Finding a Place

Event Information

The idea of ‘place’ helps us to consider our relationship to, and journey through, life’s landscapes, both literal and metaphorical. Whether we feel well-placed, on top, lost, out of place, or facing an uphill climb, we often describe our positionalities through metaphors about our physical positions, and, in turn, our relationships to our physical surroundings can have a profound impact on our sense of where we are in life. 

In this series of creative-critical talks hosted by walk-listen-create’s poet-in-residence Shani Cadwallender and writer-in-residence Amelia Hodsdon, we invite scholars and writers whose work explores landscape, walking, and ‘finding a place’ to discuss what their latest research reveals about human relationships to place. 

To celebrate the recent move towards incorporating creative or ‘non-traditional’ methodologies into research, our guests will also provide a stimulus for creative works, to which our writers-in-residence will respond. These creative responses will be presented alongside the main talk, followed by a (hopefully productively!) meandering discussion and Q&A. 

Shani and Amelia have invited researcher and author Dr Anna Burton to be their guest. Anna has researched and written extensively about trees and how they have influenced the way we write about them – you can read some of her work in “Trees in Nineteenth Century English Fiction: A Silvicultural Novel.

Contributors

Anna Burton

English lecturer - Interested in all things arboreal

(United Kingdom)

Dr Anna Burton is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Derby. Anna’s research is concerned with representations of trees and woodland in nineteenth-century literature and culture; her book, Trees in Nineteenth-Century Fiction: The Silvicultural Novel, was published with Routledge in 2021, and her current project focuses on the literary and cultural history of tree planting in the English Lake District. She also co-leads the 'Romantic Trees: The Literary Arboretum, 1740-1840' project and the interdisciplinary 'Tree Talks' seminar series.

Shani Cadwallender

Shani Cadwallender is a poet, teacher and PhD researcher at Birkbeck UoL, whose interests are in trees, identity and ecopoetics.

Amelia Hodsdon

I work with words for a living, to learn, and for fun. I walk in the gaps. Originally from Cheltenham, I recently moved back after 25 years in London, and am relearning the local landscape. Words for a living: editing and proofreading, formerly for the Guardian. Words to learn: student on Bath Spa's nature & travel writing MA course, 2021-23. Words for fun: prose and poetry with a strong sense of place and a touch of the eerie.

Organisation

Walk Listen Create (WLC)

walk · listen · create (WLC) is the home of walking artists and artist walkers, as well as Sound Walk September, the Sound Walk September Awards, the Marŝarto Awards, and Placecloud.

walk · listen · create operates on a plain that is bounded by sound, or audio, place, or location, and technology. Technology is not just mobile phones or computers, it’s also pen & paper, rocks, and anything that can be used as a tool.

We have a particular weak spot for sound walks, hence our yearly festival Sound Walk September. Curious as to what is a sound walk?

WLC was officially founded in 2021 as an NGO in Belgium, but we came together in 2019, around the implementation of the first Sound Walk September, itself a consequence of Sound Walk Sunday 2017.