Who cheated? Growing up in Oz, the places on the monopoly board were synonymous with bitter spats and the shame-faced cheating heists. So when I came to London in 2001 they were already famous, and colour-coded. They also became real gritty, noisy trafficked streets with layers of history like I had never experienced before. So, when the fabulous poet Roddy Lumsden (http://vitamin-p.co.uk/ ) commissioned some of the best poets in town to write about a place on the monopoly board I took up the dice.

I rolled Liverpool Street Station…. so perhaps a bit of research. Ha! It turned into a project, an obsession. The librarians at the Barbican where only too pleased to find me more and more books from the amazing London section, including the wonderful Peter Ackroyd’s London Biography (there are hundreds of poems to write from this), a history of Spitalfields Market, a pompous 1914 edition of the history of Bedlam mental hospital (pulled down to make way for Liverpool Street station: http://www.bethlemheritage.org.uk/explorebethlem/), an astonishing recent book on the East End: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jul/05/saturdayreviewsfeatres.guardianreview30 and 18 Folgate Street, a book on Denis Severs House http://www.dennissevershouse.co.uk/, an inspiring expression of place.