Contemporary Poetry

152 contemporary poetry

sets for itself the study of the precise laws and specifi c effects

of the geographical environment, whether consciously organ-

ized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.

The charmingly vague adjective psychogeographical can be

applied to the fi ndings arrived at by this type of investigation,

to their infl uence on human feelings, and more generally to

any situation or conduct that seems to refl ect the same spirit

of discovery.^41

Psychogeography could be thought as an overlap where psychology
and geography meet in assessing the behavioural impact of urban
space. In Debord’s original hypothesis, psychogeography proposes
a new way of discovering the cityscape by relying upon tactics of
errancy, as opposed to following conventional maps. In this way,
the pedestrian travels outside of established and predictable paths
to fi nd a new understanding of the city that is not defi ned by the
city’s architectural forms. An important feature within Debord’s
discussion of psychogeography is the practice of dérive or drifting,
which resembles a passage through varied ambiances. He proposes
that dérives involve ‘playful-constructive behaviour and awareness
of psychogeographical effects, which are thus quite different from
the classic notions of journey or stroll’.^42 It is a practice in which:

One or more persons during a certain period drop their rela-

tions, their work and leisure activities, and all their other

usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves

be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters

they fi nd there.^43

Sinclair’s poetry Lud Heat ( 1975 ) and Suicide Bridge ( 1979 ),
novels such as Downriver ( 1994 ) as well and the non-fi ction London
Orbital ( 2002 ) (which explores the M 25 encircling London)
engage with psychogeography’s ways of discovering the cityscape.
Moreover, his poetry is alert to the behavioural impression that the
city makes upon its inhabitants.
The opening of Sinclair’s poem ‘hence like foxes’ places its
reader in unfamiliar terrain, and conventional methods of orienta-
tion vanish.^44 The title’s citation from Lear’s entreaty to Cordelia