Edgelands by Michael Symmons Roberts
Edgelands explores a wilderness that is much closer than you think: a debatable zone, neither the city nor the countryside, but a place in-between - so familiar it is never seen for looking. Passed through, negotiated, unnamed, ignored, the edgelands have become the great wild places on our doorsteps, places so difficult to acknowledge they barely exist. Edgelands forms a critique of what we value as 'wild', and allows our allotments, railways, motorways, wasteland and water a presence in the world, and a strange beauty all of their own. Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts - both well-known poets - have lived and worked and known these places all their lives, and in Edgelands their journeying prose fuses, in the anonymous tradition, to allow this in-between world to speak up for itself. They write about mobile masts and gravel pits, business parks and landfill sites in the same way the Romantic writers forged a way of looking at an overlooked - but now familiar - landscape of hills and lakes and rivers. England, the first country to industrialise, now offers the world's most mature post-industrial terrain, and is still in a state of flux: Edgelands takes the reader on a journey through its forgotten spaces so that we can marvel at this richly mysterious, cheek-by-jowl region in our midst.
The edgelands, where the veneer of civilisation peels away, are the most despised and ignored of landscapesAmbition turns to dust in the sewage farm and landfill site. But Farley and Roberts's mischievous and elegant forays into these marginal wastes, show that dust turns back to life in them - into riotous ecologies, agitprop architecture and the wonderful business of playing. A provicative, left-field read. -- Richard Mabey
Outstandingly well written...In a cheeky counterblast to 'the new nature writing', the two poets celebrate the marginal wastelands of contemporary Britain: land-fill sites, container yards, wheel-clampers' pounds, self-storage units, derelict factories and sewage works -- Peter Parker * Spectator *
Outstandingly well written...In a cheeky counterblast to 'the new nature writing', the two poets celebrate the marginal wastelands of contemporary Britain: land-fill sites, container yards, wheel-clampers' pounds, self-storage units, derelict factories and sewage works -- Peter Parker * Spectator *
Michael Symmons Roberts (Author)
Michael Symmons Roberts was born in Preston, Lancashire in 1963. He has published six collections of poetry and received a number of accolades including the Forward Prize, the Costa Poetry Award and the Whitbread Poetry Prize. As a librettist, his work has been performed in concert halls and opera houses around the world. An award-winning broadcaster and dramatist, he has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Paul Farley (Author)
Paul Farley is the author of four collections of poetry and has won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Whitbread Poetry Award and the E.M. Forster Award. He broadcasts regularly on radio and presents The Echo Chamber on Radio 4. Edgelands, co-written with Michael Symmons Roberts, received the Royal Society of Literature’s Jerwood Award and the 2011 Foyles Best Book of Ideas Award and was serialised as Radio 4 Book of the Week.
Michael Symmons Roberts was born in Preston, Lancashire in 1963. He has published six collections of poetry and received a number of accolades including the Forward Prize, the Costa Poetry Award and the Whitbread Poetry Prize. As a librettist, his work has been performed in concert halls and opera houses around the world. An award-winning broadcaster and dramatist, he has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Paul Farley (Author)
Paul Farley is the author of four collections of poetry and has won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Whitbread Poetry Award and the E.M. Forster Award. He broadcasts regularly on radio and presents The Echo Chamber on Radio 4. Edgelands, co-written with Michael Symmons Roberts, received the Royal Society of Literature’s Jerwood Award and the 2011 Foyles Best Book of Ideas Award and was serialised as Radio 4 Book of the Week.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780224089029 |
| ISBN 10 | 0224089021 |
| Title | Edgelands |
| Author | Michael Symmons Roberts |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 2011-02-17 |
| Number of pages | 272 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |