On “Borrowing Landscapes” and “Shared Consciousness”: Alec Finlay and Ken Cockburn’s Collaborative Projects Writing Through Matsuo Bashō’s Oku no Hosomichi

Monika Kocot

FULL TEXT

ABSTRACT (en)

The article explores multimodal references to Matsuo Bashō’s philosophy of writing in Alec Finlay’s collaborative projects. In my discussion of Bashō-inspired texts, I focus on two forms of shared writing as exemplified in Alec Finlay and Ken Cockburn’s the road north book of poetry and a blog, both based on a journey through Scotland guided by Bashō’s Oku no Hosomichi that took place between 15 May 2010 and 15 May 2011. The theme of “borrowed landscape,” a term used in classical Japanese gardening, will be introduced in a comparative reading of the road north and Bashō’s Oku no Hosomichi. As will be argued, by “translating” Bashō’s and his companion Sora’s journey to Scotland (the Scottish North), Finlay and Cockburn attempt to draw up a new (mental) cartography.

KEYWORDS (en)

Matsuo Bashō, Alec Finlay, Ken Cockburn, Zhuangzi, shared writing, borrowed landscapes, travel writing, road north, Scotland, Japan

DOI

https://doi.org/10.14712/2571452X.2023.66.7

SOURCES

Barnhill, David Landis. Bashō’s Journey. The Literary Prose of Matsuo Bashō. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005.

Bashō, Matsuo. Back Roads to Far Towns, Basho’s Travel Journal. Translated by Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu. Tokyo: Grossman Publishers, 1968.

Bashō, Matsuo. Back Roads to Far Towns, Basho’s Travel Journal. Translated by Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu. Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 2004.

Bashō, Matsuo. The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches. Translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa. London: Penguin, 1966.

Carter, Robert E. Becoming Bamboo: Western and Eastern Explorations of the Meaning of Life. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992.

Corman, Cid and Kamaike Susumu. “Introduction.” In Matsuo Bashō, Back Roads to Far Towns, Basho’s Travel Journal. Translated by Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu, 7-11. Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 2004.

Creeley, Robert. “Foreword.” In Ian Hamilton Finlay, The Dancers Inherit the Party and Glasgow Beasts, 9-10. Edinburgh: Polygon, 1996. Cullen, Gordon. Townscape. New York: Reinhold, 1961.

Finlay, Alec. “Overview: còmhlan bheanntan | A Company of Mountains.” Company of Mountains. http://www.company-of-mountains.com/p/overview.html. Finlay, Alec. “Saint Fillan’s Hill.” The Road North, 16 August 2010. http://the-roadnorth.blogspot.com/2010/08/14-saint-fillans-hill.html.

Finlay, Alec. “Twin Peaks.” Alec Finlay, 12 March 2013. http://alecfinlayblog. blogspot.com/2013/03/a-company-of-mountains.html. Finlay, Alec and Ken Cockburn. the north road. Bristol: Shearsman Books, 2014.

Gairn, Louisa. Ecology and Modern Scottish Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. “Interview with Alec Finlay on Navigations.” Animate Projects, January 2013. https://animateprojectsarchive.org/interviews/alec_finlay.

Itoh, Teiji. Space & Illusion: In the Japanese Garden. New York: Weatherhill/ Tankosha, 1981. Keene, Donald. “Bashō’s Journey of 1684.” Asia Major 7 (November 1959): 131-44.

Kocot, Monika. “Geopoetics and the Poetry of Consciousness: A Transmodern Perspective.” In Transmodern Perspectives on Contemporary Literatures in English, edited by Jessica Aliaga-Lavrijsen and José María Yebra-Pertusa, 178-203. London: Routledge, 2019.

Kocot, Monika. “Kenneth White’s North Road Travelling.” In W drodze / On the Road – Perspektywy badawcze, edited by Anna Suwalska-Kołecka and Jakub Ligor, Monika Kocot 124 107-25. Płock: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Mazowieckiej Uczelni Publicznej w Płocku, 2019.

Kocot, Monika. “Writing the Road: On Drifting and Travelling-Seeing in Kenneth White’s Geopoetics.” ANGLICA. An International Journal of English Studies 29, no. 3 (2020): 45-62.

Kuitert, Wybe. “Borrowing Scenery and the Landscape That Lends – The Final Chapter of Yuanye.” Journal of Landscape Architecture 10, no. 2 (2015): 32-43. DOI: 10.1080/18626033.2015.1058570.

Morgan, Edwin. “Roof of Fireflies.” In Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry, edited by W.N. Herbert and Matthew Hollis. Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 2000.

Nobuo, Hori. “Bashō at the Center of Creation.” Translated by Cheryl Crowley. In Matsuo Bashō’s Poetic Spaces. Exploring Haikai Intersections, edited by Eleanor Kerkham, 23-31. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Qiu, Peipei. “Reinventing the Landscape: The Zhuangzi and the Geographical Imagination of Bashō. In Matsuo Bashō’s Poetic Spaces. Exploring Haikai Intersections, edited by Eleanor Kerkham, 61-77. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Rodger, Calum. “Poems of the Infra-Ordinary: Alec Finlay’s Question Your Teaspoons.” Glasgow Review of Books, 28 May 2013. http://glasgowreviewofbooks.com/2013/ 05/28/poems-of-the-infra-extraordinary/. Scarfo, Bob. Landscape Architecture As Storytelling: Learning Design Through Analogy. New York: Routledge, 2023. Ebook.

Schiller, David. The Little Zen Companion. New York: Workman Publishing, 1994.

Smith, Stewart. “Basho Borne on the Carrying Stream: The Word-Mapping of Scotland and the Ecopoetics of Wind Power in Alec Finlay’s The Road North and Skying.” In Environmental and Ecological Readings: Nature, Human and Posthuman Dimensions in Scottish Literature and Arts (XVIII-XXI c.), edited by Philippe Laplace, 217-34. Besançon: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comte, 2015. DOI: 10.4000/books.pufc.9183.

Snyder, Gary. “Endless Streams and Mountains.” In Mountains and Rivers Without End, 5-9. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 1996.

Spence, Alan. Edinburgh Come All Ye. Edinburgh: Scotland Street Press, 2022.

Yasuda, Kenneth. Japanese Haiku. Its Essential Nature and History. Boston, MA: Tuttle Publishing, 2011.