Mimic Pond

Author: Carol Watts

Publisher: Shearsman Books (2024)

Mounts Pond is a small urban pond on Blackheath, in south-east London, named for its dark earth. It is one of four ponds on the heath and the only one which comes and goes with seasonal weather. Records suggest it has been there for centuries. The pond is named after the small mound which rises like a tumulus beside it, the only rising on this levelled ground. It is a place famous for rebellions, political speeches, assemblies and sermons, with Wat Tyler and Michael An Gof of the Cornish rebellion both part of its history.

The pond swells and wanes with the season, is a barometer of the climate, and also a neighbourhood shared with the rhythms of crows and starlings, humans and plants. The pond is fragile and sometimes vandalised, occasionally rubbish strewn, a quilting point on the heath that speaks to depletion and survival, yet open to endlessly attuning, shifting, sometimes spectacular light, and mimic proposals.

Mimic Pond is part of a practice of ongoing documenting, which is my living here in this neighbourhood. ‘Born otherwise’ in Ponge’s words, the pond wells up and vanishes in these poems, and elsewhere in notebooks, photographs and a wider making.