa6b462337360e5b0765da22a287cfb45c97344d47a5077f/feather-HD.jpeg" /> https://thegardenzine.co.uk/About Mon, 18 May 2020 13:50:22 +0000 The Garden Zine https://thegardenzine.co.uk/About <img width="5616" height="3744" width_o="5616" height_o="3744" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3e909d840bbb6b486db028386576f43b3af51b130a451059893a5a4cea67abc8/About.jpg" data-mid="74523910" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3e909d840bbb6b486db028386576f43b3af51b130a451059893a5a4cea67abc8/About.jpg" /> <img width="5616" height="3744" width_o="5616" height_o="3744" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7d3617f618d5dd1aa86c6c815e72ef48f8e4c33ea89680d7d8dcb9f0506cd83b/birdhouse.jpg" data-mid="74524115" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7d3617f618d5dd1aa86c6c815e72ef48f8e4c33ea89680d7d8dcb9f0506cd83b/birdhouse.jpg" /> <img width="5616" height="3744" width_o="5616" height_o="3744" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a954d223ffda8da01fd5fc52acf9dec8d50504a2af73bea65a20d83b4d07b871/microphone.jpg" data-mid="74524473" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a954d223ffda8da01fd5fc52acf9dec8d50504a2af73bea65a20d83b4d07b871/microphone.jpg" /> <img width="5334" height="3493" width_o="5334" height_o="3493" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7b860dd351b6866d2b4bb03bd1e765b0383403bb00c9b327737b6d99e3d9d9ab/peashoot.jpg" data-mid="74524474" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7b860dd351b6866d2b4bb03bd1e765b0383403bb00c9b327737b6d99e3d9d9ab/peashoot.jpg" /> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; Photos by Adele M Reed The Garden &nbsp; THE POD (funding partner and co-commissioner) The Gardenis a collection of environmentally focussed projects and programmes commissioned by THE POD and archived by artist Alix Villanueva. The Garden Zine, curated by Alix Villanueva, is a document that collates over 40 people’s multifaceted relationships to gardens and gardening. The idea for The Garden Zine emerged out of a residency at THE POD in Coventry for the Coventry Biennial 2019. Gardens have been at the centre of her work for the past few years. They appeal to her as places saturated with cultural and social histories, as well as the meeting point for human and 'nature' to co-create. They are neither wild, nor domestic, perhaps both... The Avian Garden is Coventry-based composer Tim Seeley’s interactive sonic installation, in which the listener is left to compose their own soundscape, merging the velocity of birds’ wings, the chaos but beauty of masses of birds, their conversations and calls, with ethereal electronic sounds. The idea within the music for the Avian Garden is to create the feeling of the wings’ movement, the energy behind flight for a bird. “I wanted to convey the feeling I get when the geese fly over me. The energy and effort their body exerts. Each wing forcing the air while the body makes gentle sounds like an accordion. I have ignored many aspects of time and tempo, inspired by Erik Satie’s ideas of eliminating the bar lines. There is no strict tempo, no pulse, no defined time signature. Just expression of movement.”&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Tim Seeley underGROWTH&nbsp;is a series of eco-art inter[actions] that create a unique platform for people to consider, confront &amp; articulate issues relating to the environment: the air we breathe, the city we move through, the trees that line our streets, the weeds that breakthrough the paving slabs, the River Sherbourne as it runs through and beneath the city, the food we eat, &amp; ultimately our human responses. The programme was co-curated by artist Lauren Sheerman and poet George Ttoouli with THE POD, Food Union and DIALOGUE. spaces(in)BETWEEN is a project that shares the walking routes of a sociologist, a musician and an artist and the body of work they have produced in reaction to their walk. They also worked alongside film-maker Duncan Whitley, who produced three short films in reaction to their work. This project has been commissioned by THE POD and Coventry City of Culture. &nbsp; The Live &amp; Dye Garden is a garden built by Food Union within the grounds of Coventry Cathedral, as part of Coventry City of Culture’s Green Future Programme. The garden has a shared focus on both the incidental and cultivated growth that can occur within this space and looks to promote the benefits and safe uses of medicinal plants and ‘weeds’ as nature’s healers. Once developed, the space will be used to host workshops, grow plants and be a place of solitude within the busy centre of Coventry. The Garden was co-commissioned by Coventry City of Culture Trust for #GreenFutures, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Severn Trent Community Fund. THE POD is Coventry’s award-winning mental health social brokerage and cultural hub, its unique approach builds capacity for creativity, innovation, regeneration and activism. THE POD is cited as being a culturally impacting arts and mental health organisation in Coventry’s Cultural Strategy and was actively involved in engaging communities of interest and artists in the development of the City of Culture bid and consequently are now delivery partners in ‘Green Futures’.&nbsp; “A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.” &nbsp; &nbsp; Gertrude Jekyll THE POD believes nature has a huge impact on people’s wellbeing and mental health.&nbsp; Food Union was founded by The Pod in 2014 – as the name implies – uses the simple power of food to bring communities together, to find healthier ways of producing and eating food, but also of thinking about and enacting community and civic identity. Food Union currently has over 100 members who collectively manage/work our ¾ acre community food growing site affectionately known as CV5. In addition, The Pod/Food Union have commissioned hosted and curated an artist in residency programme at CV5, monthly gatherings and folk gigs around the fire in the evening and at weekends, &nbsp;ground breaking events, midsummer celebrations, structure building and eco narrative walks led by poets.&nbsp; Last year we were delivery partners for the inaugural CHANGE festival, which saw us co-curate a Folk Song Nature Walk with internationally acclaimed Sam Lee.&nbsp; THE POD have also been awarded funds for underGROWTH.&nbsp; underGROWTH is a series of eco-art inter[actions] that create a unique platform for people to consider, confront &amp; articulate issues relating to the environment: the air we breathe, the city we move through, the trees that line our streets, the weeds that breakthrough the paving slabs, the River Sherbourne as it runs through and beneath the city, the food we eat, &amp; ultimately our human responses. underGROWTH aims to awaken/radicalise how people interact with the city by cultivating common purpose, exploring wildness and unearthing and re-planting the city's radical roots. underGROWTH will enable local people to engage with eco-artists, environmental activists, food growers, scientists &amp; academics from across the UK. Participative in nature, the inter[actions] will creatively agitate environmental, political, and culturally motivated conversations and actions. In collaboration with Coventry Biennale and integral to the work/vision of Food Union and underGROWTH Edinburgh-based artist and cosmoecologist Alix Villanueva undertook a residency across The Pod’s diverse sites to include the CV5 site and the Bob and Roberta Smith Zine Reading Room.