Perec and Psychogeography in Huddersfield

This programme was broadcast on Radio 3 yesterday

It is presented by Kevin Boniface, a postman based in Huddersfield who has written books on his psychogeographical adventures for uniformbooks.

It connects perfectly with my conference theme of Everyday Geographies, and also the work of Georges Perec and his books which look at the infra-ordinary.

It also features Kei Miller, and an extract from this poem. Maps identify places of power.

We don't speak of the banal, quotidian, everyday.

Perecquian or endotic are useful adjectives.

There's some links between psychogeography and Huddersfield by the way. It has hosted the World Congress of Psychogeography for several years (although the last few have taken place on Zoom)

I also have a connection with Huddersfield as that was where I completed my geography degree in the early 1980s. The city has changed a great deal since then.

Kevin documents the species of spaces of Huddersfield.

This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: to name it, to trace it, like those portolano-makers who saturated the coastlines with the names of harbours, the names of capes, the names of inlets, until in the end the land was only separated from the sea by a continuous ribbon of text.

I've also had the pleasure of doing a talk for the Leeds Psychogeography group. I was invited by Tina Richardson, who connected with me as she had a family connection with Hunstanton. I visited the group in May 2012 to speak in the Parkinson building, ironically about our work on Mission:Explore and connections with psychogeography and guerilla geography.

Joanne Lee, who is featured in this collection from the UCL Press on Perec's geographies, talks about the need to see flatly: to see without an agenda.