“The society which has abolished every kind of adventure makes its own abolition the only possible adventure.” Paris, May 1968


Saturday 5 March 2011

The Edgelands.

There is nothing us psychogeographers like more than a nice bit of marginal land. Of course, when we are out and about with our lovers and muses we can be found striding the Surrey Hills, waxing lyrical about the view across The Weald or some example of hedging and ditching. But when we are out in our usual male groups of one, pursuing the psychogeographer's art as we do, we tend to gravitate back to the edges and a landscape that is home to treatment works and trailer parks, pylons and gypsy ponies; back to Britain's real wilderness where breaker's yards accommodate endangered species and anything could happen.
There is not a great deal of edgeland literature. There's Iain Sinclair of course, Richard Mabey's 70's classic The Unofficial Countryside is back in print and at the moment I'm reading Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts' very fine Edglands. Probably less well known is Marion Shoard's Edgelands essay in Remaking The Landscape. Splendid stuff! Although quite what this respectable woman from Dorking is doing poking about in the armpit of modern capitalism is another matter.

2 comments:

henry said...

And maybe Nick Papadimitriou? Puts a bit more of the psycho in psychogeographer, (though Richard Mabey rather hates him).

Jemmy Hope said...

Edgelands, a new wordin my vocabulary. wikipedia calls.