Reimagining place: creative walking, writing and reading

My practice-based research draws upon psychogeography and the relationship between walking, ideation and creative writing. How can an embodied experience of place inform the writer? How can an imaginative approach to walking and revisiting place enhance our experience as readers, and our relationship with texts?

Using psychogeographical approaches to revisit the urban readily lends itself to dystopian readings of place, as seen in Iain Sinclair’s exploration of the Gothic in London Orbital (2003), and Phil Smith’s observations on the zombie mythos in The Footbook of Zombie Walking (2015). In this paper I will discuss how the notion of walking ‘in’ character found in these works - most explicitly in Smith’s provocations - can be extended to walking ‘as’. Through the application of a psychogeographical ‘lens’, walking in place can inform the creative writer and the creative reader.

To demonstrate the affect of this creative walking method on both reader-walker and writer-walker, I will briefly share examples of my own practice. This will include an extract of creative writing and a case study based on my public walking projects, designed to engage with text through the re-imagining of place.