‘Herbarium’ is a web-based anthology of poems written by over 50 poets celebrating and exploring the contemporary resonances of medicinal plants and herbs. Join us for a live reading of poems from the anthology, edited by James Wilkes, and the launch of a zine which will give the anthology a printed afterlife.
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In Partnership with:
Schools and Family Programme:
With Generous Support by:
Urban Physic Garden // Jun 10, 2011 at 2:24 pm
[...] the moon! there the moon he is there when he is gathered when it be gathered let it be Leo let in Leo the sun in of the sun an herb of it is an herb it is wind and wind cold and of cold coming of torments coming and torments pains and all pains easeth all time easeth time flesh with flesh bones with the naked bones by covering the naked quickly by covering to heal quickly to heal Wayne Clements (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jun 10, 2011 at 2:47 pm
[...] burning flower in the world a repeat offender a seed attaching itself to a tubular meat flambing jambon a soft nutty hydrocortic sear a burn some fat sunseeds some kids of a fat son scooping hanks with a tablespoon & coughing some colouring a tot teet pipette a grip closed-claw twist a Norfolk barricade a promontory barrister quickening to revive the spirits strengthening the memory expelling heaviness beside ourselves with approval antiscorbutic above par nationalistic a flower though prepared retaining vitality when buried alive in the ground in essence hard to get rid of S.J. Fowler (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jun 10, 2011 at 3:08 pm
[...] be kind! this is the first rule of the reformed to be kind one must learn to accept punishment for punishment is not a disease it is an easel landing for joy a loyal companion parading with trumpets a triumph soft phalanx of frogs a green tide turning bomb threat bivouac Us, caught on our knees in Maria’s upstairs bedroom our nose full of underwear imagining the below-short / above knee thigh & prison Us, a Caucasian puppy born to sniff & untaken in large doses acting as a gentle purgative. a vermifuge bruised and boiled in lard to sprout, grow & blossom a free plant! candied & ready our love is an ointment which is good for wounds. S.J. Fowler (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jun 10, 2011 at 3:11 pm
[...] what in its corona is denied in its glory wrest across hostile fixture inefficient counting to Fibonacci and associated proportion when is the passion spent and fire malign that raw and pagan romping is holy enough to the everlasting David Caddy (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jun 10, 2011 at 3:14 pm
[...] Lying on the rocks and rain held crinkly tempest tempestuous I am well oiled. Slated, bereft, spindle thin mint me in bitter slats of indifference and get lost. Don’t need toxic sympathy, your legal definition. Go on rub your hands infuse or snuff and let me penetrate every nymph and cranny. Let me give you something I is not enough. Feed your ulcer I am the Leveller fresh to e pick me up Gatherer in high heel aroma a a a a. Light headed tonight. Out of clump and custom fabrication. Heal, or Devil take the hind. Re-curved lower lip ring of humulene Bladdered. Sore and st. Come close and torture cusses from my veins. Mary mild call home your child. Come close. See my brown anthers remember the mute and forgotten. I do not need withy. You lot rot centre out. David Caddy (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jun 23, 2011 at 5:38 pm
[...] Your body, that clay two-handled jug, is dislocated; either it shivers with the ghost of the potter’s wheel, or it voids all food and leaves you a grey-blue tenant in a saddle of bedsores. At night, you become a hive: the shudders, the pistons in your femurs, thrust your legs like foils at me and your nurse, and the cousin I know would kill me and marry you, if he could stop your seizures. Brushing back that sweated weed on your pillow that in a former life I knew as hair like molten butter, I pull from my waistcoat a vial; the juice of a purple lion of a flower, an anemone, spined and silken like you. Too much cure and your dance of death, will wake the mountains. They will groan and stand straight and goats will tumble, screaming, from their backs. Too little and nothing will happen. You will slowly rot here in this pokey room. The years will find me playing backgammon with my rival, crushing glans-mauve petals between my fingers. Kirsten Irving (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jun 28, 2011 at 9:29 pm
[...] yellow lamb lemony swoop green so quick you could miss it if you blink & there’s down too, like the softness of a life there’s the name, Arnica, loll of each canyon billowing chipmunks rattlesnakes hiss bliss this Arnica the only witness to the chipmunk’s death, its striped face a strange mask – hell, you may see it there, storing life in its cheeks; twigs, soft grass. Liz Adams (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 9:35 am
[...] Day breaks into a forced smile – finds me on damp knees in the half- light, rooting for the stem-joint, a pinch, a snap: a leaf. Three more, then I steal back in, quick as a breeze through the door, huddle them under my school coat, cupped like new-lain eggs. I move aside his emptied cans, tip his ashtray into the bin; green boils dark in a silver pan – the smell of spring foams up. Gather, crush and poultice, you taught me how to do this. Now you need my comfort: blackwort, bruisewort, boneknit. Clair Wilcox (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 9:41 am
