The Edgelands
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The Edgelands: Body As Edgeland
Or, what it was really all about: love. Welcome to Edgelands post #6. We are walking the edgelands, looking at the body as an edgeland both physical and metaphorical, the changing seasons, the who and why of edgelands, liminal spaces as healing spaces where we meet both others and ourselves, and physical pain as surrender.…
alleyways, aloneness, anamendieta, anger, barbarakruger, belonging, bodyasedgeland, brownfield sites, cameronawkwardrich, chronicillness, chronicpain, community, desire, disused railway tracks, edgelands, foucault, grieving people, hermits, homeless people, hostels, industrial estates, isolation, liminalspaces, longtermchronicillness, longtermillness, mariapopova, mentally ill people, nomansland, people with addictions, pilgrims, radicalove, simoneweil, sineadgleeson, teenagers from abusive homes, thebody, tonimorrison, travellers, underpasses, victoriantimes, witches, workhouse
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The Edgelands: Alleyways – Boundaries, Belonging & Disappeared Maps
Transitory Bodies // The Physicality of Wheelie Bins. Welcome to Edgelands post #5. This week I revisit an old hometown of Hemel Hempstead, itself an old edgeland till it was populated by post-war Londoners, look at how some maps show alleys and others don’t, why and how our bodies navigate down them, loving strangers, how…
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The Edgelands: Nuclear Borderlands & Cumbrian Homelands
The Northern Nuclear Accident & Unmoored Wanderings. Welcome to Edgelands post #4. This week I wander through the radiation-soaked landscape of the Cumbrian Windscale disaster story holding my grandpa’s calloused hand, stopping off at an orchestra that makes music out of the frequencies from nuclear radiation. I look at the sorrow that comes from the…
1957, bigrigg, borderlands, cancer, chernobyl, cumberland, cumbria, davidwhyte, edgelands, egremont, englishwoman, gammaray, governmentcoverup, homelands, ines, irishsea, musicfrequencies, nuclear, nuclearaccident, nucleardisaster, nuclearreactor, nuclearwarfare, nucleus, pilgrimage, radiation, radiationorchestra, sellafield, themarginalian, walking, wandering, whitehaven, windscale, womenwalking, workingclasswalking, workington, Zaporizhzhia
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The Edgelands: Hacking Hospital Maps & The Dérive
From Periphery Psychosis to Patterns. Welcome to Edgelands post #3! Today I talk about hospital maps, the dérive, map-hacking as an act of resistance and reclamation of the self, the edgelands of periphery psychosis, and the beautiful patterns all across nature, art, mathematics and music – and what these things all have to do with…
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The Edgelands: Asylums – A Letter to My Uncle
From Shenley to Bethnal Green via Hill End – with Nellie Bly and David Chapman for company. Welcome to my second Edgelands installment, this time about Hertfordshire and London asylums, the history of Nellie Bly’s exposé of asylums in 1886 then David Chapman’s less than a century later, the power dynamics at play within the…
antipsychotic, asylum, asylums, boundaries, davidchapman, eastofengland, edgelands, familialshame, familyhistory, healthcareabuse, hillendhospital, inheritedtrauma, insanity., madhouse, madness, mentalasylums, mentalhospital, mentalinstitution, nelliebly, nhs, nuthouse, psychosis, sadness, shenleyhospital, trauma, victorian, wrightsmadhouse
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The Edgelands: Train Stations & Hostels
Transitory Bodies & Dereliction. Last week I blogged about my new Substack series, The Edgelands. I just released my first post, about the dereliction of the self, our bodies against the backdrop of derelict buildings, hostels, belonging, and the liminality of train stations. Click on the button below to access it, and think about hitting…
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The Edgelands: a new experiment and an invitation to join me
The narratives I want to read are marginal, not mainstream: the voices we don’t get to hear, the unrecorded and undiscovered stories of how people navigate/d life. I am a margin-dweller too, and I’m currently exploring the edgelands between worlds; those that connect and divide both our experiences and our geographical areas. Exploring placeness, dereliction,…
sam dodd 