&nbsp; We are thrilled that as consequence of that residency the seeds for this Garden Zine were planted. “The quiet activism of THE POD is also a deep activism, a unique case of civic care for people, places, land and multi-species, at a time when civic care is aggressively being eroded through calls to austerity, auditing and capital.” &nbsp; &nbsp; Dr Nirmal Puwar, Reader in Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London Christine Eade (Manager, The Pod) <img width="7500" height="1529" width_o="7500" height_o="1529" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7e5907df590a6a21dfb74ec3a854d2ef0da14861a2ea1844f1c589e530c56cd3/the-pod-logo-Cultivate-Connect-Change.jpg" data-mid="75079509" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7e5907df590a6a21dfb74ec3a854d2ef0da14861a2ea1844f1c589e530c56cd3/the-pod-logo-Cultivate-Connect-Change.jpg" /> https://thegardenzine.co.uk/spaces-in-BETWEEN-home Sun, 19 Jun 2022 15:36:26 +0000 The Garden Zine https://thegardenzine.co.uk/spaces-in-BETWEEN-home spaces(in)BETWEEN&nbsp; <img width="2633" height="1729" width_o="2633" height_o="1729" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a9f812413678e00bd27fceb2d7f7cef69381a3cafac69cfd00458d16550c2455/maps-layered.gif" data-mid="145810730" border="0" data-scale="29" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a9f812413678e00bd27fceb2d7f7cef69381a3cafac69cfd00458d16550c2455/maps-layered.gif" /> spaces(in)BETWEEN shares the chosen walking routes of a sociologist, an artist and a musician, and the body of work they have produced in relation to these. The project also involves a collaboration with film-maker Duncan Whitley, who produced three short films capturing a glimpse into their processes. This project was co-comissioned by THE POD and Coventry City of Culture Trust for Green Futures, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Severn Trent Community Fund.&nbsp; <img width="3333" height="2017" width_o="3333" height_o="2017" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/941a849724a466f243dab7bbed1f2573faba0c5b7e4f8b8551a6847e9a6bc980/Scan-4.jpeg" data-mid="145821423" border="0" alt="Nirmal Puwar" data-caption="Nirmal Puwar" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/941a849724a466f243dab7bbed1f2573faba0c5b7e4f8b8551a6847e9a6bc980/Scan-4.jpeg" /> <img width="1331" height="1684" width_o="1331" height_o="1684" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/70b9065b53d8782169bb0c5976a064cf28cf907580badbc8d7191e87abb0c367/map-4.gif" data-mid="145811944" border="0" alt="Martin Green" data-caption="Martin Green" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/70b9065b53d8782169bb0c5976a064cf28cf907580badbc8d7191e87abb0c367/map-4.gif" /> <img width="5570" height="5493" width_o="5570" height_o="5493" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d30595e57a484af96654511e724c395d032cf14f875152f52b835b1ca224f83a/Route-Map-Charlie-copy.jpg" data-mid="146750814" border="0" alt="Charlie Tophill" data-caption="Charlie Tophill" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d30595e57a484af96654511e724c395d032cf14f875152f52b835b1ca224f83a/Route-Map-Charlie-copy.jpg" /> An Editorial, Of Sortsby Alix Villanueva Spaces in between. What are they, and perhaps just as importantly, where can they be encountered? Suggestive of an emptiness, a non-entity, they none-the-less maintain the form and structure of all that is there. In the caseroom, the typist picks up thin, lead rectangles and wedges them in between words. When the page is printed, they do not appear on the paper. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Yetwithoutthemtherewouldbenowordsorsentences. We asked a musician, an artist and a sociologist to take us to their spaces-in-between. What emerged were three distinct walks, spanning the west of Coventry in Spon End, through to Ball Hill and as far east as the suburb of Wyken. Though unique in character, the three walks bear similarities in the way in which memory has provided direction to their feet. During the end of April, forensic botanist Mark Spencer, film-maker Duncan Whitley and I were taken on the three walks. * * * On the 26th of April, and westernmost, Charlie Tophill meets us at Lake View Park. She is a musician and tells us she grew up by the seaside, moving to Coventry only a few years ago. Her pull towards water in a city very much lacking in water takes us along the River Sherbourne through Spon End and to the Cathedral. Through Mark Spencer, we learn about the plants that grow along the path, about the barely noticeable but scientifically significant Thale Cress, about the asexuality of Dandelions, about the presence of Midlands Hawthorn indicating ancient woodlands and the alelopathy of Garlic Mustard. We walk over the culverted parts of the river, discussing the ways in which the man-made hard margins of the riverbed make the water run faster and lower its resistance to flooding. To make a river more stable, we have to slow the water flow and, with sufficient light and access to soil, bankside plants would be able to serve this purpose. Upon reaching the Arches we begin to look up at the plants growing vertically, their roots firmly embedded in the rocky walls. We spot Maidenhair and Rue-leaved Spleenwort, which dislike pollution and were almost wiped out with the rise of industrialisation but came back after the introduction of the Clean Air Act. There is so much Buddleia, firmly encroaching onto the hard surfaces. A rarer specimen of Pellitory of the Wall makes itself known to us. These are all plants that have adapted to the hardscapes of our cities, much like pigeons have adapted from cliff-edges to building façades. Looking at spires of Rosebay Willowherb, not yet in flower, Mark Spencer tells us about its other names, one of which is Bombsite Weed (and interestingly enough, Bombsite Bush is another name for the invasive Buddleia). Rosebay Willowherb did particularly well after the wars, as explosions carried its parachuting seedheads that then settled down on the bared ground and took little time to thrive. We learn that bombsites are a genre of brownfield site, of particular ecological interest. Tophill went on to adopt the name Brownfield for her EP which emerged from her work for spaces(in)BETWEEN. The four sonic works she has produced are composed using an orchestra made up entirely of sounds collected from different points on her walk. We are transported across four distinct segments she calls ‘scenes’, a term suggestive of interaction and action rather than static passivity. In these scenes, different beings and elements are subtly referenced and come to merge, the running of water, the birdsongs, and the fragments of dialogue, all coming together with the rhythmic use of the instruments she built from her field recordings. The last scene, entitled Cathedral, is the only one where we hear Tophill’s vocals. The song is full of precise details encountered from within the body of the Cathedral. On her note-taking as part of her song-writing process, Tophill tells me: “I approached note-taking more like a survey than a diary entry, which I would have normally done. I made notes of what I observed and heard. […] The whole process was not led by autobiography, only by presence in the space.” The