The Common

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The assembling of these poems is an attempt to create a singular entity in the face of the cancellation of the future by which to navigate subjectivity through a landscape haunted by ghost dictators, political and cultural malaise and hyper-lively crows.

Unexpectedly finding myself on a platform I did not make, privileged to speak at all, as if I sneaked onto stage during an interval in a play, I have borrowed tools for modernists, neo-romantic ‘apocalyptics’ and unhuman allies to gesture from inside weakness some kind of refusal to entirely give up, still the testing the principalities and powers I once thought I might play a part in overthrowing

Now, in their debris, from their debris and from the debris of us, I have tried to build some small thing again from unpromising materials by poetry; going down writing.

The Common is available from the author.

Phil Smith

Phil Smith

Phil Smith is an Associate Professor (Reader). He is an academic researcher, writer and artist specialising in walking, site-specific performance, dramaturgy and mythogeographies. He welcomes enquiries from postgraduate students interested in researching f...

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Walking Writers' Salon
The Common with Phil Smith

2024-01-09 19:00

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Meet the authors who are writing about walking and the landscapes through which we walk, at walk · listen · create’s Walking Writers Salons. We start the new year in the company of acclaimed walking artist, Phil Smith discussing his collection of poetry "The Common".

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