The IsamBards do pop-up poetry at the Botanic Gardens

Amidst uncertainty around the wisdom of older poets meeting indoors to share their work, the IsamBards decided to make hay while the sun shines (or not) and do some pop-up poetry in the Botanic Gardens, where we've held poetry walks previously. 

It was just an ordinary Sunday at the Garden, events such as the Bee and Pollination Festival having proved too risky to organise during the pandemic, so we weren't expecting to be overly busy. David Johnson and Pameli Benham set up stall individually; Dominic Fisher and I decided to read together, interleaving recent nature poems in a conversation of echoes and shadows. All of us soon found we were reading more or less continuously, Dominic and I managing to get through six sets of poetry back-to-back in the space of an hour and a half.

Here we are, having a bit of a breather.

Photo by Alex Johnson

There wasn't even time to take as many photos as I would usually.  Here's David and his wife Alex, standing to one side of the beautiful pool ...

... and a couple of dragonflies having sex ...  

... and that's about it, really, except to say it felt good to do a bit more toe-dabbling in the waters of poetry performance, after such a long time without the possibility of sharing our work. Small steps into a different future.