ABSTRACT
Throughout his literary career, the work of the twentieth-century Cumbrian writer, Norman Nicholson (1914–1987), was consistently underpinned by an imaginative preoccupation with the poetics of place. In particular, Nicholson famously devoted much of his topographic writing – in both poetry and prose – to documenting the practice of everyday life in his native Millom: a townscape which, in the twenty-first century, is characterised by a complicated coalescence of post-industrial, coastal, estuarial, urban and even pastoral physical features and which, by extension, resists rigid topographic categorisation. The peripherality of this place, in purely positional terms, is indisputable as it is a built environment which is significantly, and problematically, detached from wider spatial networks. Even in the second decade of the twenty-first century, travelling to and from Millom is a relatively time-consuming process: it is an approximately 100-minute circuitous rail journey from the nearest mainline train station at Lancaster; and just under an hour is required to drive from the closest junction of the M6. This sequestration has a demonstrable impact upon the everyday spatial practices of the town’s residents; and, concurrently, it is a physical geography which any visitor to Millom necessarily has to factor into his or her planned journey to the place.
