True Adventures, 40” x 30”, December 2005, Acrylic on canvasfrom Kenneth White’s poem, Walking the Coast
who has not observed it
the primal movement
the play of wind on water
the undulation
the glassy membrane
lifted
excited
and energised
by insisting air
the curving
the deliberate inflection
the flurry of whiteness
the bright cast of spray
the long falling rush
and the hundredfold ripple
The above quotation is from the book, ‘The Bird Path: Selected Longer Poems’.
Kenneth White is relatively unknown in Britain but has been awarded some of France’s most prestigious literary prizes, including the Prix Medicis Etranger (1983) and the French Academy’s Grand Prix du Rayonnement (1985) for the entire body of his work.
Kenneth White writes in English - not French. His work is now out-of-print in the UK (and US) but is still available in translation in German, Greek, Spanish, Bulgarian, Dutch and so on and so on.
