How Creative Writers formed the Black Country

I received an email from Matthew Stallard. He said, 'Key to the creation of the the idea of the Black Country as the "shock region" archetype of fossil capitalism was the impact of Dickens' blockbuster, The Old Curiosity Shop... Dickens uses landscapes and locations as allegorical diorama for the unfolding drama. It was the Black Country which Dickens chose for the dramatic peak of his narrative, as the morbid backdrop where Nell becomes sick through pollution, exposure, hunger and with the illness that eventually takes her life...for Dickens, the landscape of the Black Country offered the perfect symbolism for his literary exposition of the most pernicious environmental and social impacts of the emerging industrial modernity. Indeed, German theorist Theodor Adorno described Dickens' 'first images of Wolverhampton' as the 'embodiment of hell in the bourgeois universe.' This is what Dickens had to say:

“where coal-dust and factory smoke darkened the shrinking leaves, and coarse rank flowers, and where the struggling vegetation sickened and sank under the hot breath of kiln and furnace, making them by its presence seem yet more blighting and unwholesome than in the town itself . . . they came, by slow degrees, upon a cheerless region, where not a blade of grass was seen to grow, where not a bud put forth its promise in the spring, where nothing green could live but on the surface of the stagnant pools, which here and there lay idly sweltering by the black roadside. Advancing more and more into the shadow of this mournful place, its dark depressing influence stole upon their spirits, and filled them with a dismal gloom. On every side, and as far as the eye could see into the weary distance, tall chimneys, crowding on each other, and presenting that endless repetition of the same dull, ugly form, which is the horror of oppressive dreams, poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air.”

Stallard is interested in the origins of the name 'the Black Country' and his argument is that the name was achieved and 'implanted into the popular consciousness' by the 1850s, and with its popularity 'its status as a "shock region" that literate people were expected to know about, have an opinion upon, and to have witnessed themselves.' This link to 'literate people' and the way in which literature was key in formulating and fixing the term is important, partly because by 1854, 'the Black Country' was already being used as a metonym for the negative environmental impacts of extractive fossil capitalism.' For instance, the Birmingham Daily Post described 'black country" symptoms' as one approached Ironbridge; and the Worcestershire Chronicle described 'two steep "black country" looking escarpments' on a new railway line. Stallard suggests that because 'literate' people (that is, those who read widely) who probably also travelled were, effectively, conduits of not just the name of the region, but were messengers and therefore unwitting collaborators in formulating and creating the Black Country concept. Essentially what Stallard is saying is that creative writing is, therefore a vital aspect or component of the existence of the Black Country.

I've been thinking about this, and the importance, then, of the novel in what 'the Black Country' means. I've used this excerpt from 'God's Country' in a previous post, but here it is again. This is the section where Guy has returned home to the Black Country farm (a Black country farm: incongruous enough, but perhaps in itself a representation of the mix of original rural overlaid with industrial. More of that later) where he was brought up. He left the region, and has returned for the funeral of his twin brother:

Imagine what it must have been like for him being back here after all that time, into the interzone of the Black Country. Imagine it now. Imagine him feeling as if he’d passed through some kind of portal, back in time, into a different time-system. Imagine the place re-engineering itself into him, of him becoming a kind of interactive thing, not man-made, not nature either, but something yet to be discovered. Imagine him, if you can, the way the place was working on his mind – nothing coherent, nothing easily explainable – and think of the power of it, his allegiance to the place itself, how he would have been thinking that whatever had happened in the past, however the past had treated him, he was aligning himself, twinning himself, with something that was even more forceful, more dynamic, than that past, that treatment. Imagine a slow curve of a line made entirely by walking ahead of him. Imagine him being gradually, no, suddenly, aware of, rather than hearing, specifically, the sensation of water, the grey-green blades of grass, the complexion of nettle leaves, and the meaning of yellow in the fennel flowers, the curiosity of a lump of concrete or cement. Think about how the rhythmic placing of each step might become out of his control, as if he was being drawn into the place, or back into the place, or into something, like he was part of its permanent essential essence. We could guess that he thought of himself as Guy then, Our Guy, and that all sense of time evaporated along with his feelings, so that, together, what he was sensing was bodily, like utter relief, beyond satisfaction, as if he was in the process of finding the answer to a long-lost question he hadn’t even realised he was considering. It’s at times like that when it’s easy to believe that the gaps between feelings and thoughts are actually as important as the thoughts and feelings themselves, that there is no concealing anything, and that having recognised this, life – his life – could be changed for ever. Ask him where he was, or where he walked to precisely, and he can’t tell you, because there were moments of erasure so that he forgot, or didn’t even recognise where he was and what he was doing, yet it all seemed easy, painless and easy, and looking at the landscape, to him, looking at the canal, the factories, it looked like a foreign land, like a myth or a dream, as if he had burrowed into his own unconscious, where there was a clear picture of what and how he needed to be, what he needed to do. But imagine this, imagine seeing this, experiencing it – because you can bet he did – words, he’d say, emerging through the bark of trees and slipping off the leaves there, like blossoms, like memories; words and sentences shimmering on the surface of the canal water, appearing like living creatures, like gifts, through the water starwort. God’s country, he’ll still say, this place here.