film produced by Duncan Whitley on Tophill’s work gives us a glimpse of her use of note-taking and drawing, as well as the physical interactions she has with her direct environment from which she built her sound library. In a muted palette, characteristic of Whitley’s work, a wooden mallet and a drumstick, are witnessed extricating sounds from things evoking a semi-urbanity: an open pipe, a wooden pole to which is attached rusty barbed wire, emerging out of the out-of-focus green of the plants that give context to her walk. In one particularly visually striking fragment, Tophill’s hand is seen rhythmically grabbing a chain, suggestive of the relationship between the use of her body, encountered objects and her environment in her musical process. * * * The next day, sociologist and writer Dr Nirmal Puwar takes us on her walk across Ball Hill. The walk is short, but packed with personal, social and civic references for Puwar. We set off from the 2 Tone Café on Walsgrave Road. She points out the displays of our consumer relationship to food through the copious amounts of fast food places that surround us. Across the road is an abandoned shop front with a blue façade – a Boots that closed down. ‘For Sale’ boards are visible all along the side streets. We pass by a series of small front gardens, almost all un-kept, some strewn with litter, others recently sprayed with glyphosate. Litter is something familiar to Puwar, having written “Walking Through Litter”, in which she describes the litter that now paves the same walk she writes about for spaces(in)BETWEEN. Peering into these small front gardens, Mark Spencer starts pointing out the species that grow in them. According to him, these gardens are filled with evidence of certain kinds of human actions and decisions: Buddleia, an import from China; Oxford Ragwort, originally from Mount Etna and brought to the Oxford Botanic Garden where it eventually escaped, got onto the railway and was spread by train travel; Yellow Corydalis, a garden escapee from the foothills of the Alps; Sycamore, which went extinct here in the last ice age but was reintroduced around the Norman period. He also points out the native plants: Bracken, Herb Robert, Sow Thistle, Dock. These he calls the ‘survivors’, those who made it past the agricultural periods and have found a small surviving niche in our urban areas. There are resonances with themes that are integral to Puwar’s writing, unpacking experiences of diaspora and identity as evidenced in “Indomitable Mint”. In one of the gardens, growing just along the side of the wall marking the start of the pavement, the white clusters of Snow-in-Summer, Cerastium tomentosum in its Latin name, catch our eye. These were in fashion in the mid 20th century in working-class gardens. This plant appears in Puwar’s writing, its name evoking the memory of the tragic loss of her brother from within the walls of the Walsgrave hospital as snow uncharacteristically blanketed the ground in April. We walk past the Stoke Library and sense the ghost of the filled-in swimming pool below our feet. Above ground, Mark Spencer points out the clear evidence of glyphosate application. The yellowing corpses of Chickweed, Dead Nettles and other specimens of plants that grew between the cracks in the pavement tell us a story. Amongst them, Docks endure. Improper applications of herbicide breed resistance. We are indignant witnesses to human malpractices. Full of academic and conceptual references, and yet moving and accessible, Puwar’s address to her deceased mother deftly weaves the intimate with the civic and social, through different layers of temporality and power structures. As part of her writing process, Puwar undertakes segments of her one-mile walk with different companions: botanists, artists, activists, scientists, local residents, non-humans and ghosts. These become lenses through which she reads the details of her walk, her attention being drawn to novel things that have been there all along. “Ball Hill”, the film Duncan Whitley produced with Nirmal Puwar, gives us a glimpse into one such layer. Detailed, almost surgical views of Puwar’s hands holding up plant specimens gathered and identified from her walk with Mark Spencer roll on the screen. We would almost believe they were photographs, were it not for the subtle tremble of the hand yielding to the effort of keeping still, a subtle reminder of our living, breathing bodies juxtaposed with the herbarium-like presentations of plants against a white background. Layered on the top, we hear Puwar address her mother, with the last line of her text read in Punjabi, the language she would have communicated with her in. * * * The last walk took place a couple of days later, although without Mark Spencer present as he got called in to a forensic emergency. Still, Duncan Whitley and I had the pleasure of an intimate non-walk (due to its non-linear nature) through the suburb of Wyken, in east Coventry. The suburb’s layout is characterised by 196 alley gates guarding what Coventrians call “entries”, these back alleys of housing estates built pre-war around the 1930s, which were wide enough to accommodate carriages and cars but just a little too small for today’s vehicles. Green’s childhood and teenage memories of the geographical layout of his neighbourhood are suffused with places we can no longer access. Short routes often meant cutting through the then-opened backstreets and, as we walk, memories surface of ball games, or of being shouted at by a neighbour for cutting through where one was not supposed to be. These entries bear no formal names. The neighbourhood itself is anchored in a misnaming, coming up on maps as Church End, a name that has never been uttered on local lips. Green takes it upon himself to create associative names for the entries, based on specific autobiographical memories. The walk is not linear either. Often times, we have to turn back upon ourselves. “You can now only assess a street by its façade. You can no longer see the back,” Green tells us. This is apparent in Green’s post-it paintings, in which the backs of his drawings gain just as much significance as the fronts do. Led by the dots that have bled through the page from the front, Green maps out the lay of the land, something he tells us his feet have always felt beneath the hopscotch layout of the pavement slabs that characterise this suburb. The slight incline of Morris Avenue now lined with identical houses can be felt by the feet of the attentive walker. Broken sightlines can only be glimpsed through the gates of these entries and one can almost imagine what the land might have looked like when it was still farmland. There are no trees here. In the summer, the heat pools along the paved slabs. As we walk, Green often bends down to pick up discarded objects. A category of object that seems to come up time and again is the bright coloured disposable vape canister. Green puts these in his pockets as he walks along with us. The ground is littered with them. Once back in the studio, he will flatten and dissect them, his fingers tainted by the artificial smell of watermelon, candyfloss, or whatever other flavour these come in. He is interested in addiction, as has been exemplified in the past work he has done with encountered nitrous oxide canisters, “especially in a place where nothing happens” Green tells me. “The place I used