St Paul’s Cathedral gleams, Southwark Bridge looms, and a middle-aged man – grey suit, substantial build – unsteadily dribbles a small purple balloon with silver ribbons down the empty, moonlit, riverside walkway.
Feb 062014
Jan 212014
Bin
by Christina Petrie
My broken devices
Stand in municipal juices.
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Jan 152014
Threnody on the Suicide of a Parking Meter in Dagenham Brook, E10
by Matt Haynes
O dark devourer of the driver’s coin,
What broken dreams was this leap meant to fix?
What hope-denuded skyline did enjoin
You to cast off on this East London Styx?
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Nov 252013
by Matt Haynes
In the grass are, unmistakably, the ghosts of abandoned roads: cracked tarmac and kerbstones, carless and homeless, fading to brown and green. And here’s the thing: if you look in an old A-Z – one from the sixties, say – Burgess Park isn’t there. But those spectral streets are; and they have names, and purpose, and they’re drawn in hard black ink. There’s also a line of turquoise, running dead straight between them. [read more…]
Oct 242013
Bidet Is For Customers’ Use Only
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Oct 142013
THE ERITH PILE OF FISH
WHAT IS IT?
WHAT’S IT FOR?
WHO PUT IT THERE?
IT LOOKS LIKE A BIG PILE OF FISH…
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Sep 022013
Remembering Sea Alley by Mark Sadler
I grew up in a dockers’ terrace on Sea Alley, in East London. Our house was one from the end of the row, near to where the street split into three tributaries, like an old piece of frayed rope. A stone staircase ran along the front of the houses. When the water was at its highest point, it would come up over the third step, leaving the fourth step clear for you to walk on. [read more…]
Jul 312013
by Matt Haynes
Out here, the river’s still allowed to undo its buttons twice a day and slob out across the mud with primordial glee. For one of the Thames’s more discombobulating quirks is that it’s wider upstream than down, where it’s been artificially banked and trammelled – no one paddles on the beach outside Lambeth Palace any more, not since Mr Bazalgette’s embankments went up in the 1860s and the Archbishop lost his deckchair concession. [read more…]
Jul 012013
Urban Intervention No. 51
On sunny lunchtimes, dress up as a giant duck and then sit by the lake in St James’s Park throwing torn off chunks of Ginsters pasties at tourists.
Jun 102013
The sending of the first Smoke book to the printer is celebrated with a trip to Erith.
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