Geopoetics: Bodies and Landscapes

‘Geopoetics’ encompasses a range of creative approaches to geography, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, geophilosophy, as well as visual and performance arts. Eric Magrane explains that a geopoetic approach focuses on “embodied engagements with place”, and demonstrates awareness of “cultural constructions of […] place, space, landscape”, practicing “a relational perspective to human–environment interactions [my italics].”[1]

In preparation for writing my MA dissertation, I looked for examples of geopoetic writing that expressed embodied empathy with landscapes. Interestingly, although perhaps not surprisingly, my research repeatedly led me to works by disabled and chronically ill writers.

In her poetry collection, ‘The Girl Who Forgets How to Walk’, Kate Davis explores the geography of south Cumbria, alongside her experiences of disability. Through finding synchronicities between local geology and her own body, Davis creates intriguing juxtapositions and fresh poetic frames for both things.

For example, in ‘Boulder Drift’, Davis compares two different names given to glacial rocks, and relates the qualities inferred in each name to different states of her body:

The men who mined here called it Pinel….
…the hint of fixing in place,
pinned on display like an insect.
She would have preferred the one
geologists gave it – Boulder Drift.
To imagine those stones suspended,
all weight gone, their pock-marked bodies
lifted and held like dancers.[2]

Through a geopoetic exploration of language, Davis reshapes how we view both the landscape and her disabled body. Boulders and disabled bodies, though usually thought of as being heavy and pinned in place, instead become beautiful, drifting dancers.

Emily Hasler produces a similar effect of embodied geological empathy in her poetry collection, ‘Local Interest.’ Here Hasler explores the history and geography of the Stour river estuary, an area just north of the Naze and Hamford Water. The poem ‘At Cobbold Point’ in particular taps into an embodied sense of emplacement, describing Hasler’s experience of swimming near a breakwater constructed from “imported Norwegian rocks which pin the shore / in place.”[3] Hasler describes the breakwater “like a curved spine/my curved spine / breaking the water.” Through using recurring verbs that relate to both her own body and the movements of silt around the pinned shoreline – moving, accreting, eroding, thinking, coasting – Hasler builds a cycle of mirroring resonances that connect her intrinsically to her environment:

I am accreting thoughts… The coast, for the most part, is thinking… Coast is what I swim, what I think, moving in more than one direction.

These poetry collections helped me feel into how I might be able to articulate commonalities between my own body and local landscape - the eroding coast at Walton-on-the-Naze and the flooding of its adjoining backwaters, Hamford Water. 

In both the essays and poems of ‘Inundation’, I sought out verbs to describe shared experiences between me and the coast. At the end of the essay, ‘Erosion’, for example, I realise my own ‘verb-nature’ through reflecting on the ever-changing physical forms of the eroding cliff. The title of the poem ‘Nazing’ is itself a verbing of the landscape – my attempt to express the emotional and physiological effects that spending time at the Naze was having. By referring to my body as becoming more like the Naze – that it was nazing – I am conveying the healing effect of imagining my body becoming yielding like the cliffs, rather than hard with tension like the seawall.

Further inspired by Davis and Hasler, I also experimented with using historical and geological information to form poems. For example, Davis forms a poem from a geological quarter sheet from 1873, even naming the poem ‘Explanation of quarter sheet 91 N.W.’ In a similar vein, my poem ‘Tidal Refrains’ uses excerpts from Hilda Grieve’s The Great Tide: The Story of the 1953 Flood Disaster in Essex to collate a brief overview of the history of flooding on the Essex coastline, as well as peoples cyclical surprise at each flooding event.  With this poem, my aim was to highlight what geologist, Marcia Bjornerud refers to as our “temporal illiteracy”[4]: while reading Grieve’s account of Essex seawall construction, I was struck by the repetitious comments about the height of the flood tides; there seemed to be no significant ancestral or cultural knowledge about the flood-prone nature of the coastal regions, and rather than accepting the nature of these places, landowners simply put more effort into dominating them, building higher and stronger seawalls. As Bjornerud argues, “we accelerate into landscapes and ecosystems with no sense of their long-established traffic patterns, and then react with surprise and indignation when we face the penalties for ignoring natural laws.” 

