Getting familiar with Dartnell Park

Hi everyone, it’s your local Poet Laureate again to tell you a little bit about what I’ve been getting up to.

 You know, one of the best things about being Croydon Poet Laureate is going all around the borough, visiting places I wouldn’t usually go and having the opportunity to get to know them a little better. As you probably know by now, I’m from Thornton Heath, and I don’t spend a whole lot of time outside of anywhere that doesn’t stretch to Purley, Selhurst, Norbury, South Norwood or the Town Centre.

 However, through a number of different projects and workshops, I have stepped into areas of Croydon that were once only familiar to me by name (I’m still not fully familiar with them, but I have a better idea of their personality or what was going on than I did at the beginning of this year). One of those once unfamiliar areas was Addiscombe, because of a transformed park that became the focus of my second residency.

 What is now called Dartnell Park (found on Dartnell Road, CR0) was a neglected green space for many years, becoming known as ‘Dog Poo Park’ (I think the name speaks for itself). But through the galvanisation of a local resident and the joint forces of a community, the park has been restored, refreshed and renewed. It is now a beautiful and safe space for children to run around neighbours to chat, and dogs to meet.

 I was invited by the superstar who is Andrea Perry (galvanising local resident) to facilitate workshops with different age groups in the area. The first workshop was with an enthusiastic group of Year 4s at John Wood Primary School, a great school I had visited last month on National Poetry Day, so it was really them that brought me to Addiscombe first. They were extremely excited to hear about the park and all the new things that would be there, which poured through their poems in abundance. Some of the references to leaves were especially funny, perfectly exemplifying the innocence and joy of children.

Hopefully you will get to see their poems at some point in the future, because they are brilliant and looked beautiful hanging up in the park for the opening party. The following two workshops are to come, which will hopefully be with young adults, followed by a workshop with what I guess we’d call slightly older adults.

 Andrea also asked me to a write a poem about the transformation of Dartnell Park, which I shared at its official reopening on Sunday 21st November. This was a very special poem I was determined to get right, as this park has a big place in the heart of its community and means so much to the volunteers who have worked tirelessly to transform it. In fact, the volunteers were a major help in writing the poem, as their shared thoughts and experiences fed directly into the words I used to construct it. From the feedback I’ve received, I think I did them proud and that is what truly matters.