Local Plan is a poem written in response to a local government consultation document, earmarking potential sites for housing development. It concerns the brown-field site of a former airfield at Wisley, Surrey. It has been published in Best of British, 2017 (Paper Swans Press) and as ‘settlement’ in The Keystone anthology 2015 (Dempsey and Windle).
Listen to Local Plan:
Local Plan
There is talk of building a settlement
out on the old airstrip, that brown-field
not much used since the war.
As if we hadn’t yet accumulated
garden suburb, new town, city sprawl,
nor let the high-rise fracture these horizons –
but had time, still, to dwell, to abide,
seek out the hamlet that lingers
after the clearances for motorways,
third runways, and out-of-town.
We are making space for those yet to come,
who if they came, would not recognise this place –
only a certain restlessness in the drone
from the by-pass, and an agitating presence
of geese on Boulder Mere.
© Karen Izod, 2018