The Space We Inhabit

Abstract

In this chapter I want to search with you for the spirit of place, to conjure up the spirit that will give life and breath to descriptions of places. I find that many new writers’ stories and poems seem to occur in a spatial and social vacuum: the writer launches straight into an account of action, ideas, thoughts, feelings, without giving any clear sense of where all this is taking place. The result is that the reader feels lost — because the writer hasn’t bothered to say where they are. It is frustrating, confusing and severely diminishes the pleasure the writing could bring. But if the place is there; living and breathing through what happens, then the writing achieves another dimension: it becomes more real.