Commons in Contemporary British Nature Writing: Literary Form into Praxis

Smith, Jos ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3826-6416 (2025) Commons in Contemporary British Nature Writing: Literary Form into Praxis. New Formations, 115. ISSN 0950-2378

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Abstract

How do contemporary British nature writers think with, write with, and represent commons as landscapes? Sites of violent dispossession and vestigial survival, sites of haunting and historical traces, and sites of contemporary and future possibility, British commons represent a distinctive set of affordances for authors today. This article explores how two authors – Nick Hayes and Helen Baczkowska – have engaged with these landscapes and what their writing can tell us about the status and meanings of commons today. It draws on the idea of the ‘double character’ of commons aesthetics 1 , investigating the commons both in the context of the literary aesthetics of nature writing and in the context of the activism of these authors, a kind of social cultural work that exceeds and expands such aesthetics. The article draws out an argument about the conflicted presence of British commons that these authors help to make visible, a presence caught in a tension between historic losses and speculative possibilities.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	the commons,commons aesthetics,nature writing,nick hayes,trespass,helen baczkowska
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Modern and Contemporary Writing Research Group
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	14 May 2026 15:15
Last Modified:	02 Nov 2026 10:01
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103025
DOI:	10.3898/NEWF:115.06.2025

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