Spatial Theories and Poetic Practices

Abstract

The ‘spatial turn’ in cultural and social theory is more than simply an increased interest in space or spatial relations brought about by low-cost travel, the development of the Internet and the activities of multinational companies. It is also a result of changed concepts of space and the way that these changed concepts have been disseminated across a variety of academic disciplines. This trans-disciplinarity of spatial concepts has not made the difficult task of describing the concept of space any easier, and each discipline will provide its own emphasis. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary lists 15 definitions and the Oxford English Dictionary some 30 pages of references. These range from ideas of space within time, as an interval, to space as negative and empty distance and its use to describe the ‘stellar depths’. There are numerous references to printing and printed material, to the spacing of words and to space within a book, and to the idea of personal space around the body. The latter half of the twentieth century is also, of course, the ‘space age’, following the first usage of the term in 1946, and defined as ‘the period of human exploration and exploitation of space’. The drug culture of the 1960s and 1970s produced terms such as ‘space cadet’ as ‘a person regarded as out of touch with reality, esp.