Imagine that. Imagine him believing that he had reclaimed this place. Imagine him thinking he could just pick it up and put it down whenever he felt like it.

I realised, when I read this again, that there's something about the tone here. When I wrote it, I didn't realise it would come out like this, and I'm reminded of this: ‘Words choose the poet. The art of the writer consists in little by little making words interest themselves in his books.

In question is a labor, a deliverance, a slow gestation of the poet by the poem whose father he is.

Little by little the book will finish me.(L’espace blanc)' This comes from Notes from Derrida’s Writing & Difference, from the chapter ‘Edmond Jabes and the Question of the Book’ (p. 64) and I'm struck by that phrase: 'Words choose the poet' obviously, but, more, 'Little by little the book will finish me'. Even more: 'The poet is thus indeed the subject of the book, its substance and its master, its servant and its theme. And the book is indeed the subject of the poet, the speaking and knowing being who in the book writes on the book. This movement through which the book, articulated by the voice of the poet, is folded and bound to itself, the movement through which the book becomes a subject in itself and for itself, is not critical or speculative reflection, but is, first of all, poetry and history. For in its representation of itself the subject is shattered and opened. Writing is itself written, but also ruined, made into an abyss, in its own representation. Thus, within this book, which infinitely reflects itself and which develops as a painful questioning of its own possibility, the form of the book represents itself.’ (p. 65). This, to me, makes perfect sense, and especially when thought about through the lens of psychogeography - look at that phrase 'the movement through which the book becomes a subject in itself and for itself.' The shattering and opening of the representation of itself here, in the excerpt from 'God's Country' is, I think part of that voice of the 'poet' (or writer) which is folding and binding to itself. Essentially, where, in this excerpt does the voice of the poet/writer (me) end and the subject (the Black Country) begin? Those psychogeographic blurred boundaries through - look - I'm saying 'We' - 'We could guess that he thought of himself as Guy then...' - the narrative itself is full of knowledge there, and 'Imagine him believing he had reclaimed this place.' THIS place, here. What am I talking about? The Black Country, or the narrative 'place' or space? I can't remember what I was thinking exactly by using the imagery of the word 'emerging from the barks of trees and slipping off the leaves there, like blossoms, like memories; words and sentences shimmering on the surface of the canal water' except reading it now, I know exactly where I had that thought, when I was walking and thinking and allowing the alert reverie to do something to my own unconscious. I don't want to edit any of that. I want to leave that there.

I took this photo on my walk today. I imagined Guy walking the same way. You can't see it, but the canal is to the left in a dip. See that chimney? It's Stuart Crystal Glass works - it used to be, it's a museum now. 'a kind of portal back in time to a different time-system'. Somewhere beyond it is Barrow Hill, where I walked with my Dad, and then Dudley. Sandwell is in the hazy distance. I imagine this, here, this is the view from Guy's father's farm. No, I'm not making any changes to that excerpt there. And what has this to do with Stallard's ideas about the origin of the name of the place? Well, his view is that creative writing has brought 'the Black Country' into existence - that not just the thought, but the actual place is complete in the written words, and then the concept is developed further by the reading of those words. Photographs from the past (if you can get hold of them) and of now might show what the place was and is like, but the capacity of analysis of creative writing, of the words that make up the writing itself were, and therefore are, part of the mechanics of keeping the place alive. It means that writing 'Black Country fiction' is, essentially, asking questions about what fiction can do. It is both asking and answering philosophical questions through the medium of fiction. In the case of 'God's Country', it is, therefore, a philosophical investigation of place and the people in it. It can be appreciated as a piece of fiction, of course, but it is also an example of what can be 'done' with fiction, and also what can be 'done' with psychogeography. Essentially, in 'God's Country' psychogeography is being used to flag up the the philosophical questions, and fiction is being used to answer them, or attempt to answer them. As Stallard implies, there is a tradition of Black Countryness conveyed through creative writing (non-fiction as well as fiction) which means, there is a tradition of Black Country fiction, and 'God's Country' is part of that. The philosophical questions I am asking are about the relationships between Black Country people in their Black Country and the interaction between these people and this place, yes, but also that interaction with fiction.