Fragments and thoughts : sited poetry readings. Photography courtesy Jennifer Deakin.

 To the Garden: A Walk and Talk Through Time and the Seasons with TS Eliot -

To be conscious is not to be in time

But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,

The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,

The moment in the draughty church at smokefall

Be remembered; involved with past and future.

Only through time time is conquered.

  - T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

Reading from Sonia Overall"s "The Art of Walking"

in the rain / departure

leaving, door wedged open

water pooling, you step into the rain

filaments of longing curling

like burnt hairs

you turn up your collar                        

  (Sonia Overall,  The Art of Walking , 2015)

Trish Scott, Research Curator, Reading from "Burnt Norton"

"Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,          Round the corner. Through the first gate,

Into our first world, shall we follow

The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.

There they were, dignified, invisible,

Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,

In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,

And the bird called, in response to

The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,

And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses

Had the look of flowers that are looked at

There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting." (Burnt Norton, TS Eliot)

Patrick Seery, Walking with the Waste Land Group contributor,
Reading from "Burnt Norton"

"Garlic and sapphires in the mud                    

Clot the bedded axle-tree.

The trilling wire in the blood

Sings below inveterate scars

Appeasing long forgotten wars.

The dance along the artery

The circulation of the lymph

Are figured in the drift of stars

Ascend to summer in the tree

We move above the moving tree

In light upon the figured leaf

And hear upon the sodden floor

Below, the boarhound and the boar

Pursue their pattern as before

But reconciled among the stars.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance." ("Burnt Norton" TS Eliot)

Diana Lane, Walking with the Waste Land group contributor,
Reading from "Burnt Norton"

"To be conscious is not to be in time                  

But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,

The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,

The moment in the draughty church at smokefall

Be remembered; involved with past and future.

Only through time time is conquered.

III

Here is a place of disaffection

Time before and time after

In a dim light: neither daylight

Investing form with lucid stillness

Turning shadow into transient beauty

Wtih slow rotation suggesting permanence

Nor darkness to purify the soul

Emptying the sensual with deprivation

Cleansing affection from the temporal.                       

Neither plentitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker

Over the strained time-ridden faces

Distracted from distraction by distraction

Filled with fancies and empty of meaning

Tumid apathy with no concentration

Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind

That blows before and after time,

Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs

('Burnt Norton" TS Eliot)Time before and time after."

Final reading from Burnt Norton

        " The detail of the pattern is movement,            

As in the figure of the ten stairs.

Desire itself is movement

Not in itself desirable;

Love is itself unmoving,

Only the cause and end of movement,

Timeless, and undesiring

Except in the aspect of time

Caught in the form of limitation

Between un-being and being.

Sudden in a shaft of sunlight

Even while the dust moves

There rises the hidden laughter

Of children in the foliage

Quick now, here, now, always-

Ridiculous the waste sad time

Stretching before and after."
("Burnt Norton" TS Eliot)

Rotating our Walking books at the Walpole Bay Shelter

"All The Leaves Are Brown/Cliftonville Dreamin'," Julia Riddiough

"Margate at 9 Years Old", Keith Grossmith