Now, as we face our uncertain future in the Anthropocene, it is more important than ever to recognise, respect, and attune to environmental patterns. As writers and artists, taking a geopoetic approach seems a wonderful way of developing and promoting this awareness of the landscapes we shape, and are shaped by.

~~~~

My collection of essays and poems, Inundation is now available in paperback and ebook.

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[1] Eric Magrane, “Climate Geopoetics (the earth is a composted poem),” Dialogues in Human Geography 11, no. 1 (2021): 11, https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820620908390

[2] Kate Davis, “Boulder Drift,” in The Girl Who Forgets How to Walk (London: Penned in the Margins, 2018), 51.

[3] Emily Hasler, “At Cobbold Point” in Local Interest (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2023), 8.

[4]Marcia Bjornerud, Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 7.

Description of Walton-on-the-Naze from 1891

I found this interesting description of Walton-on-the-Naze from 1891 while searching the archives at Newspapers.com. It's presented as being a letter written to the unnamed writer's cousin, singing the praises of this "hitherto neglected" part of Essex. Yet I suspect it may have actually been a disguised piece of tourism promotion. 

I've edited it down, as the original article was nearly 2000 words long, and gets a bit waffley in places. There are some great phrases though, my personal favourites being the "Dutch-like confusion of land and water", and the Waltonians "highly marine situation" (which I think would make a cool band name). 

I've also included a couple of old postcards from my small collection. 

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WALTON-ON-THE-NAZE AS DESCRIBED BY A VISITOR

The Essex Standard, West Suffolk Gazette, and Eastern Counties Advertiser

Saturday, 15th August, 1891

 

In the first place we are every bit as much “out of the world” as you can be... we could see that we were making our way into a land whose quiet beauty and picturesqueness utterly disposed of the absurd libel that Essex scenery is dull and uninteresting. From Colchester to Walton you pass by a constant succession of old-world villages, shady woods, and broad stretches of smiling pasture-land, as rich, as fertile, and as beautifully green as any to be met with in England; while here and there, as at Wyvenhoe – does not the name recall to you the horrible earthquake of seven years ago? – you come upon that curious Dutch-like confusion of land and water, of red-roofed houses, towering masts, and great white and brown sails, that almost causes you to rub your eyes and wonder whether you are really within only threescore miles of London... 

And when the last of the pretty villages and shady woods have been passed, you find yourself suddenly riding at the very verge of a splendid expanse of sea, into which the train appears every moment to be desperately and recklessly determining to plunge its freight of expectant passengers. Nearer and nearer you get to the edge, until you cannot see how it is possible to go a dozen yards further without hearing the hiss of the engine-fire in process of extinction by the waves...

This is the very first thing that strikes you about Walton-on-the-Naze – this way in which it seems to be built absolutely into the waters of the German Ocean. There is no waste of time, here, I can tell you, standing at a railway station and taking-in panoramic views of a town that lies a mile or two distant. As you leave the doors of Walton station you could literally throw a stone into the sea – always provided that it did not hit someone in transit. 

The Waltonians, I find, have reason to regard this highly marine situation of theirs, so delightful to a visitor, with rather mixed feelings; for the sea on this part of the coast obstinately refuses to “know its place,” and consequently, instead of being a good servant, threatens to become a very bad master to the dwellers in the quaint little town. Nearer and nearer have the water encroached each year; steadily and remorselessly have the waters eaten away cliffs and beaten great yawning gaps in the esplanade, until at length the townspeople, aided by the railway company, who have done so much to earn the popularity which the place deservedly enjoys, have set to work to build a strong sea wall to resist the further encroachments of the oceanic tyrant. 

As early as the beginning of the century, they tell us, the sea swallowed up their old parish Church, and a good half of the original village, and ever since it has been creeping up and creeping up, until the very existence of the present town has been threatened and the new defensive works now being completed have become imperatively necessary, unless Walton-on-the-Naze is to change its title in the immediate future to "Walton-Under-the-Sea"

But this is a calamity that must never be allowed to happen, for so charming a little watering place could not on any account be spared by the dwellers in the great city. If the efficacy of air is to be judged by the resulting appetite – no bad test, I admit – I am “free to maintain” that the Waltonian atmosphere can hold its own with that of any resort on this or any other coast. Of this statement, Jack – who says he can quite sympathise with the tendency of the sea in these parts to swallow up all it can get – is prepared to offer full confirmation. As to the town, it is just as old-fashioned and un-“seasidy” as the sternest opponent of stiffness and stucco could desire. The streets are winding and leafy, the shops rural-looking and unpretentious, and I know you would be specially delighted with the primitive little post office which is simply a pretty country cottage that has some how found its way into the heart of a town, and has been pressed into the service of her Majesty’s Postmaster-General...

 

