“Matt Gilbert’s writing marvels in the spirit of place; his poetry wanders, camera-like, along overgrown tracks through woods, riverbanks, wastegrounds that are rewilding; he takes us on journeys to greening edgelands that spill into urban decay. Gilbert ‘s eye pans, then zooms in, on the minutiae that most of us ignore, the neglected details of our physical environment. Matt Gilbert is a descriptive, modern poet of nature with a scalpel-like pen and eye for the arresting image as he quietly transcribes, always searching for the near-perfect word and phrase. He plunges us into deep time, recording mysterious odysseys into the places, traces and symbols of the ancient past.”

Matthew M. C. Smith, Editor of Black Bough poetry, three times-nominated ‘Best of the Net’ writer

2023

May

‘Street Sailing’
My debut poetry book.
On Black Bough Poetry.
Cover by Ben Pearce

Article in Bristol 24/7 on ‘Street Sailing’.
+ two poems set in & around my hometown.

Interview with The Wombwell Rainbow
on writing Street Sailing.
Influences, inspiration and urban nature.

Acumen 106
‘Halcyon Day’

April

‘Norwood Grove’
Sound & Vision:
A Top Tweet Tuesday/Black Bough
Poetry Online only edition

‘A scrap of screaming blue’
BOLD: An Anthology
of Masculinity themed
Creative Writing
The Broken Spine

‘A Kick Out of Nowhere’
Pulp Poets Press

March

‘A Dulwich hermit’
Finished Creatures
Issue Seven

February
‘Flaming Bench’
The Storms, Issue 2

February
Atrium, a poem:
‘Flower of Bristol’

January
Spare Parts Lit Vol 4.
A poem: ‘Cold Trail’

2022

December Authora Australis
Issue 5 – The City
Three poems: On the fence,
Take the second exit and
Drowning under flowers

December Black Bough Poetry
Christmas-Winter Edition III
A poem called ‘Winter Shade’
(page 61)

November Dreich
Season 5 Number 5
Passing acquaintance, Catching up,
Calling out a plane tree, Bright sided,
Sky Pirates (pp 24-27)

October Mono Issue Three
Poem: ‘On the bench’

September Black Bough Poetry
Silver Poets Feature
A profile, several poems
& a piece of Creative non-fiction
about my fave local cafe The Electric.

September Flight of the dragonfly,
Flights e-journal Issue 6 Three poems:
‘Rehearshing the eremocene’,
‘Spalted wood’, ‘Pollarding’.

June Broken Sleep Books,
Footprints: an anthology of new ecopoetry
Poem: ‘Goodnight Phillip Island’

May Lothlorien Poetry Journal
Two poems:
‘Beyond DIY’ & ‘An average sort of stone’

March Briefly Zine 8
Poem: ‘Outside Broadcast’

March Ink Sweat and Tears
‘Afoot’ poem of the day (16 March)

March Marble Poetry Magazine
Issue 11 – Poem: ‘Domestic’

February Cerasus Magazine Winter Special
Two poems: ‘Character assassination’& ‘Screaming party’

February Patchwork Lit Mag3
A dramatic/poetic dialogue called ‘Home’

January The Broken Spine,
Angels and Dogs Poetry Project,
Poem: ‘Entrance’

2021

December Atrium
Poem: ‘Tickenham Hill’.

October Green Ink – Roots
Poem: ‘Some men and a horse’ 

October Fevers of the Mind
Poem: ‘Ridley Road‘

September EatTheStorms
One of the guest readers on Damien Donnelly’s
fantastic poetry podcast.

August Dreich – Season 3 #2
Four poems: ‘Like a hole in the park’, ‘Long Meadow’
‘Mighty pockets’ and ‘Of dust’

July Mono
Guest blog: “In search of the remarkably mundane’

June Green Ink Poetry
Poem: ‘Hard Loving’ in the ‘Discovery’ Issue.

June Mono
Poem: ‘A cultured voice’.
(no longer on their blog,
but you can read it here)

April The Dawntreader
Poem: ‘Mudlarking’ in issue 54.

March The BeZine
Poem: ‘Garden Be Wild’, in the SustainABILITY issue.

Jan Anthropocene
Poem: ‘How to flatten the moon’ @anthro_poetry

2020

December The Dawntreader
Poem: ‘Wood Echoes’ in issue 53 @IndigoDreamsPub

Oct Blackbough Poetry
Poem: ‘Starless’ in Deep Time Vol 2 @blackboughpoems

Sep The Dawntreader
Two poems: ‘Foxed’ and ‘Cormorant’ in issue 52
@IndigoDreamsPub

Jul Blackbough Poetry
Poem: ‘Red echoes’ – Deep Time Vol 1.
inspired by Rob Macfarlane’s Underland @blackboughpoems

2019

Picaroon Poetry
One poem in each of: Picaroon 14, Jan 2019 & Picaroon 15, March 2019
(you can download a pdf of the relevant issue by clicking the respective link).

