Mythogeography: A guide to walking sideways

by Phil Smith
£28 for The Lovely Edition, £12.50 for The Economical Edition, www.mythogeography.com, ISBN 978 0 95626 313 1

The act of walking can be a political protest, personal expression, spiritual discovery and geographical deconstruction – all part of a tradition from the drift and dérive of the Situationists to today’s psychogeographers such as Iain Sinclair and Will Self. Exeter-based performance artist Phil Smith is a veteran sideways walker and in this book develops psychogeography into mythogeography. It’s a compendium of walking stories, hoaxes and digressions, lists, literary jokes, observations and dense passages of prose poetry-cum- theory. Pretentious at times perhaps, but you’d have a hard heart not to enjoy some of Smith’s involving, passionate and often very funny storytelling. Des de Moor