In the course of his essay, ‘Dwelling without Roots’, on the famously homeless and geographically displaced American poet Elizabeth Bishop, Tom Paulin makes clear his deep distrust of those views of place which see it as a constant, the source of authentic value and identity. For Paulin, ideas of home rooted in history, land, language, tribe, ancestry and race memory harbour a dangerous essentialism. Such ideas conjure up for him the figure of Martin Heidegger and Heidegger's image of the peasant cottage in the Black Forest that has long been dwelt in and embodies ‘the forces stemming from earth and blood’. In Paulin's view, Heidegger dwells on the apparently natural and traditional in order to naturalise a violent politics: ‘How easily Romantic ideas of authenticity, rootedness, traditional crafts, folklore, take on the stink of power politics and genocide’. Instead, Paulin feels drawn towards those poets such as Elizabeth Bishop who use their poems to ‘erect a makeshift building nowhere’ (M 191). This ‘rooted’-‘makeshift’ axis is used to structure his long poem ‘The Caravans on Luneberg Heath’. Here, Heidegger's idea of authentic dwelling is summarily dismissed: ‘Go chew acorns/ Mr Heidegger/ you went with the Nazis’.