Lisa writes: The Scavenger project relies on the acrostic form to record my regular walks around the Darlands Nature Reserve near where I live in north London. The garden centre I pass on the two-hour circuit occasionally fills a crate with unwanted plants to ‘take for free’ – what I find, I plant. Sometimes there…

Below are two poems from Lisa Kelly’s debut collecton A Map Towards Fluency, recently published by Carcanet. Colchester Native Oysters shucked. Poor man’s beef discardeddown guts and out again to sea. Shells salvaged.Here, concentrated behind wire mesh, hard stuffingfor this upholstered seat placed for musingon the river Colne. Quantities shipped oncircuitous routes to sate Elizabethan…