Tag Archives: psychogeography

Ladywood: Two Towers and a Reservoir

Posted on February 4, 2017 by

It had been many years since I had been to Ladywood. This inner city borough of Birmingham had long been a mythic landscape for me even before I became aware of any sort of Tolkein connection. It was here that … Continue reading →

Posted in Cities, History, Midlands, Walking | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Space is the Place – Shakespeare and Sun Ra

Posted on May 15, 2016 by

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 , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Birmingham Edgelands Part 2

Posted on October 10, 2015 by

Edgelands are not necessarily always on the urban edge. Not physically anyway – the important thing is they are perceived as different from the zones that lay beyond. Neither strictly urban nor rural but an overlooked amalgam of the two … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Human Geography, Midlands | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Birmingham Edgelands Part 1

Posted on September 16, 2015 by

Some cities draw you straight in from their edges by dint of gravity or beckoning pathways – officially designated walking routes or desire roads shaped by regular footfall. Not so Birmingham: here the momentum at the city’s outer limits is … Continue reading →

Posted in Cities, Human Geography, Midlands | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

At Covehithe

Posted on September 23, 2014 by

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 , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Edgeland

Posted on May 2, 2014 by

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 , , , , , | 5 Comments

Pleasure of Ruins

Posted on January 25, 2014 by

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 , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Botanising the asphalt

Posted on November 1, 2012 by

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 , , , | 12 Comments

Orford Ness

Posted on June 20, 2012 by

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 →

Posted in Literature, Suffolk, Walking | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

North-South divide?

Posted on March 28, 2012 by

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 , , , , , | 5 Comments