A Flaneur is “a person who walks the city to experience it.” The term became popular through the writings of Baudelaire, who thought of the flaneur as someone who was both a voyeur of the city as well as someone who was completely within it. In the mid 18th century, artists and writers took up the idea of flaneur and began to walk turtles on leashes through the Paris marketplace. In general, the term refers to a person who sees the city fully, an observer who slows down enough to analyze the social, the architectural, the infrastructural and psychic nature of the modern city.

Flaneur Walks Northampton is a poetic/conceptual walking tour series dreamt up by Shape&Nature Press. We have asked two writers from Northampton, Connolly Ryan and Betsy Wheeler, to each write a poetic/conceptual walking tour that guides readers through a re-exploration, re-habitation and re-experiencing of the town through the writer's eyes.  Readers will then be able to buy the pamphlets and take the walks on their own as the writers instruct. These are not your usual walking tours filled with historical tid-bits and local lore.  Instead, expect to be taken on a poetic journey that investigates the psychic nature of the city.

Shape&Nature Press will publish the walks using a local print shop and will have the pamphlets available for sale via their website and in some of Northampton's stores and businesses. The walks should be ready early this summer, and we're hoping to throw a fun opening party where readers can take the walks with the poets themselves.

We are asking for this mini-grant to help pay the poets for their work and to offset the cost of printing.

Meet the Poets

Connolly Ryan was born in Greenwich Village, New York. He is currently a professor of literature at University of Massachusetts where he was thrice a finalist for the Distinguished Teaching Award. His poetry has been published in various journals including Harvard Review, Scythe, Bateau, Slope, Meat For Tea, Pannax Index, and Old Crow. He is also a multiple Pushcart nominee. He has two finished Manuscripts: Fort Polio and The Uncle Becky Chronicles. Connolly can be seen riding his bike down the streets of Northampton on any sunny day.

Betsy Wheeler studied poetry and the art of the book at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse where she was a Maple House Fellow for Sutton Hoo Press. After a brief stint working in the publishing industry in Minnesota’s Twin Cities (as an Intern at Graywolf Press, and as Events Coordinator at Consortium), she went on to receive her MFA in poetry from The Ohio State University. From 2005-2007 she held the Stadler Fellowship at Bucknell University. She now works as Managing Director for the Juniper Summer Writing Institute at UMass, Amherst and is editor and publisher of Pilot Books—a poetry micro-press. Her poems have appeared in Bat City Review, The Journal, Pebble Lake Review, Forklift Ohio, Octopus, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Start Here, is available from Small Anchor Press. A yoga devotee and damn fine cook, she lives in Northampton, MA with her partner, Meghan, and their two cats, Ollie and Brodie. 

Shape&Nature Press is a small, independent press run by poets Maria Williams-Russell and Julia Bouwsma.  Our projects and books are funded mostly through the change in our shallow pockets because we think it is important to have quality contemporary and innovative literature out in the world.  It is a labor of love, which is why we are currently seeking non-profit status and why we are asking for this mini grant. 

The press has a mission to dream up and help facilitate literary art projects in addition to publishing books of poetry and fiction. Our first project was The Favorite Words Project, which collected favorite words from all over the world and published them on bumper stickers as a moving installation. In September, we launched the Things To Come Poetry Prize for a book of poetry. Visit us at www.shapeandnature.com