Biography
Plenitude 2002-2023
2002
Is awarded the ARDUA prize (Bordeaux) for his work as a whole. Prepares the edition of his Collected Poems, Open World, published the following year by Polygon, Edinburgh. Follows more bird paths in the Indian Ocean.
2003
A symposium Horizons de Kenneth White : littérature, pensée, géopoétique (Horizons of Kenneth White – Literature, Thought, Geopoetics) is held at Bordeaux, its papers published by Isolato, Paris, in 2007. Another symposium on his work is held in Scotland at the University of St Andrews, leading to a book published in 2005 by Alba Editions under the title Grounding a World. The film Sur la trace des esprits ailés (The Traces Left by Winged Minds) shot by Michel Dupuy, director of Les Films du moment in his collection « Terre d’écrivains », receives the citation for literature at the UNESCO International Film Festival for art and education. Trip to Polynesia : a lecture on Gauguin at Tahiti in the context of a conference organized by the University of French Polynesia, followed by a journey from island to island.
2004
Takes part in an international poetry symposium in Italy at Stresa-Orta organised by the literary review Atelier. An international colloquium on geopoetics is held at Geneva, organized by the University of Geneva. Lecture on Rimbaud, at the poet’s birth-place, Charleville-Mézières. Lecture on Saint-John Perse in Paris at an international colloquium on that poet organized by the Sorbonne. Publishes two new books in Britain : The Wanderer and his Chartsand Across the Territories. Receives the Édouard-Glissant prize attributed by the University of Paris-VIII for his « openness to the cultures of the world ».
2005
Publishes three new books in France : Le Passage extérieur (poems), La Maison des marées (French version of House of Tides), L’Ermitage des brumes (The Hermitage of the mist – interviews on his relationship to the East, with an anthology of his haikus). Lectures : at an international symposium in Cerisy on the theory of complexity ; at the University of Rennes for the inauguration of a new Maison des sciences de l’homme ; on prehistory and geopoetics at the National Museum of Prehistory in the Dordogne ; at the Edinburgh Book Festival (« What is World Writing ? ») ; in north-west Scotland (« A reading of Atlantic culture ») as the recipient of the first Hi-Arts International Fellowship. Receives an honorary doctorate from the Open University.
2006
Publication of Le Rôdeur des confins (French version of Across the Territories). Lectures : at the Cité des Sciences on the theme of « Poetic intelligence » ; at the Iberian and Latino-American section of the University of Paris-III on « Travelling and founding » ; at the abbey of Bonport on the theme of « Open World » ; in Munich at the World Congress of Geometers on geopoetics ; at the Grand Bivouac Festival of Albertville on travel. Is awarded the Prix Bretagne for his book La Maison des marées and his work as a whole. In Scotland, is nominated Visiting Professor to the projected University of the Highlands and Islands. Publishes the lectures done in Scotland in 2002 under the title On the Atlantic Edge.
2007
Publication in Paris, in the collection Poésie/Gallimard, of Un monde ouvert, a large selection of his complete poetic work to date. This year sees also the publication of his essay on Deleuze, Dialogue avec Deleuze, along with the re-edition of his book on Victor Segalen, Les Finisterres de l’esprit, at Isolato Editions, Paris ; and a re-edition of his Asian travels, Le Visage du vent d’est, with Albin Michel, Paris. A new study of his work, by Tony McManus, is published in Scotland : The Radical Field. Readings at the « national people’s theatre » (TNP) of Villeurbanne and at the festival Étonnants Voyageurs at Saint-Malo. Lectures : in Paris, in the « Travel series » of the Éditions Transboréal ; at the Ullapool Book Festival, on Scottish literature ; at Tournefeuille at the Festival of History and literature ; at the Edinburgh Book Festival, on « radical writing » ; at the Hebridean Book Festival, Stornoway, on the question of insularity ; at the Inverness Book Festival, on the work of Neil Gunn. President of the International Poetry Biennale at Liège, in Belgium. Guest of honour at the Books in Brittany festival at Bécherel (lectures and readings). Honorary President of the Breton Book Festival, Guérande. To cool off, trip to Alaska.