WALTON-ON-NAZE CHURCH

The Waltonians having, as I say, had one Church swallowed up by the sea, seem to have been resolved that the marine monster should not have any opportunity of repeating its performance. For this reason, no doubt, they have placed their present Church at the very back of the town, and have refrained from providing it with a spire, in order that it may attract as little attention as possible... 

SCENERY

By-the-way, you must not imagine, ma chére cousine, that we have no “scenery” here at Walton. As I have already told you, we have no hills, at least none in the immediate neighbourhood; but, to begin with, this walk along the cliffs from Walton to Frinton, through fields of rustling corn and barley, is as pretty as anything of its kind I know; while our inland canters have revealed to us some of the most delightful of “sweet Auburns” among the fair pasturelands of hitherto neglected Essex, which is at last beginning to be known and appreciated. If you were here, I could show you hedges aglow with wildflowers and picturesque old farmhouses nestling in leafy hollows, with walls thick with jasmine, honeysuckle, and roses, that would convince you at once that the beauties of East Anglia are at any rate well distributed. And here, in Walton itself, Jack and I can promise you, if ever you may come, that you will find comfortable quarters, picturesque surroundings, the best of bathing, the pleasantest of sands, and, above and beyond all, the glorious air that only blows in from the great North Sea.

 

 

Does AI Pose a Threat to Writers?

Does AI pose a threat to writers? Stupid people misusing AI definitely do.

I’m not a natural techie at all. In fact, contrary to popular misconceptions about autistic people, I’m actually fairly averse to new technology. I’ve only recently started using a Bluetooth speaker, for example. So, my recently developing interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come as a bit of a surprise to me.

AI generated image

Since finishing my master’s degree, I’ve been looking for ways to earn money online, and during my searching I came across YouTube videos of people claiming that they had made money by using AI to write ebooks. Feeling intrigued, I started experimenting with Chat GPT to see what it was capable of.

My first impression was that the writing it produced was much better than I’d expected, and I started thinking, oh dear, this doesn’t bode well for us writers. On closer inspection though, I relaxed. AI writing is repetitive and rather bland, and furthermore, it can ‘hallucinate’ facts and sources of information. For example, I asked Chat GPT to give me a reading list of books about British saltmarshes, and from the list of book titles and authors it presented, only one actually exists – the others were completely made up.

Still, I came away from my experiments feeling that AI could be a useful tool for writers. It can prompt ideas. For example, it can break down a book idea into possible chapter headings, and it can answer some kinds of questions more easily than a straightforward search engine, providing that you take any ‘facts’ it gives you with a pinch of salt. I certainly wasn’t concerned at that point that AI posed any real threat to professional writers.

However, as I searched more for online writing jobs, I started coming across some troubling Reddit threads. Many freelance content writers were noticing the same thing – it’s becoming harder and harder to find writing gigs online. This reflected my own experience - I used to work as an online content writer around ten years ago, but things definitely seem different today. The opportunities seem fewer and farther between. Not only this, but a strange new phenomenon is beginning.

Writing clients are starting to use ‘AI detectors’ – software designed to identify text written by AI. The problem is, these detectors are flagging up writing that was most definitely written by humans. One writer described how they’d been working for a particular client for ten years, yet recently the client had started using an AI detector. The detector started flagging up writing from multiple writers on the team, and when those writers said that they hadn’t used AI, rather than believing them, the client doubled down and continued to accuse them. Subsequently, many of those writers are now leaving.

This seems so ridiculously stupid to me. But given how much faith some people invest in technology, I can well believe it’s true. You’d think that having worked with people for years, you would 1) trust them more, and 2) recognise whether there had been a change in the quality of their writing. Obviously, when they started writing for you years ago they would not have been using AI then, so unless there’s been a deterioration in quality, there’d be no reason to trust the AI detector over them.

I don’t really know anything about AI detectors or how they work, but simply on an intuitive level it seems untrustworthy. After all, AI has learnt how to write from humans, so to then try and judge whether human writing sounds like AI writing seems like an oxymoron, surely?

I decided to test a free AI detector using a couple of paragraphs from this blog post. This was the result (LOL!)

Hmph!

