Conversations on a Bench - Ilford

Poet Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's poetry archive and selects Conversations on a Bench - Ilford as Anna Scott-Brown hears more stories from the people who stop to sit beside her on benches around the country.

In this edition, she sits on a bench in Ilford. Throughout the programme, a specially commissioned work by the poet Hussain Manawer draws on the voices of those passing by – and sometimes pausing on – the bench beside Valentines Mansion in Valentines Park.

It creates a portrait of a diverse London borough built on farmland, and the constant flow of people arriving and moving on. From the first white middle class residents to the Jews and people of the Windrush generation, arrivals from Asia and latterly Somali immigrants and refugees.

Rising crime is pushing some people out, and the bench is dedicated to Levi Miller who took his own life. But what we learn from Ilford is that, if the same energy that depresses you can be used for living life, life can be different.

Presented and produced by Anna Scott-Brown

Poem by Hussain Manawer

An Overtone production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in March 2020.