Stories Along the Life Paths of Beings: Character and Place in Prose Poetry

This chapter is an exploration of the relationship between character and place in the prose poetry sequence, Alice and the North. I discuss how they might intertwine with each other, with fluidity as a key characteristic, in a sequence of prose poems. The work focuses on the theme of the North and I consider whether the region can be perceived as both real and imaginary. A central enquiry of the work looks at how the North’s shifting geographical, political and cultural borders impact the central persona of ‘Alice’ in my collection. There is an examination of the writer as walker/flaneuse and discussion of how the use of metaphor and ecological details can enrich the sense of place in the poems. Place is seen as a series of pathways or stories in Alice and the North, drawing on the theories of Doreen Massey and Tim Ingold. Prose poetry is seen as ideal genre with which to discuss these ideas, and I propose that the form can make an innovative contribution to eco-poetics and place writing.