Across the Territories: Travels from Orkney to Rangiroa

by Kenneth White

An initial mapping of this book might say that it goes from the Orkneys to Polynesia via Scandinavia and the Baltic regions, the Iberian peninsula, and North America. But Kenneth White's method is impossible to sum up: the thing is to get out on the road with him. Along with, for example, three Quebeckers from the St Lawrence river-country through the forest and along the coast of Maine, or with an eleven-century Jewish poet across Spain. Other chapters will take the reader to the haunts of migrating cranes in Sweden, the misty margins of Portugal, across the plains of Poland, into the Atlas mountains, or along the coast of Norway into the Lofotens. The book ends on the atoll of Rangiroa in the Tuamotu archipelago, on a shore of dark jagged coral, wild bird cries and empty sea. The result of the whole complex process is an acutely increased sensation of life, a vastly enlarged experience of the world.

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2004

About the author

Kenneth White was a Scottish poet, academic and writer. He spent his formative years in Fairlie in Ayrshire.

White obtained a double first in French and German from the University of Glasgow. From 1959 until 1963, he studied at the University of Paris, where he obtained a state doctorate. He purchased Gourgounel, an old farm in the Ardèche region of France, where he could spend the summers and autumns studying and working on what would become Letters from Gourgounel.

In 1963, White returned to the University of Glasgow, where he lectured in French literature until 1967. Then, disillusioned by the contemporary British literary and poetry scene, he resigned from the University and moved to the city of Pau, near the Pyrenees, in south-west France, where he lectured in English at the University of Bordeaux. He was expelled from the University after his involvement in the student protests of May 1968. After leaving the University of Bordeaux, White remained at Pau and lectured at the University of Paris VII from 1969 until 1983, when he left the Pyrenees for the north coast of Brittany, and a new position as the chair of 20th century poetics at Paris-Sorbonne.

In 1989, White founded the International Institute of Geopoetics to further promote research into the cross-cultural, transdisciplinary field of study which he had been developing during the previous decade.

White held honorary doctorates from the University of Glasgow, the University of Edinburgh and the Open University. He was an honorary member of the Royal Scottish Academy, and a visiting professor at Scotland's UHI Millennium Institute.

Reviews

[Grim-Anal King · Rating 2 out of 5]

The world's self-appointed deepest geopoet delivers a colection which reads like a half arsed travelogue involving interesting locations and not so interesting asides. The Scandinavian bits are good but the further south he goes the more it drags.

[C.M. Mayo · Rating 5 out of 5]

White is a Scottish poet and founder of the Institute for Geopoetics. Beautiful and humorous. (Thanks to L. Peat O'Neil for the suggestion.)

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

really enjoyable, very singsongy style of writing which was like reading a lullaby late at night. the places he went are so interesting as is what he tells you about them.