Richmond is rich in literary associations. Wordsworth, Dickens and Virginia Woolf are among the writers who lived there or used it as subject-matter.

But very few British readers would know two poems that it inspired from my mother, the Australian poet Rosemary Dobson, writes Ian Bolton.

My mother, who died in 2012 at the age of 92, was secure in her Australian identity, but at the same time felt a strong link to England and its literature.

The link was in her genes, because she was the granddaughter of the English poet and essayist Austin Dobson; and it was further strengthened by two periods when she lived in England.

The first, of a couple of years, was in the late 1940s, when she was in her late twenties.

Then in 1966 she came to England once again, this time with a husband and three young children: my sister Lissant, my brother Robert and myself.

My father, Alec Bolton, was a publisher and editor, and it was his work that took us to England; he had been appointed to run the London branch of an Australian publishing firm, Angus and Robertson.

Searching for accommodation, my father formed the idea that Richmond would be a good place, and found a flat for us to rent at 34 Sheen Road, an old house that also goes by the name Holly Lodge.

Our flat, which was on the first floor, was our home for the first two of our five years in Richmond.

Holly Lodge is the subject of my mother's poem 'The House in Summer', which is reproduced here.

Our time in England was extraordinarily rich. Not that we were rich ourselves: my father was supporting us on a relatively modest salary.

Rather it was rich in terms of the experiences we had and the friends we made, many of whom were our neighbours in Richmond. 'The House in Summer' evokes something of that richness.

The 'Katherine' referred to in the poem was the daughter of our neighbours who lived in the basement flat; the 'Ian' is myself. Both children are now of course well and truly middle aged.

Having outgrown our flat in Holly Lodge, we moved to another not far from Richmond Park. The park inspired my mother's second Richmond poem, also reproduced here.

My mother wrote relatively few poems while we were in England; it was, she later said, a time when she was taking in more than she was giving out.

She became more emphatically creative after our return to Australia in 1971. The same was true of my father, who after our return to Australia established a private printing press, The Brindabella Press, which he operated from our home in Canberra.

He printed books by hand which have become highly sought after, examples of the highest pitch of the art of the printed book. My father died in 1996.

My mother was an amateur artist as well as a poet, and made a pen and ink drawing of Holly Lodge and the neighbouring houses, also included here.

My mother practised the craft of poetry for seventy years. Some of her poems were inspired by Australia, others by Greece and its myths and legends, still others by art and artists—all subjects that reflected her different interests, different facets of her infinitely subtle mind.

Many poems, but none shows her sensibility better than the two Richmond ones, about a walk in Richmond Park and a house in Sheen Road; ordinary subjects transformed by my mother's poetic alchemy into something rich and strange.

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The House in Summer

This tall old house is worn
Thin as a silver spoon.
At night the floorboards speak
Of footfalls long ago
As though from glass is heard
Faintly, a dying ring
Still sounding out through time.
And children fast asleep
Upstairs and down, exhale
Their breath of life, their joy
In sunlight, leaves and rain,
And deeply draw again
From darkness, faint and far
Lilac, wisteria.

Ian, Ian.
I can hear you, Katherine.
Come down to the garden
Tomorrow in the morning
When we wake up.
Are you sleeping up there?
Yes, Katherine, sleeping.

In the house cell on cell
Stored with life's honey,
Yellow pollen, sunlight
Pushing through the windows
And people calling
Up and down the staircase
For lemons, or children.

Interchangeable children,
Visiting, exploring;
And all along the railings
Profusion of clematis!
Come in—expectant
Of anything splendid
Of living and being!

A Walk in Richmond Park

The world ran backwards, colour ebbed,
The falling leaves crashed down and died.
Mist rolled from Europe to engulf
The dun and dripping trees, my steps
Skirred on dead summer underneath.
Keeping the world beneath my feet
And all that glorious summer crushed
To husks, I paced the royal park.
Crystals and stars hung from the trees
And nuns and deer sprang from my way.

How strangely companied I was!
In all that Monday space and time
But nuns and deer! And which were which
Could hardly be determined—both
In twos and threes kept watch and ware.
With neat and nimble feet they leapt
Nervously from my blundering way
And though I held in metaphor
The bread of friendship in my hand
They kept their sidelong glance from me.

Wimpled and antlered, soft of eye,
Timorous, disciplined and neat
Through mazy mist and thorny bough
Evasive still, on flying feet
They bounded, quivering, out of sight.

I did not care to sojourn there
Alone, unwanted, lumbering,
In shaggy coat and heavy boots.
Rejected, raging, I came down
To find my fellows in the town.