to live in is a barren void,” says Green. Barren of resources and infrastructure, a neighbourhood dubbed by Green as “Fortress Wyken” in which gates, surveillance cameras and anti-climb paint are the norm. I stick my hand into the thick greasy black mess at the top of a gate before Green is able to warn me. He shakes his head, a smile on the corner of his lips. In a palette that echoes that of the corpus of post-it paintings produced by Green, Duncan Whitley’s film, “(in)secure Childhood”, captures the works in their context. The works of art are returned to their place of conception, deposited on the gates of the entries or by the brick walls that they reference. This gives the viewers a glimpse into the final stage of Green’s process, which would involve the placement of these works back into the entries out of which they were coaxed. This is a challenge for the artist, who feels uneasy engaging in activities that are not considered normal for that area. The authority afforded by the camera lens made the filming possible, but not without glances and questions. The slow cadence of the film is interrupted by the final segments of the film, in which the field of focus is expanded to beyond the entry gates and into the sightlines that they keep concealed, evoking a longing for a walk down the forbidden paths. https://thegardenzine.co.uk/Nirmal-Puwar-1 Thu, 09 Jun 2022 10:59:21 +0000 The Garden Zine https://thegardenzine.co.uk/Nirmal-Puwar-1 <img width="3333" height="2017" width_o="3333" height_o="2017" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/447d6c14a7d56f23dfc8a08f76743998d8e43726157426e3ccfe60b7b3b513ce/Scan-4.jpeg" data-mid="145977787" border="0" data-scale="85" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/447d6c14a7d56f23dfc8a08f76743998d8e43726157426e3ccfe60b7b3b513ce/Scan-4.jpeg" /> Dr Nirmal Puwar Ball Hill a film by Duncan Whitley with Nirmal Puwar &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; In the novel ‘Here is where we meet’, based in Lisbon, John Berger observes the outline of a female figure walking towards him. As she becomes closer and comes into focus, he notices it is his mother and she has been dead fifteen years. She states that the dead don’t stay where we want them to. So often we walk with ghosts; our mind roams with time as we ramble with our feet in the here and now. We are mangled time-machines; envisioning futures with distant pasts, seeking repair when we are broken. <img width="1536" height="2048" width_o="1536" height_o="2048" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b1e21917d24f1ac3453cb7b4ae67c70ab15b359960a54648d302c241302dfbd7/814c0db8-c0fb-44ff-a45f-ea7a86f44366.JPG" data-mid="145978351" border="0" data-scale="46" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b1e21917d24f1ac3453cb7b4ae67c70ab15b359960a54648d302c241302dfbd7/814c0db8-c0fb-44ff-a45f-ea7a86f44366.JPG" />rubble along Ball Hill &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The lines on the hand curled over, held along journeys, from crawling to the handlebars, in between the laughter of wheeling down the hill of Ball Hill. The paths are now wheelie binned all over; discarded nappies, polystyrene take-away boxes, strewn on asphalt pathways. The purple ivy-leaved toadflax, a rock climber from Italy, has made a home in the crevices of cracked urban walls, with edible flowers, which we don’t eat. Purple hanging buddleia, introduced from China to the UK in the 1890s for gardens, invites dances with butterflies, the wind spreads their seeds far and wide, making them commonplace in urban wastelands. In between the infrastructural lines of migration and colonialism, plants, people and animals have co-mingled. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Oh what a ball we had, as we whizzed down Ball Hill with the rain in front of us, you holding your arched umbrella majestically mid-air, while I drove the wheels of what you referred to as my gaddhi (motor vehicle), since I didn’t drive, in this motor proud clogged city. The pavement almost clear all the way then, looking out for dog poo or potholes that could jerk us (you) off course. Laughing at the hilarity of times, when on the same path, a bright yellow block heel had clopped off a yellow strapped sandal, bought in a job lot from Curtiss’s by the young women in the neighbourly circles, putting the elegant jaunt, of the bell bottom wearer, out of keel. Forming part of your own helter skelter of life between Coventry and the diaspora of oceans you crossed to be here. *** Threaded through the time of now, deep time, the personal, colonialism and migration of plants, soil, animals, human and non-human life, a key note in the writing comes from observing how places and life are simultaneously both &nbsp;decomposing and recomposing. As we compose academic prose for the world, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer can enable us to do a different braid with our writing; in terms of genres, disciplines and vernaculars. This walk has become a braided form of writing through several elements: 1. This walk is multi-scalar, it moves from micro details to large historical changes, from personal intimate biographies, to structural global phenomena. 2. It is not an isolated walk, as it is linked to other places, through infrastructures, networks of relations and power structures. 3. This walk moves back and forth in time, it is an atlas of emotions with layered temporalities. It engages in a hybrid mode of contemplation. Reflecting as a daughter and sociologist who returns ‘home’ and finds herself becoming writer-as-resident. 4. It is based on a one mile walked alongside others, including botanists, artists, activists, residents, the non-human and ghosts. Each of these companions inflect how one walks, what is observed and imagined, becoming ‘companion thinkers’, as Isabelle Stengers puts it. *** &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Three-foot tall perimeter walls hem in the soil of sloping gardens, meeting my eye level, as I walk down the hill, counting To Let signs which have sprung up in abundance. Above and away from the path sit Victorian houses, chopped into multiple HMO occupation properties for maximum rent, the cash rolling in with no civic accountability for the maintenance of infrastructures. Mattresses, ripped bin bags and pushchairs discarded amongst the nettles, soothing dock leaves co-exist. From rock faces, ivy-leaved toadflax adapts to growing in built urban environments, finding spaces in between glass and decomposing food waste to crawl up the steep stairs to the houses. