“...nonplace is a neologism coined by the French anthropologist Marc Augé to refer to anthropological spaces of transience where human beings remain anonymous, and that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as "places" in their anthropological definition. Examples…would bemotorways, hotel rooms, airports and shopping malls…[It] is strictly subjective…For instance, a shopping mall is not a non-place for a person who works there every day.”
Wikipedia entry for “Non-Place
Non-Place
Liam Walke
It is spring, and I see our city
from the ground, it’s miles of ashen road
I see the river push its driftwood sticks
into the forest, nudge them onto byways,
leave them in tufted cracks of asphalt
with something close to ice.
further out, the river is boisterous,
water beneath a breaching whale,
frothing, directionless,
gilded and unguided fathoms
***
in the forest, mud and hummus
(like rich and foreign chocolate)
part their heavy palette, first for an airy green blanket,
then a wave of trillium, cut by riffles
and mossy rocks
that wend to a copse,
a chirping and residential bog.
the lining of our great gut
***
viewed from the sky
our city is grey crumbs, spilled
on a matt of flaxen squares
among croaking bush
it is not dissected by roads:
it is itself a broken thoroughfare
it is itself a broken thoroughfare
