iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 01/10/2024

‘Each time I’ve been to Fingal’s Cave, the sense of natural magnitude dwarfing human endeavour has been inescapable. Turner’s painting amplified the feeling: a luminescent, natural arch opening into the unfathomable past’: Fiona Stafford on Staffa.

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 26/09/2024

‘I want to make some kind of gesture. An offering. A mark of passing. And to leave it here. Tied to the land’: about to re-immerse myself - for the nth time - in the extraordinary deep map of Richard Skelton’s ‘Landings’.

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 24/09/2024

Just spent much of the train commute home dreaming of walking into this painting (‘Washdaybreak’, 2003) by Martin Greenland martingreenland.co.uk

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 22/09/2024

‘The Outrun’: special preview screening of Nora Fingscheidt’s adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s remarkable memoir at HOME in Manchester on Thursday, 26 September homemcr.org/film/the-outru…

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 19/09/2024

‘Making Geography Matter: Opening up the Doreen Massey Archive’ - a brilliant funded PhD at the Open University. Closing date: 7 January 2025 www.oocdtp.ac.uk/making-geogr...

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 17/09/2024

Spent much of the day thinking about the past of the Portico Library thanks to the doctoral research of Michelle Ravenscroft; spent the evening in a trustees meeting & thinking about the Library’s exciting future in the centre of Manchester www.theportico.org.uk/reuniting-po...

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 15/09/2024

‘What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us…’ (Georges Perec).

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 15/09/2024

Spent a wonderful day yesterday at the Liverpool Travel Seminar at the Bluecoat reflecting on & celebrating the field-shaping work of @timyoungs.bsky.social Many thanks to all involved for making it happen.

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 09/09/2024

The Centre for Place Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University is keen to support applications for 2025 Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships. Please get in touch via email if you’re interested & want to find out more about the internal selection process mmu.ac.uk/research/fello…

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 07/09/2024

‘All my life I have restlessly been looking for a home, for a room. And it was here all along’: I’ve just been left breathless by the beautifully traumatic final chapter in Wild Twin by @wildtwin.bsky.social Published by @littletollerbooks.bsky.social on 18 Sept littletoller.co.uk/shop/books/lit…

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 03/09/2024

Stunned that, in the brilliant Wild Twin, @wildtwin.bsky.social refers to ‘Cherry Blossom (AKA Boot Polish Head), the man [in Liverpool] who paints pretend hair on his skull with shoe polish’ as, for years, I’ve assumed that he was a product of my childhood imagination or family myth-making . . .

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 30/08/2024

‘Nostalgia is an illness, perhaps. And yet, it’s beautiful. I live in memory. I live in the present moment but the past is here too, sometimes shimmering, sometimes dimming in the same space as the now’: #amreading Wild Twin by @wildtwin.bsky.social from @littletollerbooks.bsky.social

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 27/08/2024

Albert Vincent Reade, ‘Morecambe Bay June 1932’.

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 26/08/2024

‘I’m in car park world, a space with its own politics, culture & memory. Not an unplace, but a place apart’ (Gareth E Rees): Bank Holiday Monday landscape.

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 25/08/2024

Landscape studies by the Kendal-based artist, Lela Harris, who has received great critical acclaim for her brilliant ‘Black Lancastrians’ exhibition at Judges’ Lodgings, Lancaster lelaharris.co.uk

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 24/08/2024

‘We pass and fade on the face of the/ earth, sun-nets drifting over distant hillsides, the cloud/ shadows. We become the half-sensed ghosts’ (‘Moor’): #amreading - slowly, sadly - the unsurprisingly wonderful ‘Cairn’ by Kathleen Jamie.

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 21/08/2024

Skylines: Liverpool & Marseille; this week & last.

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 20/08/2024

It’s arrived! It’s great to be able to hold a copy of ‘The Routledge Handbook of Literary Geographies’ I’ve edited with Neal Alexander. An enormous thank you to the 41 contributors & the editorial team at Routledge for making it happen.

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 19/08/2024

‘The prettiest city in France doesn’t hide its wounds. It is sincere. That’s all’ (Philippe Pujol): spent a few days in Marseille last week & completely fell in love with the place.

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 19/08/2024

Early notice that the Centre for Place Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University will be keen to support applications for the next round of Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships. Please get in touch via email if you’re interested & want to find out more about the internal selection process.

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 18/08/2024

The River Sorgue in Provence which features in Petrarch’s poetry & in which I lost my wedding ring a few days ago. I’d like to say that the literary association brings some comfort but, right now, I’d do absolutely anything to have that ring again.

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 08/01/2024

I thought that I was tired of Turner’s ‘Rain, Steam & Speed’, as I’ve used it in teaching so much, but then I stood in front of it in the National Gallery again for the first time in years.

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David Cooper @drdavidcooper.bsky.social · 04/01/2024

‘Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down,/ Threatening with deluge this devoted town’ (Swift, A Description of a City Shower): early evening arrival in London.