Getting to the Point: Walking and feeling on the shorelines of Spurn

Horkan, Toby

Abstract

Spurn is a narrow sandy spit on the Holderness coast of East Yorkshire, UK, which juts out into the mouth of the Humber Estuary, and is a place of rich ecological and historical interest. Because of its position at the boundary of river and sea, Spurn is also a landscape distinguished by its liminality and unpredictability, with recent flood events rendering it largely accessible only by foot. In the body of literature produced surrounding Spurn, there are a number of authors who write of walking with the aim of reaching the tip of the spit, Spurn Point, merging their embodied experiences of the place with reflections on their emotions and uncertainties. This paper recognises Spurn as a more-than-representational landscape (Waterton 2018) and as an affective landscape (Berberich et al. 2016), in a constant state of becoming and in which bodies affect and are affected by a range of more-than-human actors and atmospheres. The paper explores how writers use the act of ‘getting to the Point’ to negotiate questions of grief, uncertainty, memory and identity. It also considers the extent to which these texts have the potential to influence how readers connect with the landscape, and how certain evocations of Spurn can affect the meanings that people associate with the place. The paper argues that such associations, developed through the intimate encounters enabled by walking, could have a significant impact on the future management of Spurn and other similarly transient places.

Citation

Horkan, T. (2024, March). Getting to the Point: Walking and feeling on the shorelines of Spurn. Paper presented at ACLA 2024 Annual Conference (American Comparative Literature Association), Palais des congrès de Montréal, Montreal, Canada

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: ACLA 2024 Annual Conference (American Comparative Literature Association)
• Start Date: Mar 14, 2024
• End Date: Mar 17, 2024
• Deposit Date: Apr 5, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: May 13, 2024
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4619319
• Publisher URL: https://www.acla.org/program-guide#/search/seminar/42987