Sound Piece: Lot by Remi Graves
“we must brush up against the past’s humble face/ if we want to say we are alive”
Lot is a sound piece exploring the history and origins of The Phoenix Garden, situated just behind 125 Shaftesbury Avenue. Originally a disused parking lot, and before that a WW2 bomb site, Phoenix Garden is the last of seven original community gardens that existed in 1970s and 1980s. Local volunteers and members of the Covent Garden Community Association built Phoenix Gardens in 1984, in the face of Government plans to redevelop the entire Covent Garden Area.
Poet and musician, Remi Graves spent time exploring The Phoenix Garden Archive, held at the Camden Local Studies Archives Centre at Holborn Library. Newsletters, flyers asking for gardening volunteers, and long lists of plants growing in the garden make up the archive. These materials were the inspiration for Lot, a piece which aims to shed light on the different pasts and presents that live alongside each other at The Phoenix Garden. Now, a quiet space away from the busyness of Shaftesbury Avenue, the garden is a testament to the sticking power of grassroots initiatives and members of the community coming together to save the areas that matter to them. In Lot a sparse piano motif plays over audio recordings of the garden at different times of day. The piece also imagines the lives of the other community gardens in Covent Garden that sadly didn’t survive the sharp edge of gentrification – in particular the Japanese Garden and the Chess Garden. Remi’s voice can also be heard over the track, reading their poem, Lot.
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This video is a fantastic insight into the community effort that led to Phoenix Garden being the space it is today. The challenges organisers faced in the 1980s chime with today’s challenges, particularly given the closure of the Odeon Shaftesbury Avenue last year, due to the building being purchased by YOO Captial for £31 million pounds.
LOT
out in the garden – last surviving of its kind
pigeons bathe, workers lunch, the sun feeds the gingko
in the cracks of splitting bark and seams of upturned soil
the ghosts of those other gardens breathe;
vacant lots turned to life through loving hands.
Look -there the japanese gardens’ bridge floats head height
between friends whose laughter dapples the air like light
and here- the worn chess table hovers above the pond
Can you hear the rook making its move?
we must brush up against the past’s humble face
if we want to say we are alive
come, caress this echium’s soft scales and tell me you can’t hear
the pulse of every other living thing and all the things that have ever lived?
feverfews, mullein, parsley,mint, rue, southernwood, thyme, sage, lady’s mantle,
lungwort, violets, tansy, foxgloves, yarrow, bronze fennel, lovage, rosemary,
hyssop, chives, woodruff, lavender…
and flowering in the garden now are
wing flap
leaf fall
door slam
city creak
everything happens here
even the past
Remi Graves was one of the Nunnery Gallery’s writers-in-residence, delving into the history of the area around 125 Shaftesbury Avenue. Lot appears on the Bow Arts website as part of the Soho Connections: Artist Takeover at Shaftesbury Avenue, taking place from 7-9th March 2025.
More about Remi Graves
Remi Graves is a London based poet and drummer interested in the interrelation of sound and text. A former Barbican Young Poet, their work has been commissioned by St Paul’s Cathedral, Barbican and BBC Radio 4. Sound commissions include ‘coal’ for Rosa Kwir’s ‘Tender and Masculine’ exhibition (Malta 2022) and ‘the sound of hope’ for The Story Museum (Oxford, 2021). Remi’s debut pamphlet with your chest was published in 2022 by fourteen poems. As a drummer Remi has toured UK, US and Europe playing for various artists and performed improvisational sets at Somerset House, Southbank Centre’s Africa Utopia and more.
More about The Phoenix Garden
The Phoenix Garden is the last of the Covent Garden Community Gardens. Located just off St Giles Passage and Stacey Street, north of Shaftesbury Avenue and east of Charing Cross Road. Visit their website.