2008
Begins to sort out manuscripts and correspondence for a deposit of his French archives at the IMEC (Institut Mémoires de l’Édition Contemporaine), the equivalent of his Scottish archives at the National Library in Edinburgh. Inaugural lecture (« Pilot-Plan for a Highliner University ») as Visiting Professor at the projected University of the Highlands and Islands. Takes part at the St Andrews Poetry Festival. Later in the year, at the Istrian Book Festival, Pula, Croatia, with talks, interviews and readings on the theme of nomadism. In Italy, receives the Grinzane-Biamonti prize for his work as a whole.
2009
Continues his activity as travelling lecturer. In France at the municipal library of Dinan, Brittany ; at the book festival in Montpellier ; and at the school of architecture, Clermont-Ferrand. Guest of honour at the Book Festival of Montenegro, with lectures and readings. Delivers a lecture at the National Library of Scotland : « Moving Out –The Extension and Expansion of Scottish Intelligence ». In Paris, publishes a book of essays, Les Affinités extrêmes, which is at one and the same time a homage to certain French writers and a kind of intellectual biography by proxy. This book is awarded the Grand Prix Maurice Genevoix of the Académie française.
2010
Celebrates the new year by breaking a leg on the icy granite steps of his workshop. Carrying in his hands a Japanese earthen teapot, he saves the teapot but shatters his left femur. After ten days in the hospital at Lannion, where he reads Schopenhauer while listening to the talk of the nurses, he gets back to Gwenved where, after a few sessions of kinesitherapy, he begins stomping about on crutches, first around the garden, then on the Pors Mabo road, which has never before seemed to him so beautiful. He uses this accident as a point of departure for studies in bone structure, the mechanisms of walking, and the practice of proprioception. In October, back on his feet again, he does a lecture and a reading on the occasion of the staging, at the town library of Saint-Brieuc, of the exhibition Open World.
2011
Publishes simultaneously La Carte de Guido, un pèlerinage européen (prose) and a new book of poems, Les Archives du littoral, which is awarded the Prix Alain Bosquet. Lecture and reading tour in Corsica : Ajaccio, on intellectual nomadism, Corte, on geopoetics, Bastia, on politics and culture, Bonifacio, a reading of island poems. Other lectures at the European Centre for Archeology in the Morvan (on geopoetics) ; at Pau on « Travel and writing » ; at the Parc régional of the Narbonne area on « walking the territories » ; guest of honour at the Parole ambulante festival in Lyon. Seminar on geopoetics at the University of Paris 3. Participates in a symposium at the Centre culturel of Cerisy-la-Salle on « Alternative cultures » with a presentation of the geopoetics movement. Writes the text, « Le territoire extrême », for a album on the Finistère district of Brittany. Finalizes further loads of archives : English language material for the National Library of Scotland at Edinburgh, French material for the IMEC at the Abbaye d’Ardenne near Caen.
2012
Engaged in a big bout of scriptorial work on the artist D. Rousseau’s paper. It’ll be Okeanos — a white bible, the atlas of an atopia, with lines of earth and sea. Tour of conferences and meetings in the Tarn. He announces the intention of leaving the presidency of IIG. Conferences in Genoa, in Brittany and Normandy. Involved and evolving in a welter of work. O fortunatus ego qui in hoc loco vivo. (Kennetus Candidus)
2013
Publishes a new edition of La Route bleue, and, in English, a collection of his poems Latitudes and Longitudes (Aberdeen), the first since Open World (2003). Conferences: in Caen at the IMEC (Institut Mémoires de l’Édition Contemporaine) on “What is World Literature?”” & projection of the film “Les Chemins du Nord profond”; in Aberdeen; in Grenoble (University Stendhal) about « Littérature et mondialisme »; in Trouville on “De la Seine au St Laurent”; in Besançon at the ISBA (Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts) on “De Byzance à Besançon — art, pensée, culture” and a couple of seminars, where he is shown an original edition of Audubon’s Birds of America. Exhibition “Kenneth White’s Open World” in Caen and Besançon. Trip to Paris for an interview on RT Suisse on La Route bleue. After twenty-five years at the helm, he is parting out of the presidency of the Institute. He recommends Régis Poulet as his successor. The General Assembly agrees on 30th September. End of December: tempestuous weather. Brittany is hunching its shoulders.
