Writing the Road: On Drifting and Travelling-Seeing in Kenneth White’s Geopoetics

Abstract

The article will off er a comparative reading of Kenneth White’s poetry, essays and travelogues/waybooks, with the focus on the issue of travelling, in particular the theme of drifting, the practice of writing-travelling and travelling-seeing (voyage-voyance). I will also try to demonstrate that there is a link between White’s theory of geopoetics and the practice of voyage-voyance in his writing. I will focus mainly on selected passages from the chapters of Travels in the Drifting Dawn and poems in which White discusses the issue of his writing-travelling and the process of self-realisation.