Looking at the edge of beauty

Edgelands between Ordsall Hall and the Ship Canal

You may be able to think of a lot of words to describe retail parks, scrapyards, waste land and gas towers, but the likelihood that 'beautiful' is amongst them isn't very high.

Mancunian writer Michael Symmons Roberts thinks differently though.

He has been awarded the Royal Society of Literature's Jerwood Prize for non-fiction for 'Edgelands - Journeys into England's Last Wilderness'.

The book investigates the beauty in these disregarded places.

We decided it was up to us as poets to try change people's minds about England's edgelands. We want to celebrate these overlooked places Michael Symmons Roberts

The writer, who usually authors poetry and novels, says the book is "a response to the many - often beautiful - books celebrating British landscapes."

"They're almost always concerned with rural beauty like the Lakeland hills or windswept moors, or rugged urban landscapes, like our great cities," he explains, "but hardly any of them bother with the edgelands."

"Edgelands is a geographer's term for those unplanned, unwatched strips of land between cities and the countryside, full of car crusher's yards, gas-holders and retail parks."

'Overlooked places'

Michael, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University said that the idea for the book came from a realisation that both he and the book's co-author, Paul Farley, had included the subject of edgelands in their past fictions.

"We've both written about 'edgelands' landscapes in our poems, so we realised we had this shared interest, and wanted to find a way to explore it further.

"We were talking about the way in which landscapes are often not appreciated as 'beautiful' until someone sees them in that way and writes about them.

"Before the romantic poets of the 19th Century, mountains were generally seen as ugly things that made travel difficult.

"We decided it was up to us as poets to try change people's minds about England's edgelands. We want to celebrate these overlooked places."

Celebrate

Irlam Road cuts past edgelands in Salford

He's quick to encourage other people to celebrate them too, and says that our sprawling conurbation has plenty of them.

"Greater Manchester has some fantastic edgelands. There's the large expanse of edgelands seen from Barton Bridge over the Ship Canal and an area south of Piccadilly Station that's got railway sidings and a huge freight yard with stacked containers from around the world.

"But there are plenty of interesting smaller ones too, like the stretch just off the A34 south of Manchester, near Handforth, where an unnamed pool attracts weekend fisherman, between a massive leisure centre and a retail park."

Remember that the next time you are passing the Trafford Centre on the M60, taking the train to London or even meandering along the Ship Canal, and see if you can see beauty in the edges of our area that are often ignored - you might well be surprised what you find.

'Edgelands - Journeys into England's Last Wilderness' will be published by Cape in 2010