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; In the 1970s, in your fifties, you abundantly pushed a full size bouncy spring suspended pram, with your strong petite 5ft frame, up Ball Hill, with your elder two grandsons in it, while my hand held on to the side bar and we admired the carefully planted front gardens. Gardens can be a gift to neighbours and bypassers. Then, we certainly chose to walk up towards Ball Hill so we could lift our heads to take in the careful curation and changing colours of what was planted on the side of the sidewalk. Your smiles drifted away from us, aided by small drops of morphine, as one of your loyal grandsons held on to your grip to the end. They placed precious you in a bag and took you to the morgue where your body was refrigerated as it tried to decompose. The walks stay with us, as we walk the paths we took both decompose and recompose. <img width="1536" height="2048" width_o="1536" height_o="2048" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/29c26e0faed60b53571f0396e441cf209cf9c200b7f65904f08977fb3a46379d/390d6d62-9a3c-43a0-aa9d-bcb6a40016ea.JPG" data-mid="145979308" border="0" data-scale="52" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/29c26e0faed60b53571f0396e441cf209cf9c200b7f65904f08977fb3a46379d/390d6d62-9a3c-43a0-aa9d-bcb6a40016ea.JPG" /> Nirmal visiting one of the gardens that still looks maintained along Ball Hill &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Front gardens we pass are integrally related to a multiplicity of global routes, through the production of discarded plastics, the exportation of waste and a pluriverse of plant journeys. The green and shimmering purple of Briza maxima, also known as great quaking grass or pearl grass, quivering grass, shaky grass and shell grass from North Africa and the Mediterranean, delicately dangles over plastic bottles and tin cans, a misnomer to be logged with the Botanical Society of Britain &amp; Ireland, says the botanist Mark Spencer, as it has become naturalised in the far south of the UK and now seems to be moving north. Used as an ornamental dried flower, quivering grass is now classified as an invasive species that has become a common weed of waste places, considered to be threatening native species of plants and crops in countries as far as Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Hawaii, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras. Diasporas of seedlings and cuttings have travelled by the designs of trade and movement across the globe, as well as through unwitting processes of migration from non-human lives. The spores of moss, one of the earliest plants to grow on land, is limited to spreading laterally. In between the spaces of the feathers of birds, this plant, like others, has dispersed to all parts of the world. <img width="4000" height="1800" width_o="4000" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3cd2c6ecc50312ebaf3cfedaaf2db9e47dad620975c8481cf7dc0b1938be1509/plants-Nirmal---Duncan-2.jpeg" data-mid="146225592" border="0" data-scale="72" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3cd2c6ecc50312ebaf3cfedaaf2db9e47dad620975c8481cf7dc0b1938be1509/plants-Nirmal---Duncan-2.jpeg" /> plants collected on the walk image by Duncan Whitley, labels by Alix Villanueva &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The taxonomic language of botany is replete with references to migration, native, non-native, invading, naturalised, escaped, adapted, extinct and survivors, with an emphasis on geographical location, ecologies and changing value systems. For diasporic human lives these words are irksome, inviting vigilance. In their late eighties, with their walking sticks in hand, both my mother and father were naturalised as British citizens, this was after they had lived in the country for over fifty years. They were handed citizenship certificates by a Muslim South Asian Lord mayor at a ceremony held at Coventry council house, where the national anthem played on a CD player, and a portrait of the queen stood centre staged on an easel. We pass the Day lily, also known as Wayside Burma Comforter, treated as an ornamental plant in the UK, but a food item in East Asia. It may have sat beside my father when as a young man in WW2, under British colonial rule, he fought against the Japanese, while some of the prisoners of war from British-Indian switched to fighting alongside Japan under Rash Behari Bose. And you my mother sung ‘Oh Letter from Burma’, with the women left in wait at the home front in India of the dreaded news from the Burma war front. As the wind speaks through the comforter, I can hear those longing tones, however distant your voice has become with time. These and other boliyan you carried with you to dance giddha in the making of home in a cold British climate that you warmed to too. *** How I approach what is decomposing and recomposing is very much informed and affected by who I walk along with.This could be ghosts, my young daughter, a local resident, activist, or soil scientists, as we took the path last week with Maria Puig de la Bellacasa and photographer and artist Adele M Reed. Or a botanist;&nbsp; organised by the POD and Food Union, with the ecological writer Alix Villanueva, a few weeks ago.Strolling and stopping is composed by who you walk alongside. A 5 min walk became a 2 hr walk with the botanist, as it did with the soil scientists, who pointed out the thousands of years it would take for the plastic littered amongst the wild plants in the front gardens to bio-degrade. They point out there is a lot of metal in the soil, especially silver in Coventry. We discuss how soil memory is constituted, with the industrial heritage of the motor car. There are particular stops on the way, including gardens where decay and new life come together in Ball Hill. The stop of home, the Stoke library, the covered mens toilets, the filled in swimming pool, the wilderness of the disused railway and the struggle for an orchard, the park in the middle of the cuts of highway, made for the motor city, the public-private partnership of Fargo the creative quarter, where tyres were sold, by Harrabin Construction, who have the business fingers all over the town, the making of Common Ground cafe, the soil to table philosophy of the POD, the rise of student housing, the destruction of protected trees, the hope for civic creativity in the Herbert gallery and Coventry cathedral. *** &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Snow-in-Summer, clumps of white flowers carpet gravel gardens and hang off the perimeters of walls. The juxtaposition of snow-in-summer takes me to 9th April over 20 years ago when your dear eldest son, Harbans, who was such a gift to you when you birthed him years after you entered the marital home that had begun to deride you as a barren beauty of a woman. The snow fell thick in April, as his last breaths were taken away from him, high up in the towers of the half inept Walsgrave hospital. The world fell inside out on you, and us. The two shades of yellow of daffodils circled the centre of the roundabout as we sat in cars on the way home. That time of daffodils stays with us. The words from school books read out aloud resound ‘April the cruellest month of all’ from TS Elliot’s The Waste Land, a text we poured over as literature students with Mrs Ranson: April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire… &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; As we sat at Birmingham Airport waiting for our flight to India, to take my brothers ashes to the rivers of Kiratpur in Punjab, our mother moved her hands gently over the copper coloured urn with my brothers ashes in. She then rubbed her hands on her face. <img width="2048" height="1536" width_o="2048" height_o="1536" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/701989a364f4c9d134f0c8697236bb8abbfed13af9f597107644db202806dda0/a35ce405-7992-4d0e-9a25-c70dcc91d411.JPG" data-mid="146224156" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/701989a364f4c9d134f0c8697236bb8abbfed13af9f597107644db202806dda0/a35ce405-7992-4d0e-9a25-c70dcc91d411.JPG" /> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*** The Punjabi folk song ‘Mitti De Bawa’, was sung by a young woman longing to be a mother, her husband is on his travels, possibly at war. She makes a doll of clay as an imaginary child. Feelings of jealousy towards other women are also acknowledged in the lyrics. There are several versions of it. It has been sung famously by the duo Chitra and Jagjit Singh. Mitti Da Bawa (doll made of soil) Mitti da main bawa banani aan, ve jhagga paani aan,ve utte deni aan khesi, So ja mitti diaa baawiaa,ve tera pio pardesi Mitti da bawa nahion bolda,nahion chaalda ,naan hi denda e hungaara, Na ro mitti deaa baawiaa,ve tera pio vanjaara Kade taan main launi aan tahliaan,ve pattaan vaaleean,ve mera patla maahi, Kade launi aan shahtoot,ve tainu samajh na aave Mere jehiaan lakhkh goriaan,ve tanee doriaan,haye godee baal hindole, Hass hass dendiaan loreeaan,haae mere ladan sapole I craft a doll from soil,make it wear a little shirt,cover it with a blanket… Go to sleep my doll of soil,your dad is abroad… My doll of soil does not speak,does not walk,does not call to me.. Don’t cry my little clay doll,your dad is a wanderer… I planted sheesham trees,they grew lovely leaves,aah my scrawny beloved… I planted trees of mulberry,why don’t you respond… The other women of the town,as pretty as me,have kids in their lap.. Sing them lullabies,and my soul is a snake’s playground *** Our Mother at Blackpool The frothy waves come and go, lashing through the pebbles, taking more of her away. Joining her specs of dust with grains of grey sand. Curling and enfolding her into the vast unending oceans of the seas. We have our thick coats on, it is cold. The sun shines on us as we finally let her go, at 11am on 15 February 2020, not far from the northern pier. We are bent over. We are silent together and alone. We keep looking back at her, while we walk away. *** <img width="1320" height="1181" width_o="1320" height_o="1181" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c09af89dda9f5d1897043fcaa989b3008393dab80045ea0895f081f5e2001c84/stacks.gif" data-mid="146227065" border="0" data-scale="17" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c09af89dda9f5d1897043fcaa989b3008393dab80045ea0895f081f5e2001c84/stacks.gif" />click on the bookstack to download Nirmal’s reading list *** Alix Villanueva interviews Nirmal Puwar on the work she did for spaces(in)BETWEEN https://thegardenzine.co.uk/Martin-Green-2 Thu, 09 Jun 2022 10:58:04 +0000 The Garden Zine https://thegardenzine.co.uk/Martin-Green-2 Martin Green Entry: between blocked and reimagined <img width="1384" height="1828" width_o="1384" height_o="1828" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6c6b2a6eeae15140b29322486561bada1d0a1199489fa83d7182f943f46108f4/map-3.gif" data-mid="145609091" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6c6b2a6eeae15140b29322486561bada1d0a1199489fa83d7182f943f46108f4/map-3.gif" /> <img width="1325" height="1808" width_o="1325" height_o="1808" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d4a303e68957012b2b40b9053b3533642ae9579f0b9c4a8d6132b322fdb3f2c8/map2.gif" data-mid="145609157" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d4a303e68957012b2b40b9053b3533642ae9579f0b9c4a8d6132b322fdb3f2c8/map2.gif" /> <img width="1251" height="1713" width_o="1251" height_o="1713" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/40f85aa19050f069f8c3eae0344dfca2652e2835e70f3394c311ad18c86155ce/map1.gif" data-mid="145607150" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/40f85aa19050f069f8c3eae0344dfca2652e2835e70f3394c311ad18c86155ce/map1.gif" /> <img width="1331" height="1684" width_o="1331" height_o="1684" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/af47c133c730f36f0f6d573b614313526bb46c5ce3e8c6d807469771ebda225f/map-4.gif" data-mid="145712147" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/af47c133c730f36f0f6d573b614313526bb46c5ce3e8c6d807469771ebda225f/map-4.gif" /> mapping a walk through the suburb of Wyken with and without blocked entries&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Over the past 45 years I have frequently returned to and walked a Coventry suburb where I lived from the age of 5 to 19, at which point I left to go to Art School and my parents downsized and moved to the other side of the city. How I walked through this neighbourhood pre-1976 is very different from how I am able to walk there now. Most of my journeys as a child would include routes on both roadside pavements and entries. At present, all these entries are securely gated. I was familiar with walking and playing alongside both the front and the backs&nbsp;of houses, in contrast with today where&nbsp;I am&nbsp;forced to only see the façades and therefore only understand half of the neighbourhood. I always thought the back of the houses showed more of the personality, the personality is now locked behind iron gates, observed by security cameras and under constant community surveillance.&nbsp;When I walk the routes there is always a gap inbetween memory and reality, being forced to walk alongside car lined roads while having strong routes inside me that I am no longer able to re-trace.<img width="514" height="418" width_o="514" height_o="418" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/92e149fd9f52a715313d7fa634f160ca373e81f0a0ee0d3f37fa645491f98df3/postits-captions.gif" data-mid="145709868" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/514/i/92e149fd9f52a715313d7fa634f160ca373e81f0a0ee0d3f37fa645491f98df3/postits-captions.gif" />nine reimagined entrances to a network of entries pre the introduction of security gates and three (2. 5. 8.) scenes that are no longer accessible due to to the installation of alley gates 1. Between 64A and 66 Hermitage.2. Between 76 and 78 Hermitage.3. Between 67 Morris and 1 Macauley.4. Between 38 Morris and 64 Hermitage.5. Between 64 and 66 Morris.6. Between 92 Morris and The Caretakers House, Ravensdale.7. Between 211 Longfellow and Methodist Church, Macdonald.8. The rear of Methodist Church, Macdonald.9. Between 139 and 141 Morris.10. Between 37 Mellowdew and 1 Hermitage.11. Between 39 Mellowdew and 2 Hetmitage.12. Between 83 Mellowdew and 1 Ravensdale. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; “Entry” is the Coventry / Midlands colloquial word for a path or passage between terraced houses. In other regions, an alleyway is also referred to as a ginnel, twitten, jitty, snickelway, wynd, etc. These between spaces have no civic name bestowed upon them, unlike roads that often have inflicted names with little obvious relevance to the locality and its past. These passageways with no formal designation or locally agreed names are simply described as back entry, side entry, our entry, your entry, black pad, black path, back path, etc. The housing estate built on farmland in the 1930s to house workers for the expanding factories has developed a distinctive local identity, despite the fact that residents refer to it by a name that is not the same one as the local authority recognise and is described on the ordnance survey map as Church End which no one locally has ever heard of or uses. So how do I describe an area, an enclave, that is largely either unnamed or inadequately named? Do I have to make it up, embellishing and mixing some reality with a large dose of myth-making and memories, both reliable and unreliable? <img width="1964" height="735" width_o="1964" height_o="735" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5dfe093a778050992705f9fd5cc481db1bad76bf0ba38ac7e576277c62e640ae/triptych.gif" data-mid="145710811" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5dfe093a778050992705f9fd5cc481db1bad76bf0ba38ac7e576277c62e640ae/triptych.gif" /> Entry triptych&nbsp;1. Memory drawing.2. The reverse of the memory drawing.3. Reimagining the return of a rural landscape based on the marks that came through onto the reverse of the memory drawing. