Agony
Because of all the sleep,
the rooms that show up reddest
on heatmaps for recording
the use of space in houses
tend to be the bedrooms.
Orange or orange-yellow,
the next most-used – the kitchens.
And so on, getting colder –
living rooms, green or turquoise –
till (should a home have one)
the dining room stands bluest – light
its sole real guest,
except for laughter from adjacent rooms
and, from upstairs, voices.
Richard Meier won the inaugural Picador Poetry Prize and has had two collections published by Picador. Search Party came out in 2019, while Misadventure (shortlisted for the Aldeburgh Prize and a PBS Recommendation) appeared in 2012. He lives in London and tweets from @meier_richard
Overgrown
I grew a plant from one tomato slice
found in the salad, never thought it’d grow.
It reached so tall, with leaves that craved the light.
Each day I watered it, drinking every drop;
it thanked me quietly. Most nights, we’d sit,
and watch the T.V, read letters, our shadows
flickering on walls. When the screws
came to take it away, they were sorry.
The officer I’d argued with complained
to the governor about my tomato plant.
They said it came from the top, brought in vermin,
had to take it, no choice, they said.
So the man grew too, found roots within. I began nurturing
anything I could; hair wild, uncut, mustard seeds, fennel from Indian spice,
chillies, petunias, roses blossomed into limbs, sunflowers stretched up to touch the sky.
Everything thrived. I stole earth from the yard, planting more seeds, until my cell
became a lush, green forest overgrown with life.
found in the salad, never thought it’d grow.
It reached so tall, with leaves that craved the light.
Each day I watered it, drinking every drop;
it thanked me quietly. Most nights, we’d sit,
and watch the T.V, read letters, our shadows
flickering on walls. When the screws
came to take it away, they were sorry.
The officer I’d argued with complained
to the governor about my tomato plant.
They said it came from the top, brought in vermin,
had to take it, no choice, they said.
So the man grew too, found roots within. I began nurturing
anything I could; hair wild, uncut, mustard seeds, fennel from Indian spice,
chillies, petunias, roses blossomed into limbs, sunflowers stretched up to touch the sky.
Everything thrived. I stole earth from the yard, planting more seeds, until my cell
became a lush, green forest overgrown with life.
Will Pendray
After the plagues
we learnt to re-verb our city, re-moving
the hard, cold nouns of enclave, cladding, capital.
Our language, like the shapes of our architecture
spoke of re-flocking, re-fellowing, re-wilding
re-spacing, re-purposing. Re-imagining –
a city of immunity, where our veins
and arteries flowed with green and blue and birdsong. The tongue
of the Thames licked our wounds, we sought out lifeblood
and welcomed re-fellowing the wild.
We learnt to get our hands dirty in the rich
soil of allotments, bearing fruits that spoke to the mouths
of a thousand heritages blooming in our city. Seeds sent
in plump packets of potential across continents, found roots.
Here – the locally grown bottle gourds, lotus, pomegranates
cassava, watermelons and callaloo – the emigre
waved the confetti of green and red over grey.
We learnt to welcome the weeds that grew through cracks
making poetry in our pavements, the lion’s roar of golden dandelion
soon dissolving to clocks, floating flocks of time
draping the people in minutes and hours of
noticing. The soft rhythms of
the pigeon’s coo flying through the decluttered soundscape
over the patchwork pools of blue, we –
desterilised our city. We never forgot –
the eyes of the murdered young man who dreamed of architecture
staring out from the murals that garland old brick. We never forgot
the two dimensions of the pandemic when our grandparents’ world shrank
to rectangular screens and how they dreamed of blue and green
and fullness. We never forgot the rotten tooth of Grenfell black and stark
against a backdrop of luxury glass. A mirror and light to London.
We learnt to ask
– how can we nest like this? How do we live inside our space better?After the plagues –
the hard, cold nouns of enclave, cladding, capital.
Our language, like the shapes of our architecture
spoke of re-flocking, re-fellowing, re-wilding
re-spacing, re-purposing. Re-imagining –
a city of immunity, where our veins
and arteries flowed with green and blue and birdsong. The tongue
of the Thames licked our wounds, we sought out lifeblood
and welcomed re-fellowing the wild.
We learnt to get our hands dirty in the rich
soil of allotments, bearing fruits that spoke to the mouths
of a thousand heritages blooming in our city. Seeds sent
in plump packets of potential across continents, found roots.
Here – the locally grown bottle gourds, lotus, pomegranates
cassava, watermelons and callaloo – the emigre
waved the confetti of green and red over grey.
We learnt to welcome the weeds that grew through cracks
making poetry in our pavements, the lion’s roar of golden dandelion
soon dissolving to clocks, floating flocks of time
draping the people in minutes and hours of
noticing. The soft rhythms of
the pigeon’s coo flying through the decluttered soundscape
over the patchwork pools of blue, we –
desterilised our city. We never forgot –
the eyes of the murdered young man who dreamed of architecture
staring out from the murals that garland old brick. We never forgot
the two dimensions of the pandemic when our grandparents’ world shrank
to rectangular screens and how they dreamed of blue and green
and fullness. We never forgot the rotten tooth of Grenfell black and stark
against a backdrop of luxury glass. A mirror and light to London.
We learnt to ask
– how can we nest like this? How do we live inside our space better?After the plagues –
we learnt to unfetter and re-stitch textures, scents, sights, sound
into the hems of our city. Art vaccinated architectural scabs
nature sprouted, things split down
to community level. We (de) and (re) – de-cladded and de-colonised
re-pluralised power and re-purposed the anatomy of space, re-enchanted
our city with deep knowledge of people and place. After the plagues –
we saturated our city in the velvet earth of resolution and learnt
the radical noun of revolution.
the radical noun of revolution.
Fiona Dignan started writing during lockdown to cope with the chaos of home-schooling her four children. Her work has been published in various anthologies and magazines including Mslexia, Pop Shot and WestWord. She has won the London Society Poetry Prize (2023), The Plaza Prize for Sudden Fiction (2023) and the Farnham Flash Fiction competition (2024). She has been listed for the Bath Short Story Prize and the London Independent Story Prize. Last year she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. My instagram is @fidignanpoems.