Innings

Abstract

The first versions of this poem about sound on paper were drafted while I was writing a chapter on sounds in travel literature. On 7 May 2018 my concentration broken by human and mechanical noises from outside, I tuned in to the commentary on a cricket match at Nottingham’s Trent Bridge (a ground less than 2 miles from the city centre), and listened to the applause as the South African batsman Hashim Amla, playing for Hampshire, reached his century. As I would have been there had it not been for the chapter deadline, the poem became a reflection on the paradox of sound being both present and absent in texts. During the Covid-19 pandemic I redrafted the poem several times, more intensely aware of the differences between inside and outside, between urban and natural sounds, and of the places where they meet.