Edgelands - Softcover
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.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
`haunting, often inspiring book...Edgelands covers an impressive range of politics, reminiscence, investigation and rumination.' --Scotland on Sunday,
`a masterpiece of its kind'
`Even more uplifting is the chapter on weather - truly one of the most extraordinary passages of prose I have read in some time'
`This is, quite simply, beautiful, but it is also typical of a beautifully conceived work of exploration, by two emissaries to the wilderness who do the wasteland proud.'
--The Times
`a book that begs us to use our imaginations; to appreciate what we pass by every day but never really see' --Metro,
`in this marvelously quirky, fascinatingly detailed and beautifully written book the two authors fulfill their brief triumphantly' --Daily Telegraph
`this book is a delight: witty and wryly contrarian' --Guardian
`eye-opening and hugely enjoyable book ... overall this is an original, surprising and rather wonderful addition to our literature of place' --Sundat Telegraph
'Edgelands delights with its sly, impish wit and observation' --The Spectator
'This is a delightful and important book. By focusing on the fringes, on the shabby reality of suburban life, these poets remind us that there are always new myths for old, that the `edgelands' may even be our true centre.' --Country Life, John Greening
`A beautifully conceived work of exploration... Something of a masterpiece of its kind.' --The Times
`A highly inventive survey of landfill sites, wastelands, sewage plants, retail parks, golf ranges and other features of `England's true wilderness'. All this is done at a high level of linguistic resourcefulness, and the scope is impressive.' --The Financial Times
`This exhilarating book represents an attempt by two poets to do for the neglected edgelands what Coleridge and Wordsworth once did for mountains and lakes. One of the principle tasks of any writer is to make us see the everyday anew. In this marvelously quirky, fascinatingly detailed and beautifully written book the two authors fulfill this brief triumphantly.' --Daily Telegraph
`Farley and Symmons Roberts are not only a reader's tonic; they also shake up our lazy perceptions of an aspect of England. Edgelands will gain imaginative significance as a result of this gem of a book.' --The Independant
`This witty, evocative book would never wish to claim official status. Farley and Symmons Roberts can scarcely be unaware of the contradiction involved in trying to give definition to places whose character is protean and stubbornly informal, but in their own uninvited way the authors are preserving edgelands from enlistment in the great unthinking project of public "culture" that so often fences and legitimizes and empties places of meaning.' --Times Literary Supplement
`A collection of sharp-witted vignettes of the badlands, dedicated to the redemptive spirit of these maligned places... These brief essays are a pleasure to read.' --New Statesman
`Other authors will owe much to Farley and Symmons Roberts, the first bards of England's edgelands.' --The Observer
`Travelling mostly around northern England, Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts, both of them British poets, find unexpected pleasures: a car gradually coming into view beneath the surface of a pond, like a photograph in a developing tray; children's dens; a herd of water buffalo.' --The Economist
`This often haunting, often inspiring book... It succeeds in being something distinctive in and of itself.' --Scotland on Sunday
`However readily we might understand what the authors mean by edgelands, reading this book you quickly get the sense that you can never truly know them. They are constantly rewarded by the unexpected--the witty graffito under the bridge, the bedstead in the nettles. I wasn't far into the book before I too shared their devotion to these overlooked and somehow triumphant scraps of our overcrowded island.' --Prospect Magazine
`The wealth of observation, reflection and the physical scope of the terrain covered is genuinely impressive... Their response is generously interdisciplinary, and beckons, not least, towards the spatial arts and professions. An important benchmark of sensitive observation.' --Architects Journal
'This is a delightful and important book. By focusing on the fringes, on the shabby reality of suburban life, these poets remind us that there are always new myths for old, that the `edgelands' may even be our true centre.' --Country Life
`Few writers teach us to see the world afresh as Farley and Roberts do. They have imparted an original vision and blessed us with a beautiful book.' --Church Times
`It's a brilliant idea to give proper attention to those debatable zones, neither country nor city, which are always in flux. This is what Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts do in their thoughtful and haunting book Edgelands. You know places of this sort well, glimpsed as you drive or walk past, but how often do you read about them?' --Conde Nast Traveller
'With chapters on paths, dens, wastelands, business parks and many other topics, this book has opened my eyes to all kinds of things I might not have noticed before.' --Daily Telegraph
Book Description:
`a masterpiece of its kind'
`Even more uplifting is the chapter on weather - truly one of the most extraordinary passages of prose I have read in some time'
`This is, quite simply, beautiful, but it is also typical of a beautifully conceived work of exploration, by two emissaries to the wilderness who do the wasteland proud.'
