Poems
Wincheap Orchards Walk and Writing Workshop
In August 2026, Michelle, Victoria and Helen organised a walk and a writing workshop, led by Michelle and Vicky respectively. These related to creative expression of our responses to plans to build on this precious and extensive habitat. The writing workshop began with an acrostic warm-up, using the letters of Wincheap Orchards as starting prompts. We talked about eco-grief and our feelings about losing the familiar land some of us walk daily, as have many before us. The discussion ranged from topics such as land use, loss of habitat, rage at feelings such as disempowerment and impotence, the need for our voices to be heard, capitalism, frustration, wider themes of changing land use, climate change and the implications of losing trees in particular, to grief and what to hope for. I shared some information from an interview with David Seager who knew and worked on the farmland some fifty years ago and his description of the way the land was then, including observations about the loss of diversity of fruit crops and number of roundels there used to be, for example. We read 'After Apple Picking', by Robert Frost and referred back to the walk the previous week, when our senses had come alive as we enjoyed succulent cherries, while Michelle read from H.E. Bates. This led on to describing the smell and feel of the fruit Vicky had put on our writing tables. The essence of the orchards was brought inside as we imagined adjectives and metaphors for apples, plums and ears of wheat from the fields. Following refreshments, we read and discussed 'U-Pick Orchards' by Danusha Laméris and Matthew Olzmann's 'Letter to Someone Living 50 years from now' and tried to imagine the lives of our children and of children and young people we know in 2076, fifty years from now. This inspired some of our own writing on this theme. The workshop finished with an incantation, as we put forward our pleas and prayers for the future of Wincheap Orchards, with one sentence each of us, beginning 'May ...' These combined to make a powerful group recitation, a statement of our will.
Vicky's poem "Explaining what happened to someone in 2076" which is illustrated by a photograph by Martin Crowther taken near the rugby club.
Wincheap Orchards by Victoria Field
This poem by E. Mortimer reminds us of Kent's wider fruit-growing heritage
In this poem by Michael Kauffman we are reminded of the knights who rode through Wincheap
