looking ahead to September… and feeling more positive

On By HilaireIn London, walking, workshops

After the low of no one turning up for my first flying-solo Nine Elms walk earlier this month, I had the pleasure of leading a lovely group around the route on Sunday. I really enjoy sharing information about the area’s rich history, and I’ll often also pick up an interesting new nugget or two from people in the group. On this occasion I learnt that the large tidal millpond that used to run under Nine Elms Lane was known as Hangman’s Noose due to its shape. There’s another chance to explore this rapidly changing area & its varied green spaces with me on Sunday 3rd September at 2p.m. starting at Nine Elms tube station. You can find out more and book here.

Hilaire stands in front of the U.S.Embassy & its moat. Tall buildings are visible in the middle distance on the left hand side. Hilaire is speaking & gesturing with her left hand.
In front of the U.S. Embassy
Hilaire and three others are seen from behind, standing in front of a site entrance gate with safety signs on it. On the right hand side tops of a few trees are visible as well as tall apartment blocks. The sky is cloudy, and a plane passes high overhead. A tall crane is visible in the middle distance.
Site entrance off Ponton Road, which will eventually form part of Nine Elms Park

Also coming up next month, I’m facilitating three poetry workshops for 18-25 year olds with Fatima Kashtwari at the beautiful and inspiring National Trust property 575 Wandsworth Road. This small terraced house, built in 1819, was the home of Kenyan-born poet, novelist and civil servant Khadambi Asalache, who bought the house in 1981. He gradually transformed the interior, decorating almost every surface with hand carved fretwork, and furnishing the house with an eclectic selection of objects, artworks and textiles. The house was left the National Trust after his death in 2006.

The workshop series, In a Strange Place, is part of the Heritage Open Days festival. Each workshop has a different theme and will start with a tour of the house, followed by tailored exercises and plenty of time to write. I’m excited to work with Fatima, a BA Liberal Arts Student at Kings College London, who volunteered at 575 Wandsworth Road over the summer, and developed the initial plans for the workshops. Fatima introduced me to Joe Brainard’s I Remember, an idiosyncratic memoir of childhood and early adulthood, bristling with all kinds of seemingly mundane details and quirky observations that together create a vivid picture of the specific time and place of Brainard’s childhood and coming of age. We’ll be using an extract from this work in one of the workshops. I can’t wait to hear and read the poems that emerge from these workshops, responding to a very special place. More details and booking information here.

Two women standing in a room, one with her back to the camera and the other looking slightly downwards to the right. Behind them there is carved fretwork on a wooden wardrobe, stencilled flower and leaf patterns on a cream wall, and more carved fretwork above a fireplace. A lustreware jug stands on a small plinth attached to the side of the wardrobe.
Inside 575 Wandsworth Road. Image ©NTImages

4 thoughts on “looking ahead to September… and feeling more positive”

  2. Stick with it and the crowds will surely come! To plug any forthcoming Walk, try dropping a post (with a couple of photos) on all the local nostalgia-based FB groups, ‘Battersea Pictures’, ‘I Grew Up in SW London’ etc – sometimes you need to become a member of a particular group but once you’re in, just duplicate the same message and it doesn’t take too long – there are about a dozen I post onto and once I’ve written the original message it takes about 5 minutes! Some of these sites have a very good reach.

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