Maritime Poetics : From Coast to Hinterland In the past fifty years port cities around the world have experienced considerable changes to their morphologies and their identities. The increasing intensification of global networks and logistics and the resulting pressure on human societies and earthly environments have been characteristic of the rise of a »planetary age«. This volume argues that contemporary artistic practices and critical poetics trace an alternate construction of the imaginaries and aspirations of our present societies at the crossroads of sea and land taking into account complex pasts and interconnected histories transnational flux as well as material and immaterial borders Frontmatter Contents Foreword Introduction: maritime introspections Part 1: Work and leisure in the port city Altona: Between land and sea The future of work: scaffolds and agencies Genoa: the story of a port city and its hinterland European seaport narratives: mirroring history in contemporary media Part 2: Commerce Market stall: maritime commerce in the collections of European maritime museums From lighthouses to barcodes The European tour Bottleneck pressure: Port Said Part 3: Metabolic pressure Tarnished gold: border regimes from the Mediterranean to Switzerland Liquid territory They cleaned the beach before we arrived Between the city and the deep sea: on the plastic nature of the Helsinki shoreline No trophy Part 4: Dreamscapes Haul away: Liverpools irregular currents North Canada English Electric 2010 A short journey (from Derry to Inishowen) A letter to Henrietta Acoustic ocean: annotated video script