Edgelands

Wasteland, Anne Street, Dungannon

An Introduction:

Through the course of my study to attain my degree in Photography, I have been introduced and recommended many texts that my tutors believed would be of interest to me or that would assist me in my overall practice. Edgelands: Journeys into England's True Wilderness by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts is one such text. Suggested to me at the end of my first semester, in my first year, I dutifully, and immediately went online and purchased a copy. It is a resource that I have returneds to, and perhaps unknowingly, it has played a large part in the development of both my practice as a photographer as well as my writing.

Edgelands is written by two poets who grew up on the edge of two cities, Liverpool and Manchester. Edgelands is not a book of poetry, not in the traditional sense, but more an examination of what inspires its authors. Edgelands is a simple and direct word, not overly convoluted or poetic - it is the land on the edge, and in this case on the edge of a large town or city. The phrase was coined by the geographer Marion Shoard. However, edgelands are not metaphorical places, and in fact you can identify them from the common elements that populate them. The authors refer to these Edgelands as an untranslated landscape that was different than the clearly defined familiarity of the urban and rural.

Rather than to highlight the edgelands as undesirable places, the text is an attempt to celebrate the in-between, to make us aware of its existence, rather than as spaces we spontaneously transverse as a permeable membrane between the town and countryside. They talk about how they felt edgelands were being ignored in relation to landscape writing, a place in limbo, a landscape 'that has to be escaped, or transcended, in order to discover true solitude’. The concept of solitude was the core to my concept of my most recent work, in fact the word solitude appears in the title, My Beloved Solitude being a contemplative series of reflective imagery, taken in woodlands close to my home, exploring my desire to seek sanctuary through the act of solitude and the joy I take from being alone. As John Berger said, in reference to Jitka Hanzlova’s work Forest, I use the process of capturing these images to breakout of ‘the prison of modern time’

The term Edgelands is an appellation, beautifully succinct in its descriptiveness of the transitional; or liminal spaces created between the rural and urban. Edgelands are populated by markers which identify them as such. In the book Symmons-Roberts and Farley break these elements down into 28 chapters, the title referencing something that can be found on the edge of almost every large town or city, the scars of urbanisation, the frayed edges of an ever-sprawling entity. In the introduction the authors talk about how they felt that edgelands were being ignored in relation to landscape writing, a place in limbo, a landscape ‘that has to be escaped, or transcended, in order to discover true solitude’ (Farley and Symmons-Roberts, 2012 p8). It is mentioned that there is an assumption that parts of rural Britain are timeless. However, edgelands are not timeless but rather spaces in flux. An old factory demolished, or a waste ground cleared for a new school, ‘Such are the constantly shifting sands of edgelands that any writing about these landscapes is a snapshot’ (Farley and Symmons-Roberts, 2012 p6-7)

One of my aims through my research is to continue to  further understand the anthropological conditions of self and our connection to solitude and the role that woodland plays in that. The chapter “Woodlands” recounts the children’s fable “Brendan Chase”, a story about three boys who, rather than return to school, run away to local woodland where they spend a year fending for themselves. It is a story about ‘human beings, going back to nature, not just the natural world’ (Farley and Symmons-Roberts, 2012 p161). Such works of literature speak to our ‘strong imaginative attachment to our woods’ (Farley and Symmons-Roberts, 2012 p162) and how the story attests to woodlands as places for hiding. The anthropological uses of woodland are fascinatingly telling. Woodlands provide a multitude of recourses for all manner of things including fuel, shelter and building materials. As W.H Auden wrote ‘A culture is no better than its woods’. From the anthropological viewpoint to the social and environmental, the authors also take a scientific approach and in particular the science of Genomics, the idea of progressive detachment which suggests that we have lost parts of our genome, itself the entirety of our genetic information contained within our DNA. They say that individually we have lost instinctive traits more commonly found in us when we were hunter/gatherers and that we have been liberated from this instinctive behaviour but left with a sense of longing. They suggest that this perception of loss is where we compensate by choosing to romanticise our woodlands, why we desire to return to nature and take joy in doing so.

Progressive detachment is, if nothing else, a ghostly reminder of us as we once were. Farley and Symmons Roberts postulate that if science had not given us the idea of progressive detachment that wilderness writers would have had to invent it. It is a useful theory to help make sense of our desire to reconnect with what is lost. They liken this desire to a ‘homesickness’, a longing to connect with somewhere that could be considered a sanctuary. Like Berger spoke of Hanzlová and about nature as hostess, Farley and Symmons Roberts ask ‘when you get to your wild place, who will meet you there.? (Farley and Symmons-Roberts, 2012 p167) The answer, they suggest, is no one, just like Berger says that Hanzlová’s images have ‘no welcome’. There is no hospitality to be found and that writing about such things is ‘to celebrate a yearning, not just for wild places, but for wild places without any people in them’(Farley and Symmons-Roberts, 2012 p167).

 
I intend to use Edgelands as a pseudo-guidebook, which I will use to explore the unobserved.  To search for and find these elements in my hometown of Dungannon. Hopefully to look upon them as places of possibility, mystery and even beauty, this is not a misanthropic endeavour but an ode to memory and place and well help me to both showcase and develop my writing.