Landfill

If the history of civilisation has been a journey away from our rubbish, John Wedgwood Clarke’s Landfill seeks to reverse that journey; to get us behind the chain-link fence of the dump and witness the sublime mess we’ve made of things.

Clarke marvels at the ‘confessions of a people’, at archaeology in the making, with poems about old cookers, fridges, fluorescent tubes and heaps of plastic bottles. Out of their usual locations, these objects become strangely eloquent about the shape of our lives.

Acknowledging that the beautiful view and decluttered house depend on the dump, Clarke responds here with neither cynicism nor sentiment; instead offering fresh perspective on a vital yet hidden part of our world.