Tag: Matsuo Basho
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Teifi Valley Trail, day 1: Teifi Pools loop to Pontrhyfendigaid
Ystrad Fflur (Strata Florida) is the official starting point of Teifi Valley Trail. At least it is if you’re walking from source to sea, which is the best way, unless you’ve mastered the art of reading guidebooks backwards. It isn’t the easiest place to get to, if you start out from Mumbles, as I have. …
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Grass for pillow: early Japanese travel poems
Last year Penguin published a selection of classical Japanese writings about travel. Travels with a writing brush, edited by the Australian translator Meredith McKinney, didn’t receive much attention at the time, but it’s a wonderful and wonderfully varied introduction to poetry and prose written in Japan between the seventh and seventeenth centuries. For anyone who’s…
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Walking poets
In 2012 the Huddersfield poet Simon Armitage published a book called Walking home, about a trip he made on foot two years earlier from north to south along the length of the Pennine Way. He started without a penny in his pocket, paying for his accommodation and meals through poetry readings he gave at various…