Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

I thought the only Art Installations left
lived in short-life housing co-op communal
spaces till I looked out of a No 19 bus
onto the hidden ecology of bus shelter roofs,
a Lost World translated to Highbury;
a plateau of thick green mould speckled with
plants, tennis shoes, dolls, balls, bottles.
Nobody ever sees these objects being deposited,
no shoes are ever hurled onto the shelter
in a drunken rage or after a lovers tiff
no balls ever bounce away from the tennis court,
no dolls are ever discarded from the bus window,
bottles shuffled away from aggressive drunks
by conductors cursing the memory of On The Buses.
All over London, carefully selected shelters
are now Art Installations, some prize-winning,
provided at marginal cost & hidden subsidy
by teams of Community Arts Officers (CAO’s)
who have no office, phone or badge, to prevent
residents accosting them wanting a mural painted
on their gable-end, help revising their novel,
their cat rescued or their drains unblocked.
Installations are carefully incomplete & provisional,
the teams have been fully trained to be sensitive
to the needs of the Community they work with.
If a local Minority has a tradition where their art
or cultural production must be left unfinished,
or a shelter fronts an estate full of skinheads,
the Community Arts Officers have discretion
to leave it off the schedule till a Councillor
suggests political priorities have changed.
This would not be enough to stop a cascade
of objects onto the streets and into the gutter,
but for the help of professional photographers,
seeking props for another ‘doll in the wreck’ shot.
No shortage of these while the Pension Funds
invested in by the various Peoples Socialist Republics
who employ the CAO’s, sponsor Gunzanamo
Corporation’s latest war in the home country
of the local ethnic communities, anywhere from
Ireland to Eritrea, it doesn’t matter where;
Fund Managers are not sentimentalists, nor are
the photographers. Like CAO’s, the snappers
are masters of disguise until there’s a credit on offer.
How many photographers have you seen crouched
on a bus shelter, sorting through the artifacts?
This is not a Third World country yet, at least
not where the voters & tax payers live, but
in the pub I overheard a man who knows a man
who swears blind he saw someone acting suspiciously
on top of a bus shelter in Neasden. Mind you,
just being in Neasden is a suspicious act.
This is why our Council Tax is so high;
CAO’s need 6 years training at Art Schools
in London, Paris, New York, before they can be
sent out into the community to take up this work.
Some people blame bus conductors, drug dealers,
or secret agents for depositing and removing
these objects, but if you consider carefully
there are compelling reasons why each of these
options is not realistic. This is a unique partnership
between municipal paternalism & private enterprise.
Both sides will strenuously resist the introduction
of plastic shelters unsuitable for Art Working.