poetry, graffiti and flânerie

(serendipity on the streets)

Years ago, walking up a hill in Bristol, I came across some lines from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock stencilled on a wall: ‘Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky…’ Most people will have walked past. Some will have read the words, a few may also have recognised the poem. I felt a flash of pure joy. Years before — living in that city — I studied (and loved) that poem, reading it over and over, curled on the sofa in my light-filled sitting room, rolling the words around in my head. Seeing those lines appear briefly and unexpectedly was thrilling, as if they had been put there as a message just for me.

A few weeks ago, walking the streets of La Rochelle in the quartier Saint-Nicolas, I came across some lines from Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal written in a flowing hand on a flaking wooden door.

Two moments, two cities, two poems, two unseen scribes. For me, there was a connection. As a student of literature, writing my undergraduate dissertation, I focused on another T.S. Eliot poem — The Waste Land — specifically the phrase ‘unreal city’, for which Eliot referenced a line of poetry that reads ‘fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves’ (Unreal city, city full of dreams).* A line from the same book — Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal.

Serendipity? Coincidence? A sign from the universe? I don’t know.

I do know that I needed to be reminded that poetry is everywhere, cities can be full of dreams, and there is unexpected magic to be found when you walk the streets without intent.

The French word for those who stroll in this way is flâneur, defined by Lauren Elkin in her excellent book Flâneuse (which claims the feminine form of the word, along with a woman’s right to walk the streets) as ‘an idler, a dawdling observer, usually found in cities’. (It was partly Baudelaire’s portrait of a flâneur — as an artist who seeks refuge in the crowd — which popularised the concept.)

The next day, on the way to buy croissants from the market, a faded poster taped to a door explicitly invited me to stroll.

I had forgotten the possibility of escape as inspiration, the power of the unseen, the sparkle of the new. Stepping away from my desk to explore an unknown city in a different country, walking with a curious heart and a clear mind — just a few days in the dream-filled city left me feeling renewed, refreshed and ready for the next stage of my writing.

My eyes will forever be wide open to poems written on walls, but perhaps in the meantime, like city poet Frank O’Hara, I shall take to carrying a poetry book in my pocket.

Thank you for reading,

Laura x

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*'‘“Unreal City” is borrowed from Baudelaire’s “The Seven Old Men”: “Unreal city, city full of dreams, / Where ghosts in broad daylight cling to passers-by.” Source: The Poetry Foundation