Field Notes From The Edge
- Submitting institution
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Manchester Metropolitan University
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 323
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Rider Books
- ISBN
- 9781846044571
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- April
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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C - Centre for Place Studies
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Field Notes from the Edge incurred three years of extensive practice research as an extended journey through Britain’s changing landscapes. The book is also a work of scholarship in which twenty years of experience writing about wildlife and place is supported by more recent research into natural history, ecology, literature, folklore, art and philosophy. This research included sourcing and analysing print-based texts, personal correspondence, working with BBC Radio archives and conducting interviews. Over a subsequent two-year period, I developed a style in which to articulate ecological liminality in creative nonfiction.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Process:
Field Notes from the Edge combines the process of writing country diaries for The Guardian, natural history documentaries for BBC Radio 4, feature articles for environmental publications and notes of encounter and observation. These items form the basis for a series of linked chapters. The book begins with Wenlock Edge as a locale and metaphor for liminality, and the essays discuss particular phenomena such as floods, holes, ruins, and common land in the UK and around the world. The chapters form a synthesis of lyrical prose, narrative scholarship and eco-cultural thought. Working with the artist Maria Nunzia, who produced the line drawings and also takes photographs for the country diary, was a truly collaborative process - two contrasting forms of watchfulness, through which Evans came to ‘see’ things differently.
Insights:
The book innovatively mixes literary with nonfiction techniques in order to discuss environmental issues. The ecogothic themes in Evans’ writing and the ‘reading’ of the natural world through a synthesis of poetic encounter and natural history develops a biosemiotics which gives Field Notes from the Edge its distinctiveness.
Dissemination:
The book was published by Rider Books (Penguin Random House) in 2015. Talks and readings from the book have taken place at literary festivals across the UK, such as Litchfield, Shrewsbury and Lancaster, the Manchester Met Place Writing Festival, the Suffolk Festival of Ideas and Oswestry Nature Festival. Evans has subsequently established a website for the book, supported by social media: this has proved a productive way to develop a conversation with readers. Some of the chapters will be turned into radio essays.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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