As part of Spread the Word’s Lewisham, Borough of Literature campaign, four local writers were commissioned to create new work under the theme, ‘To All The Places I have Read’. The commissions were for writers of poetry or short stories, are aged 18+, currently living in Lewisham and from underrepresented backgrounds.
The Borough of Literature Commissions were printed, alongside Emerging Writer and Deaf and Disabled Writer commissions, in the Deptford Literature Fesitval Anthology.
Reading A Room of One’s Own on park benches
by Erica Hesketh
I line up the pram, secure the brake, lift the cover to check you’re asleep, carefully drape a blanket over the top, check the bench is dry with the heel of my hand, and lower myself onto the seat. Nobody else around. Forty minutes, if I’m lucky, before you begin to mutter and stretch, like a rising loaf. I exhale, reach for my book. [
] Whenever I lose the thread of a sentence, I let my eyes wander across the grass and up to the treeline. This borough is green-veined, green-gathered, green-bursting. I love how the light dances among the willows in Sydenham Wells. The huge sky at Blythe Hill, all that space for dreaming. [
] In my memory, these minutes are always slow and balmy, though I know they can’t have been. [ ] One day I’m back in Ladywell Fields when a mother I’ve not seen since the early weeks walks by. Her mouth is an O of dismay. ‘You have time to read…’ I shake my head, embarrassed. But every mother should have a bench of her own, I think. [
] For a while you won’t stay asleep unless the pram is moving, so audiobooks soundtrack our slow circles round Mayow Park. There are lines of poetry from this time still scattered across the young apples. [
] Sometimes you wake after ten minutes instead of forty and we set off again. The stretch of Waterlink Way from Catford to the Bell Green Sainsbury’s, flanked by patient reeds, deserves its own ode. [
] At Horniman’s Triangle I fold down the page. A child clambers to the top of the rope spider-web and waves proudly to his mother, who is reading on another bench. I imagine every mother on every bench joined by a thread – all their books, their dreams, adding up to something brave, something shimmering.
you know the little tug – the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line
like a sailing-ship always voyaging never arriving, lit up at night and visible for miles
heart, body, and brain all mixed together
I found myself adopting a new attitude
It was as if the great machine after labouring all day had made with our help a few yards of something very exciting and beautiful
imaginative work that is, is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground
About Erica Hesketh
Erica Hesketh is a poet and editor, originally from Japan and Denmark, now based in Forest Hill, south-east London. Widely published in magazines and journals, she placed second in the 2022 Winchester Poetry Prize, and was commended in the 2023 Magma Poetry Competition and the 2023 Stanza Competition. She was longlisted for the 2024 National Poetry Competition. From 2016 to 2024 she was Director of the Poetry Translation Centre. Her debut collection, In the Lily Room, will be published by Nine Arches Press in May 2025.