You might be thinking, oh well, this seems more of a problem for content writers, not creative writers. Yet, I'm already noticing that magazines and journals are starting to stipulate in their submission guidelines that they won't accept AI generated or assisted work. Now, how are they determining whether a piece of creative work has been assisted by AI? Will creative journals also turn to AI detectors?

Anyway, the conclusion I take away from all this is that the main threat posed by AI is not the AI itself. AI can be useful when used properly, and I would say that text generators like Chat GPT could be particularly useful for people with communication disabilities. Like any technology, the real risks develop in relation to how people use it. The dangers of AI come from people abdicating their responsibility to practice their own intelligence and engage their thinking skills, instead relying on AI to think for them. After all, AI detectors are themselves AI, right?

It seems too many people are focussing on the ‘I’ in AI, rather than on the ‘A’.

Have you used AI creatively? Have you ever run into any AI-related problems? Let me know in the comments, I'm very interested to know!

The Legend of Black Shuck

In addition to my love of the natural world, I’m also interested in folklore, and I find that as the nights start drawing in over the autumn months, these old stories start to occupy my mind more and more. Folklore seems to be part of some collective winter hibernation dream. Of all the folklore creatures I’ve heard of, none has captured my imagination in quite the same way as Black Shuck. 

Black Shuck is the East Anglian version of the otherworldly black dog – a mythological motif that appears throughout the world. Often described as a large, black dog with fiery red eyes (or sometimes just one glowing eye in the middle of his head), Shuck is said to haunt the remote country lanes, misty marshlands, and fens of this region.

I’m sure my fascination must have something to do with the symbolic association of black dogs with depression. Throughout my adult life I’ve grappled with this condition, and there have been times when it’s actually been comforting or helpful to imagine the abstract notion of depression as a black dog who follows me around. It’s easier to enter into a kind of dialogue or relationship with depression this way. Through viewing it symbolically, the revelation of new insights and wisdom becomes possible. That’s the power of storytelling, after all! 

Furthermore, some years ago, I had my own strange encounter with a very large stray dog on a misty country lane…. But more on that later!

 

Wild Hunt Origins

Black Shuck’s origins possibly trace back to the Wild Hunt – a legend found throughout northern European cultures. Though there are many variations involving various local Gods or mythological figures, at its core the frightful Wild Hunt involves a ghostly band of hunters on a chase, often on horseback and accompanied by a menacing pack of hunting hounds.

A 12th century record of the hunt is found in the Anglo-Saxon Peterborough Chronicle. Writing in 1127, after the arrival of an unpopular Abbot, the Chronicle scribe claims that it was “general knowledge throughout the whole country that immediately after his arrival… many men both saw and heard a great number of huntsmen hunting. The huntsmen were black, huge, and hideous, and rode on black horses and on black he-goats, and their hounds were jet black, with eyes like saucers, and horrible.” [1]

A Vicious Rampage in 1577

Some centuries later, on the fateful Sunday of August 4th, 1577, a severe storm swept over the town of Bungay in Suffolk. It was during this tempest that the legend of Black Shuck became intertwined with the town’s history.

According to Reverend Abraham Fleming’s account of that day, as the storm raged on, a large black dog - "or the divel in such a likenesse" – burst into St. Mary’s Church and instantly killed two members of the congregation by wringing their necks [2]. After attacking a number of others, the monstrous hound then disappeared in a flash of lightning. Only, this was not the end of Shuck’s rampage.

Black Shuck then reappeared twelve miles away, in the saltmarshes of Blythburgh, where he burst through the doors of the Holy Trinity Church. His scorched claw marks can still be seen to this day (apparently)!

 

 

 

Modern Sightings

Shuck’s legend has evolved over the centuries. I found a couple of interesting references to Norfolk smugglers playing on local fears of Shuck and dressing as the beast to scare people away from their illicit activities [3]. His appearance is often said to foretell death or misfortune to those who encounter him. However, I’m also certain that I once read an account from the 1930’s or so, of a midwife who was out cycling alone late at night, and that she felt the presence of Black Shuck was protective. But I can’t for the life of me track down that reference again!

Despite folks becoming less superstitious in modern times, Shuck’s legend endures and has found renewed interest in recent years. For example, in 2022 an annual Black Shuck Festival was established in the Suffolk town of Bungay to commemorate the legend in early August [4]. I hope I can go to it sometime.

