SARAH WESTCOTT
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
THE WALLED GARDEN
A walled garden is a closed ecosystem in which all operations are controlled by the ecosystem operator. A double wall of outer stone with brick interior creates microclimates where tender organisms can grow. In my country, there is a walled garden called Kwangmyong. Users are unable to escape unless the walls are taken down. Airborne creatures can fly in or out but there is no pollen, and seeds are rare. One morning I climbed the stone wall and looked in at the green, green garden. There were rows of vegetable leaves, butterflies lit with eyes, beds of bright flowers. The smell of sweet peas was bewildering. I decided to make this garden my own. I play on a red swing and every autumn ripe apples fall from the trees. Some day I will build a wall around my garden to protect it. Once you build a wall you cannot take it down because its shadow stays. My garden is unlike Kwangmyong. I have been known to gorge myself on radish and lettuce until I feel quite deliriously unwell. There is so much living in my garden; an unbelievable variety of snail, frog and bat. There are more creatures in the soil than above it. I would like you to come and visit. I am making a gold plaque for the bench; it reads: in memory of happy hours I dreamt of spending here—
A Walled Garden is “a closed ecosystem in which all the operations are controlled by the ecosystem operator.” (Pierre de Poulpiquet 2017)
Photo by Ignacio Correia 🟢 on Unsplash
BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT
Sarah Westcott is a poet, freelance writer and editor, tutor and mentor. She grew up in north Devon and is particularly interested in writing about and through the natural world. Her first poetry collection Slant Light was published by Pavilion Poetry, (Liverpool University Press) and Highly Commended in the 2017 Forward Prizes. Her debut pamphlet Inklings, published by Flipped Eye, was a winner of the Venture Poetry Award and the Poetry Book Society’s Pamphlet Choice for Winter 2013. In 2019, she was awarded an Authors’ Foundation award from the Society of Authors to help with the writing of her next book. Her second collection, Bloom, was published by Pavilion Poetry in 2021 and longlisted for The Laurel Prize for ecopoetry, 2022.
Sarah’s poems have appeared in magazines including Poetry Review, POEM, Magma and Butcher's Dog, on beermats, billboards and the side of buses, and in anthologies including Best British Poetry, The Forward Book of Poetry and Staying Human (Bloodaxe).
She was a poet-in-residence at the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve in London in 2015 and Manchester Cathedral poet of the year in 2016. She won first place in The London Magazine poetry prize in 2017 and the Poets and Players competition in 2018. Sarah grew up on the edge of Exmoor, lives on the London/Kent borders with her family and works as a freelance writer after twenty years as a news reporter. She has a science degree and an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London.