--The Times
`a book that begs us to use our imaginations; to appreciate what we pass by every day but never really see' --Metro,
`in this marvelously quirky, fascinatingly detailed and beautifully written book the two authors fulfill their brief triumphantly' --Daily Telegraph
`this book is a delight: witty and wryly contrarian' --Guardian
`eye-opening and hugely enjoyable book ... overall this is an original, surprising and rather wonderful addition to our literature of place' --Sundat Telegraph
'Edgelands delights with its sly, impish wit and observation' --The Spectator
'This is a delightful and important book. By focusing on the fringes, on the shabby reality of suburban life, these poets remind us that there are always new myths for old, that the `edgelands' may even be our true centre.' --Country Life, John Greening
`A beautifully conceived work of exploration... Something of a masterpiece of its kind.' --The Times
`A highly inventive survey of landfill sites, wastelands, sewage plants, retail parks, golf ranges and other features of `England's true wilderness'. All this is done at a high level of linguistic resourcefulness, and the scope is impressive.' --The Financial Times
`This exhilarating book represents an attempt by two poets to do for the neglected edgelands what Coleridge and Wordsworth once did for mountains and lakes. One of the principle tasks of any writer is to make us see the everyday anew. In this marvelously quirky, fascinatingly detailed and beautifully written book the two authors fulfill this brief triumphantly.' --Daily Telegraph
`Farley and Symmons Roberts are not only a reader's tonic; they also shake up our lazy perceptions of an aspect of England. Edgelands will gain imaginative significance as a result of this gem of a book.' --The Independant
`This witty, evocative book would never wish to claim official status. Farley and Symmons Roberts can scarcely be unaware of the contradiction involved in trying to give definition to places whose character is protean and stubbornly informal, but in their own uninvited way the authors are preserving edgelands from enlistment in the great unthinking project of public "culture" that so often fences and legitimizes and empties places of meaning.' --Times Literary Supplement
`A collection of sharp-witted vignettes of the badlands, dedicated to the redemptive spirit of these maligned places... These brief essays are a pleasure to read.' --New Statesman
`Other authors will owe much to Farley and Symmons Roberts, the first bards of England's edgelands.' --The Observer
`Travelling mostly around northern England, Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts, both of them British poets, find unexpected pleasures: a car gradually coming into view beneath the surface of a pond, like a photograph in a developing tray; children's dens; a herd of water buffalo.' --The Economist
`This often haunting, often inspiring book... It succeeds in being something distinctive in and of itself.' --Scotland on Sunday
`However readily we might understand what the authors mean by edgelands, reading this book you quickly get the sense that you can never truly know them. They are constantly rewarded by the unexpected--the witty graffito under the bridge, the bedstead in the nettles. I wasn't far into the book before I too shared their devotion to these overlooked and somehow triumphant scraps of our overcrowded island.' --Prospect Magazine
`The wealth of observation, reflection and the physical scope of the terrain covered is genuinely impressive... Their response is generously interdisciplinary, and beckons, not least, towards the spatial arts and professions. An important benchmark of sensitive observation.' --Architects Journal
'This is a delightful and important book. By focusing on the fringes, on the shabby reality of suburban life, these poets remind us that there are always new myths for old, that the `edgelands' may even be our true centre.' --Country Life
`Few writers teach us to see the world afresh as Farley and Roberts do. They have imparted an original vision and blessed us with a beautiful book.' --Church Times
`It's a brilliant idea to give proper attention to those debatable zones, neither country nor city, which are always in flux. This is what Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts do in their thoughtful and haunting book Edgelands. You know places of this sort well, glimpsed as you drive or walk past, but how often do you read about them?' --Conde Nast Traveller
'With chapters on paths, dens, wastelands, business parks and many other topics, this book has opened my eyes to all kinds of things I might not have noticed before.' --Daily Telegraph
A book about the blank spaces on the A-Z, the hinterlands of Britain that are not urban and not yet country: the lost, the liminal and the unloved.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherCamden
- Publication date2013
- ISBN 10 1471315703
- ISBN 13 9781471315701
- BindingPaperback
- Rating
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