Leading literary writers and artists explore what ‘place’ means in age of Coronavirus

PLACE 2020 showcases new poetry, essay, written and visual storytelling, alongside films and podcasts

A new digital project gives voice to internationally acclaimed writers and artists alongside emergent new voices to explore how ideas of ‘place’ have shifted radically amid the global Coronavirus-enforced lockdown.

PLACE 2020, a new initiative by the Centre for Place Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University launches today. It showcases poetry, essay, written and visual storytelling, alongside films and podcasts from the likes of activist and photographer Lola Flash, filmmaker Andrew Kötting, poet Caroline Bergvall and author Iain Sinclair, exploring what ‘place’ means to them during this unprecedented period of history.

With lockdown restrictions in place around the globe, the project sees local environments explored in new ways, and places of the imagination coming to the fore alongside sites of memory and virtual places. Contributions range from photographic documentation of the recent Black Lives Matter protests on the streets of New York, writing influenced by self-isolation in the Norwegian countryside, walks around a Cumbrian village and pre-COVID 19 explorations of the Amazon.

PLACE 2020 officially launches the Centre for Place Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. The Centre, which forms part of the University’s Department of English alongside the renowned Manchester Writing School, comprises writers, poets and creative-critical thinkers dedicated to developing and teaching new thinking, writing and other creative outputs within this popular literary genre.

Contributions also come from the Centre’s staff members, including a new short story by Costa Book Award-winning author Andrew Michael Hurley, a lockdown diary from multi award-winning poet and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature Helen Mort, and tales from the coast by Paul Evans, nature writer and The Guardian’s country diarist.

Rachel Lichtenstein, co-director of the Centre for Place Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, said: “Place, in contemporary literary culture, is everywhere. Whether responding to global protests, urban regeneration, the rise of digital technologies, or the climate emergency, writers and artists have become more and more preoccupied with place and its many meanings.”

Fellow co-director Dr David Cooper said: “As the Centre for Place Writing we felt that it was vital to invite key figures in the field - from both outside and within Manchester Metropolitan - to respond to how ideas of place have changed radically during the global lockdown.

“Our major digital project, PLACE 2020, officially launches the Centre for Place Writing, showcasing through film, poetry, essay, storytelling, sound-works and creative nonfiction, the diversity of the place writing genre, whilst also documenting this most extraordinary of times.”

PLACE 2020 features work by 24 writers and artists, including:

• Short film BECAUSE THE REST IS SILENCE by British filmmaker Andrew Kötting that reconfigures aspects of his moving image works which focus on the idea of place
  A photographic record of Black Lives Matter protests in New York by artist and activist Lola Flash
• Poetry by the international award winning poet and sound artist Caroline Bergvall created during self-isolation in the Norwegian countryside
• An account of lockdown in New York by writer and cultural critic Sukhdev Sandhu
• A vivid memoir of pre Covid-19 adventures in the Amazonian jungle of Peru by one of Britain’s foremost place writers Iain Sinclair
• A poetry film of new arrivals to Manchester by Anjum Malik
• New short story THE FAIRYTALE by Andrew Michael Hurley that imagines a near future in which society is segregated for health reasons and in which widespread flooding has forced communities to be uprooted.
• COMING OUT AS A BLACK ESSEX GIRL by Elsa James, an artist whose work explores the historical, temporal and spatial dimensions of what it means to be black in Essex, updated in response to the Black Lives Matter protests.
• A podcast of spoken word and atmospheric soundscapes of lockdown life in Berlin, by British-Canadian-Taiwanese author and editor of The Willowherb Review (a digital literary journal that celebrates nature writing by writers of colour) Jessica J.Lee
• Amy Liptrot, author of the award-winning memoir, The Outrun – documents her household experiences of the COVID-19 lockdown in West Yorkshire, informed by her being mother of a toddler with another baby on the way and her reading on children’s relationship with the natural world. 

Iain Sinclair said: “Now that we have all, perforce, become "Mental Travellers" with passports issued by William Blake, it is exhilarating to be part of such inspirational company for PLACE 2020. Locked down is also opened up to fiercer challenges. This expansion of the definition of "Place" is the achievement of the Centre for Place Writing.”

Jessica J. Lee said: "The PLACE 2020 collection is a time capsule of these often difficult past months, seen through the eyes of some of the writers I most admire. If this platform is any indication of what the Centre for Place Writing can bring to our thriving genre, we ought to celebrate and treasure it. I look forward to what is to come!"

Our major digital project, PLACE 2020, officially launches the Centre for Place Writing, showcasing through film, poetry, essay, storytelling, sound-works and creative nonfiction, the diversity of the place writing genre, whilst also documenting this most extraordinary of times.

The full list of contributors is: Polly Atkin, Caroline Bergvall, Tim Cresswell, Andy Delaney, Kerri ni Dochartaigh, Gareth Evans, Paul Evans, Lola Flash, Elsa James, C.C.O’Hanlon, Andrew Michael Hurley, Ela Kir, Andrew Kötting, Jessica J.Lee, Rachel Lichtenstein, Amy Liptrot, Anjum Malik, Helen Mort, Antony Rowland, Sukhdev Sandhu, Iain Sinclair, Richard Skelton, Jean Sprackland, Ken Worpole.

The PLACE 2020 website can be viewed here.