Before London…an Introduction

Welcome to the webpage for INDS 233: Writing London’s Ecologies! We’re a group of seven students and one professor (plus my family) from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, USA who are spending the Autumn 2024 term at Goldsmiths, University of London. We’re about to explore the social, biological, and other environments of the UK and its metropolis through the tools of nature writing.

Composing on the blogger’s classic tool of choice: a 1951 Sears Tower Chieftain I.

I’m Prof. Chris Phillips, and I’m composing this first post on the Quad at Lafayette. My family and I leave two weeks from today; my students will join us ten days later. For the campus community, though, today is the first day of class, with all the chaos, excitement, and promise of that season.

My students and I are now in an odd in-between space: the summer’s over for almost everyone we know, but we’re still…doing whatever it is you do when you’re getting ready for a life-changing journey and waiting as actively as we know how for the journey to begin.

For me, it’s already begun in my mind. I’ve been booking rail and theatre tickets, planning excursions and class meetings, and immersing myself in the tradition of British nature writing.

I’ve taught courses on US-based nature writing for a number of years, and I’ve taught another course on global sea literatures for a decade before that. I’ve long been a fan of Robert Macfarlane and Gerard Manley Hopkins, two icons of British literature in praise of and deep attention to the living, breathing fabric of Britain.

Over the past nine months, I’ve taken myself on an intensive tour of the voices, historic and current, famous and emerging, that take on the hard of seeing and naming the “dearest freshness deep down things,” as Hopkins would put it, as well calling our attention to the ways that we, knowingly and unknowingly, damage what is dear to us in our world.

From time to time I’ll share in this space some of what I’ve learned from my reading, mixed with the learning I’ll do with and from my fellow Leopard-travelers. For now, I’ll leave you with a teaser for our first reading, which we’ll actually discuss while we’re still stateside: Zadie Smith’s 2012 novel NW.

My copy of NW. I love the typography, using “London A-to-Z” style maps in the letters. Also, this used to be in a public library in Calgary, Alberta.

Smith is renowned for her sophisticated, multi-layered narrative techniques and her characterizations of a diverse range of Londoners, particularly those who live in districts like Harlesden and Willesden in northwest London, where she herself grew up, areas known for their histories of Afro-Caribbean emigration and heritage.

How is a novel set in such a densely urban place, and focused on a deeply human set of characters, an entry point to nature writing? Stay tuned to see what our intrepid group has to say!