[...] Click on image to view full size. Antony John (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 9:43 am
[...] I do not beat my breast but it would be easier to turn pelican, peck through feathers & skin & feed you on my own heart’s blood; I do not cry over spilled milk but it would be quicker to be a trick involving a still pond & many fish floating up – sedated – to the surface; I do not eat my heart out but how much kinder to let our white curves pixelate & merge this long night & nourish you by some sort of osmosis than do this a minute more. Clair Wilcox (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 9:44 am
[...] The Coca Cola river runs dry. As sweetness turns muddy, the bubbles escape. The factory now bottles chlorophyll only, And I am the horse that draws the cart. They haven’t yet discovered the planet I hide under my leaves. Buddhist animals, slime and leprous wisdom Have learned to live in peace. Assembly lines, insomniacs and cow sheds Expect eagerly Green cascades to fall in mildness To help the ceiling soften. They say I grow, But mostly, I absorb. Livia Dragomir (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 9:49 am
[...] It is a heavy herb, laden with the names of Wilde, Cowper, Cowley, Yeats who has a hyssop-heavy sponge by his Kidron stream Wilde says we have no need of a hyssop-laden rod I have need of it Tessa Whitehouse (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 9:51 am
[...] In a dream I saw a donkey riding a lady. Big donkey dick, furry donkey balls like “Get you gone, you dwarf, you minimus!” Oh womanhood denies my tongue to tell more details but I heard, “Please tumble me, o beastly creature!” Should I strike her, kill her dead? My brother will cut off her hands. Who will not change a raven for a dove? Not me, and not down Hamsptead tube and not In a French sink full of savon. My other brother will cut out her tongue, wash it in the French sink, prepare to feed it to the swarthy old Titan down Hampstead tube. The donkey is gone. The queen is dead. All my brothers think they’re in love. Drink a silly drink and that’s what happens: Everything smells of a knicker drawer. Ben Borek (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 10:05 am
[...] husband’s dial or golde or female imperative exacting in close 3:00 PM. for endurance w/ heightened erotic / stimulant local, or worn between breast to keep sweet or clearing head to cheer lust divined or crush & burn to stomach & lips f’ true-heart St. Luke’s day Nat Raha (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 10:20 am
[...] Click on image below to view. Tessa Whitehouse (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 10:35 am
[...] … Yn Bollan Bane [The white herb/mugwort] I in lucid dreaming [inclined to palsy] my body and I [are not] well acquainted . in paralysis normal / in motion always rather, the guard assembles to mutual surrender blood on lips temporary fit quick to acquiescence ‘hussa!’ ‘husse!’ ‘hus!’ [place under pillow or sprig in pocket] Mendoza (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 10:36 am
[...] In Paris the buildings moan under the weight of water, and in Paris the generals wear genteel overcoats, in Paris, Pennyroyal pours her tea. Alex Davies (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 10:38 am
[...] Salvage knowledge once and again of burnt-breath movement – cast no backward glance. At the death of burden the pulse stops feeding and succumbs to communal rhythm. Sated smoke will clear leaving blood divine and antiseptic. Jon K. Shaw (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 10:42 am
[...] to be freed Jon K. Shaw (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) Quotations from Walter Martin’s translation of Baudelaire’s ‘The [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 10:43 am
[...] O lad’s love I can’t imagine you, but as brief, fresh and lemony, little green curls to run a hand through scenting a closed garden this summer dusk by the artifice of Artemis: to burn the corpse of Actaeon upon a pyre of southernwood crackling & fragrant. Breathe it in! Brief, brief! poignant the swifts’ cry above this tender green Peter Philpott (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 10:45 am
[...] Currents raging. Violet: sweet as a ghost. Steve Willey (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 10:47 am
[...] To listen click here (mp3). Lyrics and music by Luke Rosier (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 10:49 am
[...] I hear boys’ phrases with what tenderness in excess aren’t we all wiled into this green perfect, intense, so suddenly gritty little tendrils shyly play across flicker into this tiny world pretty red buttons peak intensities fragranced huskily crisp as stamped gold Peter Philpott (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 10:56 am
[...] Simon Barraclough (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 11:01 am
[...] To listen click here. Hannah Silva (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 11:25 am
[...] tender keep nurse toxins & stiffness; sea-ha to moor-brook’s / virtue’s june sept. root to black wool wrapt to thigh w/ flax, protects the ail / wholesome f’ breast & body ; mauve calm sharp humours fret Nat Raha (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]
Urban Physic Garden // Jul 1, 2011 at 11:35 am
[...] Remember me, true love of mine Mendoza (From Herbarium, a new poetry anthology. Launch and reading 22 July) [...]