Poetic Commoning in European Cities – Or on the Alchemy of Concrete

Abstract

This piece presents an exploration into how to write-do-think ineffable affective experiences that might cultivate more than human ethical relations in concrete environments. Learning from two urban commoning projects, I take guidance from Édouard Glissant’s aesthetic of the earth to recognize poetic practices that might seem anachronistic or naïve, awkward or intrusive, and in apparent contradiction to rational thought and critical politics. I adopt what Joan Retallack calls a “poethical attitude” to offer (reasoned) compositions with concrete as material and metaphor … mixed with a shimmer of alchemy.