Wendy Swearingen

City Smells Wendy Swearingen

Cities are as much collections of smells as they are collections of bricks: smells define them. From one block to another you can be overwhelmed by any number of odours: the garbage outside a busy restaurant, flowers on display outside a florist or freshly ground coffee as you meander past an open door to a café. Some city smells make you sigh warmly and think of old friends; others, like those that seep out of dank alleyways, make you skip a step and screw up your nose. Those of us that live in cities cannot avoid the olfactory messages that the streets bombard us with. Nor should we. This book is an international collection of poetry, fiction and non-fiction dedicated to celebrating the redolent urban bouquet. So take a deep breath, and enjoy this assorted mélange of City Smells.