Neighbourhood
I wanted to say things that could only be said
by walking, think thoughts that movement
alone allows, see what was not in my
own image, participate in the less
mediocre game, transgress the confines
of personal space, make a fact of one
unique combination of perfume, beer
and cigarette smoke from the open door
of a long-ago pub, one long-ago
summer night.
…………………………It took years for me to see
what I created: to understand that
there’s no neighbourhood until you’ve walked it
into being, beaten its bounds, outlined
the eruv with the mechitza of your
footsteps, sung its mythology on a
songline, spelled it out like Quinn in ‘City
of Glass’, spoken it in the comic strip
speech-bubble that contains all of the words
and thoughts of thousands of your neighbours, until
map and territory are one and the same.
Mike Farren is a widely-published writer and editor whose pamphlets are: Pierrot and his Mother (Templar, 2017), All of the Moons (Yaffle, 2019) and Smithereens (4Word, 2021). He won the Saltaire Festival and Ilkley Literature Festival poetry prizes in 2020 and was ‘canto’ winner for Poem of the North (2018).
Black Nore Review 