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <img width="2633" height="1729" width_o="2633" height_o="1729" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1946298cdc47b3a8d49a621f1978a6c25bde95d993a9a1720cf863452ecf0136/dot-drawings.gif" data-mid="145611997" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1946298cdc47b3a8d49a621f1978a6c25bde95d993a9a1720cf863452ecf0136/dot-drawings.gif" /> <img width="2633" height="1729" width_o="2633" height_o="1729" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d68cf3de813cc18fd9c4406e55280c0d8b96ae367633b168b8b0c92fc3dc27d1/morepostit.gif" data-mid="145711087" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d68cf3de813cc18fd9c4406e55280c0d8b96ae367633b168b8b0c92fc3dc27d1/morepostit.gif" /> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; For some reason the enforced Covid lockdown triggered an intuitive creative response, I started to draw and paint childhood memories on commercially made yellow post-it notes. The small, incidental scale seemed appropriate during the time of a very uncertain pandemic. In total I have made seven sets of 12 post-it note paintings about a housing area that comprises 33 accessible residential roads and 196 gated entries that I can (understandably) no longer walk. The first set of 12 post-it note paintings are from memory, creating the estate of the past, with no alley gates, houses with well kept front garden displays not replaced with tight fitting driveways for oversized cars, leaded windows in wooden frames with idealised roses and romantic scenes of Holland and pavements where the concrete slabs are placed in the perfect sequence for games of hop scotch. I instinctively made these drawings using an imagined impossible viewpoint from above, as if from a drone, a dream, a cloud, a satellite or an out of body experience. If I had an out of body experience why would I choose this location to float above, my childhood was in the past, already disappeared, a search for an intangible memory. This ingrained stomping ground / territory is an area on the map that, when cut out, looks like a well used open book or a slightly non-symmetrical winged creature, which I playfully refer to as the Wyken Fly.<img width="1744" height="1329" width_o="1744" height_o="1329" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a44c09e720d451877437ffd351e5c0830868e61e05f0b09e86800bec0f97e484/linedrawings.gif" data-mid="145711720" border="0" data-scale="89" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a44c09e720d451877437ffd351e5c0830868e61e05f0b09e86800bec0f97e484/linedrawings.gif" /><img width="1655" height="1230" width_o="1655" height_o="1230" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c5b95dbf2285a80e35badf8c9fd772bda38c41ee4a47a3da03afd5520189233e/dots.gif" data-mid="145712065" border="0" data-scale="88" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c5b95dbf2285a80e35badf8c9fd772bda38c41ee4a47a3da03afd5520189233e/dots.gif" />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; A lot of my previous art work incorporates and transforms found objects, giving an insight into societal changes and pressures. There is a new object to be discovered on city streets. As with many found objects I don’t always know, at first, what they are and I am oddly and often wary of them. While I have been recently walking around the roads and cul-de-sacs of my childhood I noticed a considerable number of brightly coloured cylinders. My experience of housing estates built without a broad infrastructural base and a general lack of resources is they have the potential to nurture addiction and dependence both legal and illegal. The new objects are disposable vapes, vape pens, designer colours gutter sitting alongside the already endemic silver nitrous oxide / cream charger canisters. I have dismantled the vape tubes to retrieve / reuse the outer shell, always accompanied by the smell of candy floss, watermelon bubblegum and blueberry in contrast to the throat burning odours of Senior Service, Capstan (full strength), Park Drive and Passing Clouds associated with the first residents. I have created a palette of found objects and small paintings that I am photographing in the tray-like arena in front of various styles of firmly closed gates, appropriating the locality as an impromptu gallery space where the exhibits are only fleetingly on view and quickly removed. Contrasting palette items with finger tip and handprint brick wall drawings made in frustration and anger with black anti-vandal paint and self-set vegetation waiting for a time to rewild and reclaim the undulating lay of the land that despite the area being entirely blanket covered with lines of houses I have always been able to feel this particular soil firmly under my feet. <img width="787" height="1989" width_o="787" height_o="1989" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9565c8f04cc997b93cb2909f82ded47730054db3602bb3fae03d77ca6ba43d81/vape-1.gif" data-mid="145604980" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/787/i/9565c8f04cc997b93cb2909f82ded47730054db3602bb3fae03d77ca6ba43d81/vape-1.gif" /> <img width="664" height="1732" width_o="664" height_o="1732" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/975529d3c112fc75b074e88b59e18a39dbb40847e551241209d65a7f2ecbf463/vape-2.gif" data-mid="145605612" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/664/i/975529d3c112fc75b074e88b59e18a39dbb40847e551241209d65a7f2ecbf463/vape-2.gif" /> <img width="1729" height="2633" width_o="1729" height_o="2633" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ce37a0031c0168739f77bdd187ab14d4ce68fc2dbcc147bcbd608e52ece6805c/vape-4.gif" data-mid="145606076" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ce37a0031c0168739f77bdd187ab14d4ce68fc2dbcc147bcbd608e52ece6805c/vape-4.gif" /> <img width="729" height="1689" width_o="729" height_o="1689" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e0bdcbb5ccbd531f778519fa92ff5d17751d472bb5f88371e3274daa79f65085/vape3.gif" data-mid="145605826" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/729/i/e0bdcbb5ccbd531f778519fa92ff5d17751d472bb5f88371e3274daa79f65085/vape3.gif" /> collected disposable vape canisters&nbsp; <img width="621" height="503" width_o="621" height_o="503" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3adfc21d4e2f90ad5e6eacf72af484263058c681e8e6d396709d75b83e8de2c3/notebook1.gif" data-mid="145712775" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/621/i/3adfc21d4e2f90ad5e6eacf72af484263058c681e8e6d396709d75b83e8de2c3/notebook1.gif" /> <img width="518" height="586" width_o="518" height_o="586" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3e11929106bd99cf15ced9bbbb55df329b474f7b9983c8c7ffcfb862d87c3be1/upsidedown.gif" data-mid="145712473" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/518/i/3e11929106bd99cf15ced9bbbb55df329b474f7b9983c8c7ffcfb862d87c3be1/upsidedown.gif" /> <img