2018

Elsewhere Journal blog, January 
Guest blog: A village pond without a village

2017

Elsewhere Journal blog, May 16
Guest blog: Back down Ashley Vale 

Earthlines, Issue 12, July 2015
Article: ‘Walking London back to life’

The Literary Platform, September 2012
Article: How digital is making maps personal

Originally published on The Literary Platform September 4 2012

Reporter Matt Gilbert

Can technology give us the power us to cast aside traditional maps and find our own routes to meaning? Situationism enthusiast Matt Gilbert looks at some of the latest projects and technologies that are putting the user back on the map

Humans have always tried to interpret and understand the world through maps, and digital and mobile technology has made locating ourselves easier than ever. Anyone with access to the internet, a smartphone or Sat-Nav can, with the flick of a finger, consume detailed mapping information – provided there’s network coverage where you’re standing.

One tap can pull up satellite, street and conventional views, another lets you delve into further layers of data, telling you what you can see, do and buy nearby. The problem is, no map ever tells the truth – or at least, not the whole of it. Whether you get your map from a rum-soaked pirate, Ordnance Survey, Google or TomTom, all of the information it contains is partial. Someone else, often a corporation or government, has chosen what goes in and what’s left out. But what if we could use this technology to create a different kind of map? A highly personal map that grew and shrank, advanced and retreated as we lived out our lives?

What if we could create our own, highly individual, map of the world as only we see it?

Artists and philosophers have long been attracted to this kind of redrawing. One of the more influential is Guy Debord’s 1955 ‘Psychogeographic’ Map of Paris, in which the city is divided up into ‘zones of distinct atmospheres’, then cut up and rearranged to emphasize the different ambiences individuals could perceive in the same city.

Author Jonathan Raban’s 1974 book ‘Soft City’ is, in part, a fascinating exploration of the relation between the imagined, personal, “soft city” and the physical built environment – the “hard city”. Similarly, novelist Nicholas Royle’s ‘The Matter of the Heart‘, involves the notion of ‘Emotional Routes’: discrete ways around a city, adopted by individuals, based not on the most direct ways to travel between places, but on areas and streets that are meaningful to them, so that when taken they deliberately pass through places that resonate with the emotional charge of past encounters, events and situations.

Artist Stephen Walter offers a visual approach with his delightfully intricate maps of Liverpool and London, charting the cities not as birds-eye views of street plans, but as cultural and personal constructs, with highly detailed commentary, notes and drawings marking out the distinctive and special in different parts of each city.

In the digital space, the potential for exploring this territory is massive. There are some intriguing projects underway, from those supported by major scientific research institutions to individual artists. MIT Media Lab has developed Behavio, an open-source Android platform that turns smartphones into sensors. The software can be used by anyone to gather data from mobile usage to study their own behavioural trends and potentially those of entire communities. Open Street Map is an alternative to corporate maps, which hands people shared control of free geographic data and mapping that can be used in creative and experimental ways.

Questioning the way technology affects the way we view the world and ourselves is the web doc Bear 71. Made by Leanne Allison and Jeremy Mendes for the National Film Board of Canada, this allows people to follow a grizzly bear on its journeys around Banff National Park, Canada, via an interactive map linked to footage taken from a series of remote trail cameras. The project premiered at this year’s Sundance festival with a live installation, co-created by Lance Weiler, which mixed facial detection software, augmented reality, motion sensors, wireless trail-cam QR codes, projection and data visualization to deliver the experience.

Finally a project that takes us back to Guy Debord, who may well have delighted in the potential of digital technology to play with ideas of space and perception. His theories – specifically the Letterist International and Situationist concept of the dérive- a random, or unplanned journey through an urban space – inform an art project called Drift. Developed by Justin Langlois and Broken City Lab, Drift is a mobile tool to help you get lost in familiar places. To my mind a true dérive should involve nothing but the walker’s imagination, but this assisted version looks fun, nevertheless.

We now have more ways than ever to record, track and share our place and movements in the world, from checking in to places we visit, to plotting and analysing runs or even counting how many stairs we’ve climbed. Could all this self-tracking help create a unique, emotional map for everyone, that morphs and changes according to the resonance particular places have for us at a given time? I’m not sure that something so mutable and personal could realistically be captured by a digital platform or app, but if someone develops the tools I’d be interested in finding out what my map looks like – and how it compares to everyone else’s.

For more of Matt Gilbert’s writing, see his blog: https://richlyevocative.wordpress.com/

 Curiocity – E – Escaping London

Originally published September 2013 in Curiocity Magazine.

Folly

Look for an ancient monastic ruin at the heart of Sydenham Hill Wood. These trees are the last physical echo of the Great North Wood, recalled in the name of surrounding areas, such as West Norwood and Forest Hill. The ruin is in fact a Victorian folly, built in the 1860s in the grounds of a house called Fairwood, which once stood here. Every day dog owners, toddlers and walkers are drawn to the site, using it as a marker on their journey before returning to such distant realms as Crystal Palace, West Dulwich and Penge. MG