Abstract
This chapter explores how the association of architecture and imagination works in practice, as the poet Stephanie Norgate brings Bachelard’s theory of the house as refuge to bear on the ideas explored in a number of her own poems, and the processes of creating them. Like Bishop in New England, Norgate is drawn to damaged and precarious seaside dwellings on the southern English coast; like Todorović and Dasgupta, she is concerned with the tensions between belonging and unbelonging that houses may reflect. This chapter shows how the sheer susceptibility of the imagination to built spaces operates in practice as well as in theory: how built spaces can generate or perhaps uncover ideas of which the artist was hitherto unaware.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Stephanie Norgate, The Blue Den (Tarset: Bloodaxe Books, 2012), pp. 9, 11, 12, 15, 57; Cf. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. by Maria Jolas, 2nd edn (New York: Penguin, 2014), Chapter 7 ‘Miniature’ and Chapter 8 ‘Intimate Immensity’ (pp. 167–99 and 202–26 respectively).
- 2.
Philip Larkin, ‘Days’, in The Whitsun Weddings (London: Faber, 1983), p. 27.
- 3.
Bachelard, Poetics of Space, p. 50.
- 4.
Norgate, Blue Den, p. 50.
- 5.
Nick Willing (director), Paula Rego: Secrets and Stories, BBC 4, 25 March 2017.
- 6.
Stephanie Norgate, Hidden River (Tarset: Bloodaxe Books, 2008).
- 7.
Another house was removed in 2014, further diminishing the terrace of cottages we saw in 2010.
- 8.
Bachelard, Poetics of Space, p. 119.
- 9.
Bachelard, Poetics of Space, p. 77.
- 10.
Bachelard, Poetics of Space, pp. 77–78.
- 11.
Norgate, Hidden River , p. 23.
- 12.
Thomas Hardy, Poems of Thomas Hardy, ed. by T. R. M. Creighton (London: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 90–91.
- 13.
Bachelard, Poetics of Space, pp. 54–55.
- 14.
Stephanie Norgate, ‘The House’, The London Magazine (August/September 2015), 78.
- 15.
Bachelard, Poetics of Space, p. 92.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Norgate, S. (2020). ‘The Mind in the House’ or the ‘House in the Mind’: Poetic Composition and Reclaimed Memory. In: Griffiths, J., Hanna, A. (eds) Architectural Space and the Imagination. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36067-2_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36067-2_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-36066-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-36067-2
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)