Author
Laurence Mitchell
Writer and photographer based in Norwich, UKMarch 2021 M T W T F S S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 -
Recent Posts
Tag Archives: psychogeography
To the Lighthouse
They are taking the lighthouse down. It was really just a matter of time. Time and tide, it is said, wait for no man, and the two make for a powerful combination on this rapidly changing shoreline. The Orford lighthouse … Continue reading
Posted in History, Suffolk, Uncategorized
Tagged cooling towers, lighthouse, Mostar, Orford Ness, psychogeography, Sheffield, Syria, W G Sebald
23 Comments
Beneath a Concrete Sky – to Gravelly Hill Interchange by canal
Where’s Birmingham river? Sunk. Which river was it? Two. More or Less. Birmingham River Roy Fisher The idea was to follow the Birmingham canal system north to Spaghetti Junction. I had already traversed the city by means of the Grand … Continue reading
Posted in Cities, Human Geography, Midlands, Walking, wildlife
Tagged art, Birmingham, canals, Digbeth, graffiti, Gravelly Hill Interchange, psychogeography, Roy Fisher, Spaghetti Junction, transport, West Midlands
7 Comments
The Tyranny of the Horizon by Laurence Mitchell
Originally posted on BURNING HOUSE PRESS:
“A frontier region… the resort of brigands and bandits” – Sir Clifford Darby, from The Medieval Fenland Two summers ago I walked coast to coast across England and Wales, from Great Yarmouth in Norfolk…
Posted in Human Geography, Norfolk, Walking, wildlife
Tagged Burning House Press, Cambridgeshire, Fens, landscape, Lincolnshire, psychogeography, Situationists, Wisbech
1 Comment
Space is the Place – Shakespeare and Sun Ra
Still reeling from the solar onslaught of the Sun Ra Arkestra the previous night we travelled yesterday to Great Yarmouth to see The Tempest at the town’s Hippodrome Theatre. The Sun Ra Arkestra fronted by nonagenarian alto-sax maestro Marshall Allen … Continue reading
Posted in Literature, music, Norfolk, Uncategorized
Tagged Great Yarmouth, Hippodrome, Norfolk and Norwich festival, Norwich, psychogeography, Shakespeare, Sun Ra Arkestra, The Tempest
5 Comments
At Covehithe
The day before the autumn equinox: the setting, the beach at Covehithe. We have gathered here at the north Suffolk coast to walk and talk. A literary walk to celebrate W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, no less, organised … Continue reading
Posted in History, Literature, Suffolk, Walking
Tagged coastal erosion, Covehithe, medieval church, psychogeography, Rings of Saturn, southwold, Suffolk Coast Path, W G Sebald
5 Comments
Edgeland
Edgelands are everywhere, orbiting our towns and cities like unbeautiful rings of Saturn: non-places, junkspace, transitory transition zones that lie between that which is unequivocally urban or rural. Transitory because they are spaces in flux, with fluid geography that today … Continue reading
Posted in History, Human Geography, Norfolk
Tagged Arminghall, edgelands, henges, neolithic, Norwich, psychogeography
5 Comments
Pleasure of Ruins
Abandoned Soviet-era hotel, Kazbegi, Georgia “You don’t know why ruins give so much pleasure. I will tell you. . . Everything dissolves, everything perishes, everything passes, only time goes on. . . How old the world is. I walk between … Continue reading
Posted in Caucasus, Russia, Travel
Tagged abandoned architecture, Georgia, Kazbegi, psychogeography, Soviet Union, Soviet-era architecture, Svaneti
6 Comments
Botanising the asphalt
The German philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin referred to the unwitting psychogeographical practices of the urban flâneur as that of ‘botanising the asphalt’: a way of experiencing the city as a repository of collective memory by means of a … Continue reading
Posted in Human Geography, wildlife
Tagged botany, psychogeography, urban flora, Walter Benjamin
12 Comments
Orford Ness
Walking, whether rambling or hiking in the countryside, or the unplanned urban exploration of a would-be flâneur’s dérive – call it what you will – seems to be the hippest new literary genre. Often found cosily in tandem with what can only be described … Continue reading
North-South divide?
Back in 2007, Danny Dorling of the University of Sheffield wrote a piece on the nature and geographical extent of the so-called North-South divide in Britain. This was nothing new: as most of us already knew, the north-south socio-economic divide was not simply … Continue reading
Posted in Human Geography
Tagged Danny Dorling, Forest of Dean, Ian Marchant, north-south divide, psychogeography, Redditch
5 Comments