Walking America Turtle Island* welcomes two poets, Cole Swensen and Lisa Robertson, who embrace walking as fundamental to their creative practices, and often as subject matter too. Cole Swensen’s On Walking On (Nightboat Books, 2017) interweaves short poetic chronicles of particular walks with poetic commentary on other walking writers’ work, from Chaucer to Lisa Robertson. Both Robertson’s essay collection, Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture, (Clear Cut Press, 2003; reissued by Coach House Books, 2011) and her novel The Baudelaire Fractal (Coach House Books, 2020), like walking itself, resist and drift from the confines of genre. Moving through pastoral and urban landscapes, both writers replicate the irregular pace of stride and thought in their cadenced observations. Join these two writers in conversation with host Ann de Forest as they talk about walking in and writing about place, the symbiosis between poetry and walking, and how walking informs their artistic practices.
*Turtle Island, as poet Gary Snyder beautifully defines in the introduction to his 1974 poetry collection of the same name: “…the old/new name for the continent, based on many creation myths of the people who have been living here for millenia, and reapplied by some of them to ‘North America’ in recent years. Also, an idea found world-wide, of the earth, or cosmos even, sustained by a great turtle or serpent-of-eternity.”
Walking America is a quarterly series of conversations that brings together American writers whose books share common themes. Ann de Forest, writer and editor of the anthology Ways of Walking(New Door Books, 2022), hosts and moderates the lively exchange, which touches on, among other topics, walking as a mode of research, walking as creative act, the challenges of writing about walking, as well as of walking to write. Audience questions and participation are encouraged!
| Video recording of Walk America 4 |
Related
On Walking On
On Walking On looks outward onto—or rather, walks through—the work of various writers for whom walking was or is an important element of daily life. The number of writers who were or are serious walkers is striking, and the connection goes back to antiquity, more recently including Woolf, Nerval, Sand, Debord, Sebald, and many others.
The Baudelaire Fractal
The debut novel by acclaimed poet Lisa Robertson, in which a poet realizes she’s written the works of Baudelaire. One morning, Hazel Brown awakes in a badly decorated hotel room to find that she’s written the complete works of Charles Baudelaire. In her bemusement the hotel becomes every cheap room she ever stayed in during
Occasional Works and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture
What if there is no ‘space,’ only a permanent, slow-motion mystic takeover, an implausibly careening awning? Nothing is utopian. Everything wants to be. Soft Architects face the reaching middle. If architecture is the language of concrete and steel, then Soft Architecture needs a vocabulary of ?esh, air, fabric and colour. It’s about civic surface and
Walking America – writers in conversation hosted by Ann de Forest with guests Cole Swensen & Lisa Robertson
Walking America Turtle Island* welcomes two poets, Cole Swensen and Lisa Robertson, who embrace walking as fundamental to their creative practices, and often as subject matter too. Cole Swensen’s On Walking On (Nightboat Books, 2017) interweaves short poetic chronicles of particular walks with poetic commentary on other walking writers’ work, from Chaucer to Lisa Robertson. Both Robertson’s essay collection, Occasional Work and Seven