width="632" height="468" width_o="632" height_o="468" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ffa6407dde022f4d583a022aa50ca2a6c9484feabb3393ccf8fcec14d5d0dc7f/notebook2.gif" data-mid="145712889" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/632/i/ffa6407dde022f4d583a022aa50ca2a6c9484feabb3393ccf8fcec14d5d0dc7f/notebook2.gif" /> <img width="1831" height="1170" width_o="1831" height_o="1170" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6dadcc55452fef2ebfd57e1334f8bdb441543451eb2c24443120e9daafcd395b/longpostit1.gif" data-mid="145713928" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6dadcc55452fef2ebfd57e1334f8bdb441543451eb2c24443120e9daafcd395b/longpostit1.gif" /> <img width="1724" height="1114" width_o="1724" height_o="1114" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e3f5df0496676b7ac14078c0fdb7d4c80d84a13e3a9dd2e5d2904289cd8a5b33/longpostit2.gif" data-mid="145713940" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e3f5df0496676b7ac14078c0fdb7d4c80d84a13e3a9dd2e5d2904289cd8a5b33/longpostit2.gif" /> Non-Poem Poem 4 to 2,between 2 and 18 blocked,from 17 to 25,blocked between 17 and 19,34 to 2,between 10 and 8 blocked,blocked between 1 and 24,from 24 to 32,between 32 and 73 blocked,black pad blocked,73 to 15,blocked between 15 and 2,from 2 to 48,between 48 and 50 blocked,blocked between 41 and 39,39 to 1,between 1 and 11 blocked,from 11 to 1,blocked between 1 and 2,a memorial to KC and AG scrawled on a green utility box,2 to 54,between 54 and 56 blocked,from 41 to 19,blocked between 19 and 2,19 to 39,between 39 and 1 blocked,blocked between 2 and 41,from 41 to 51,between 63 and 1 blocked,blocked between 2 and 65,65 to 105,between 126 and 111 blocked,from 7 to 1,blocked between 1 and 128,between 107 and 95 blocked,95 to 83,blocked between 83 and 1,from 1 to caretakers house,between caretakers and 92 blocked,92 to 64,blocked between 82 and 80,between 66 and 64 blocked,blocked between 67 and 1,from 67 to 43 / 64A,between 64A and 66 blocked,66 to 2,blocked between 42 and 44,between 2 and 39 blocked,blocked between 44 (48) and 58. <img width="2054" height="1040" width_o="2054" height_o="1040" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1ae1fce4786830fe694cac951478d4af776b15a3ea3380b1c9cd572a18f1bf21/gates.gif" data-mid="146866732" border="0" data-scale="89" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1ae1fce4786830fe694cac951478d4af776b15a3ea3380b1c9cd572a18f1bf21/gates.gif" />*** (in)secure Childhood&nbsp; a film by Duncan Whitley, with Martin Green https://thegardenzine.co.uk/Charlie-Tophill Thu, 09 Jun 2022 10:59:18 +0000 The Garden Zine https://thegardenzine.co.uk/Charlie-Tophill Brownfield EP Charlie Tophill click on the different scenes to enter listening mode <img width="1326" height="3128" width_o="1326" height_o="3128" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9d112bb6e23fafcb64ec3f72a6d56d23274fd0850a66aac5806c780cfb121609/part3.gif" data-mid="146764326" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9d112bb6e23fafcb64ec3f72a6d56d23274fd0850a66aac5806c780cfb121609/part3.gif" /> <img width="898" height="3134" width_o="898" height_o="3134" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/407675057aa1a1d11d8a98f6cb751d76b67ad7631153d02b144bc7bd1c2bf821/part2.gif" data-mid="146764325" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/898/i/407675057aa1a1d11d8a98f6cb751d76b67ad7631153d02b144bc7bd1c2bf821/part2.gif" /> <img width="1502" height="3116" width_o="1502" height_o="3116" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cc725cbf71d6a63a6c4fd0c462abc6d154971c827cc8fce916e3a7855293513d/part4.gif" data-mid="146764327" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cc725cbf71d6a63a6c4fd0c462abc6d154971c827cc8fce916e3a7855293513d/part4.gif" /> <img width="1085" height="3502" width_o="1085" height_o="3502" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1e19a2911cf8850af230335ef0d4bc3f7414b278f3d68a536d2a8fb10ca02581/part11.gif" data-mid="146764777" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1e19a2911cf8850af230335ef0d4bc3f7414b278f3d68a536d2a8fb10ca02581/part11.gif" /> *** Brownfield a film by Duncan Whitley, with Charlie Tophill https://thegardenzine.co.uk/Charlie-Park-to-Park Thu, 30 Jun 2022 13:16:00 +0000 The Garden Zine https://thegardenzine.co.uk/Charlie-Park-to-Park Charlie Tophill Scene one: Park To Park <img width="3508" height="2480" width_o="3508" height_o="2480" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/686869176f138a04e048226a911c40c83c4a3d6e293932a0519fbb6fcc8b330d/lake-view-road-drawing.gif" data-mid="146754133" border="0" data-scale="96" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/686869176f138a04e048226a911c40c83c4a3d6e293932a0519fbb6fcc8b330d/lake-view-road-drawing.gif" /> <img width="2233" height="2820" width_o="2233" height_o="2820" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9c171a0fb68d654723cc1051454dfc6a40583c7d2cbe6991f5c7eed44dfce320/lake-view-park-drawing.gif" data-mid="146755935" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9c171a0fb68d654723cc1051454dfc6a40583c7d2cbe6991f5c7eed44dfce320/lake-view-park-drawing.gif" /> https://thegardenzine.co.uk/Charlie-Sherbourne Thu, 30 Jun 2022 13:18:10 +0000 The Garden Zine https://thegardenzine.co.uk/Charlie-Sherbourne Charlie Tophill Scene two: Sherbourne Notes from Mark’s Walk The centre of the daisyWhen all the other bluebells stayed below the PyreneesThe sound of breaking dogwoodFloating leavesAnd Mark talks about alelopathsAlien, enshrined in the language of the lawMidlands HawthornCrap at granular https://thegardenzine.co.uk/Charlie-Birds Thu, 30 Jun 2022 13:18:08 +0000 The Garden Zine https://thegardenzine.co.uk/Charlie-Birds Charlie Tophill Scene three: Birds Brownfield I hopeThe chink of falling change was caughtBeneath my stepsThe sign says NO SIMILAR ACTIVITIESBut I can still hear the accordionAnd creaking chairsAnd see bright colours set in greyFlags flapping in the windAnd hanging pink and green lays in trianglesThe boatman is colourfully adornedAnd ostentatiously beardedWhite lines dripping down from nesting holesAnd the man tapping on his coke can A whisper between the fountainsA symphony of sneezesJumper on, jumper offIt reminds me of beingA funny sort of birdWe like to singIn various states of yellow to fuzz Padding paws and shoesAnother city soundLong distance calls in the oceanA funny sort of bird songAnd human- footsteps, singing, speaking, crying, humming, shouting,laughingAll its noisy gloryA truck, the wind, voices, a street cleaner reversingCars and clanging metal The chaos finds youThe old-boy posse - white haired &amp; throwing shapesSynchronised signallingGrew up in the bomb sites of Southern England Lady G’s done her rounds but the door’s still openMechanisms exposedShe’s been doing this for yearsShe’s got sloppy - who’s closing the doors? The last one standing https://thegardenzine.co.uk/Charlie-Cathedral Thu, 30 Jun 2022 13:18:05 +0000 The Garden Zine https://thegardenzine.co.uk/Charlie-Cathedral Charlie Tophill Scene four: Cathedral <img width="2233" height="2820" width_o="2233" height_o="2820" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8a473fcad524bf0616c54aeeda15230c31f598fb09022d8c597727f12eed50a6/dandelion5.gif" data-mid="146866321" border="0" data-scale="25" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8a473fcad524bf0616c54aeeda15230c31f598fb09022d8c597727f12eed50a6/dandelion5.gif" />