As for my own eerie experience… It was November 2015, and I was walking from Great Clacton to Thorpe-le-Soken early one morning, via cross-country footpaths. The air was chilled, and thick with morning mist. I didn't pass anyone on my journey. Then, all of a sudden, up ahead of me I saw an animal looming out of the grey, walking towards me. I immediately looked for an accompanying human, but none appeared. The animal was so unusually large, my first thought was that it couldn't be a dog, but rather that it might be one of those escaped big cats you sometimes hear about. Like a panther! I felt genuine fear and a rush of adrenaline as my mind started racing with ideas of what I should do if it was to attack me. Sounds a bit dramatic now, perhaps, but the creature's size really was a shock. And it’s unusual to see a dog out on its own, especially one that big. The animal was trotting along casually, seemingly oblivious to me, and after a few moments I realised the movement and gait wasn’t feline after all, but almost certainly canine. Before we reached each other on the path, my hands balled fearfully into fists, the dog turned off into an opening in the hedgerow. When I reached the opening, I cautiously peered into the field, but could see no sign of the dog. With a sigh of relief, I continued on my way, checking back over my shoulder a few times.

Did I see Black Shuck that misty morning? Probably not.... but who can say for sure! ;) I kind of like the thought that I might've caught sight of Shuck taking a morning stroll….

If you’re interested in reading more Black Shuck sightings (and there are many!), check out ‘Shuckland’, the biggest database of East Anglian sightings put together by Hidden East Anglia. There's also ‘Mapping the Grim’, a collection of nationwide sightings, with a handy map search function.

[1] https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/hall_megan_j_200312_ma.pdf

[2] https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/21406687.weird-suffolk-thunderbolt-lightning-frightening-day-black-shuck-terrorised-suffolk/

[3] https://www.jstor.org/stable/1259761

[4] https://blackshuckfestival.com/

The Beautiful Nature Poetry of Archibald Lampman

Why do ye call the poet lonely,

Because he dreams in lonely places?

He is not desolate, but only

Sees, where ye cannot, hidden faces.

I relate so deeply to the above poem - the sense of seeing the faces of nature, of not feeling lonely in places away from other human beings, because those places are full of other kinds of beings. 

This is just one example of the beautiful nature poetry of Archibald Lampman (1861 - 1899), which I have only recently discovered. 

Described as the 'Canadian Keats', Lampman's poetry will perhaps be considered by many today as a little too 'pastoral', yet, while I would agree with that description to a point, there is so much profound beauty to be found in his poems. 

Here is one of my favourites:

Voices of Earth

We have not heard the music of the spheres,

The song of star to star, but there are sounds

More deep than human joy and human tears,

That Nature uses in her common rounds;

The fall of streams, the cry of winds that strain

The oak, the roaring of the sea's surge, might

Of thunder breaking afar off, or rain

That falls by minutes in the summer night.

These are the voices of earth's secret soul,

Uttering the mystery from which she came.

To him who hears them grief beyond control,

Or joy inscrutable without a name,

Wakes in his heart thoughts bedded there, impearled,

Before the birth and making of the world.

What makes Lampman even more compelling to me is the sobering fact that he died at the age of 37 - the age I am currently. Furthermore, he did not consider himself a great poet. Despite finding some success in his lifetime, he once wrote in a letter to a friend:

"I am not a great poet and I never was. Greatness in poetry must proceed from greatness of character - from force, fearlessness, brightness. I have none of those qualities. I am, if anything, the very opposite, I am weak, I am a coward, I am a hypochondriac. I am a minor poet of a superior order, and that is all."

Dear Archibald, I respectfully disagree that you did not possess a brightness. Your poems have brought a certain magic to my life. 

Lampman's poetry collections are available for free from Project Gutenberg.

Alternatively, I've edited a collection of his best nature poems and made it available on Kindle. For Kindle Unlimited members it's free to read, otherwise you can buy it for 99p. 'An Old Lesson From the Fields & Other Nature Poems' by Archibald Lampman is available here.

Published in Resurgence and Ecologist Magazine! :)

Well, it's certainly been a while since I last updated the blog. That's because I've been intensely focussed on writing my master's dissertation over the summer. Now that that's submitted, I'm hoping to write here more regularly. 

An exciting thing that's happened recently is that an excerpt of my writing was published in Resurgence and Ecologist magazine, as part of an article by James Canton about teaching Wild Writing at the University of Essex. 

Bluebells!

Weeleyhall Wood Nature Reserve (Taken by my husband, Tim)

"In the soft light of the wood they glow like phosphorescent waters, casting a misty blue penumbra like the moon's at a change in the weather." 

Roger Deakin

"I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at. I know the beauty of our Lord by it. Its inscape is full of strength and grace." 

 Gerard Manley Hopkins 

 

Hillhouse Wood

"Though as a man I inherit great evils and the possibility of great loss and suffering. I know that my life is blessed and graced by the yearly flowering of the bluebells. How perfect they are! In their presence I am humble and joyful. If I were given all the learning and all the methods of my race I could not make one of them, or even imagine one." 

Wendell Berry