2014
Published that year: two books of interviews, Une cosmologie de l’énergie and especially Panorama Géopoétique with Régis Poulet, which takes stock of the various geo- that exist; a waybook, Les vents de Vancouver on his exploration of Alaska; and two books of essays, Investigations dans l’espace nomade and a reissue of La Figure du dehors. In his daily existence, all he wants is what a little cat he once knew wanted. Geopoetics colloquium at the Paris Centre culturel canadien. Interview on Rimbaud for France Culture. Grand invité Poésie at the Festival du livre at Mouans-Sartoux. He has to complete a whole geography, cosmography, topologically, geopoetically.
2015
What’s it all about? locus and focus. Published simultaneously two big books of essays, Le Gang du Kosmos, about Poetics and Politics in America, and Au large de l’Histoire, a sequel of Le Plateau de l’albatros. Lectures: in Metz and Nancy. Quick trip to Paris for the launching of a ‘livre d’artiste’, “Les derniers jours d’Audubon” with Bernard Alligand. Stayed at the Hôtel Stella where Rimbaud stayed for a while in 1870. At the General Assembly of the IIG where it is decided to cut off the Quebec Group, the Traversée, for lack of understanding both of the Institute-Archipelago relationship and of the concept of geopoetics. In Paris for a symposium on the relationship between literature and nature.
2016
Publishes La Mer des lumières, a waybook on his stays in the islands of the Indian Ocean. In the spring, studies, without unraveling the plan, the construction by magpies of their nest in the cherry tree. In Paris, at the Maison de la poésie, for a discussion on “Habiter poétiquement le monde” and at the Centre Pompidou for a conference on the Beat Generation. Conference and reading in Chartres. Receives for his Work as a whole the gold medal of the French Renaissance. Spends nine whole days on a poetic work of calligraphy on the papers of Dominique Rousseau for an Opus Geopoeticum.
2017
Publishes a book of essays, Lettres aux derniers lettrés, a waybook dedicated to France, La Traversée des territoires and reissues of Panorama géopoétique and Dérives. Welcomes people in his Atlantic studio for an interview and a film. Lectures: le Havre; Cannes on “La redécouverte des territoires”. In Paris for a presentation and signing of the artist book done with Pierre Delcourt, “Terres ultimes”.
2018
A year rich in essays with Un monde à part, cartes et territoires, a surprising Borderland, ou la mouvance des marges and a reissue of Plateau de l’albatros, to which is added a new waybook on the “Isles of America”, L’archipel du songe. Colloquium in Scotland (Glasgow and Edinburgh) on his work. Closing lecture at the symposium on Segalen at the International culture centre at Cerisy-la-Salle. Lecture in Pont-Aven: “De Paul Gauguin à la géopoétique”. Notes that there is a certain amount of pre-geopoetics and proto-geopoetics, not to speak of pseudo-geopoetics floating about.
2019
Publishes what is perhaps his opus poeticum ultimum, his first book of poems in eight years, Mémorial de la terre océane, but also two books of essays: Thoreau, compagnon de route and Les leçons du vent. Inaugural lecture in Paris at the International conference on “Otherness and Thought from Outside” at Sorbonne Université. The Lisbon trip: lecture on “The Rediscovery of the World” in the symposium ‘As Linhas da Terra’, in tribute to his work; reading, interviews. Back to Trébeurden, disaster struck. It came first in the form of a racking cough, a lost of balance and a fall down the stairs: left shoulder bone broken. Took some time to recover.
2020
He lives in a different space, and according to a different rhythm.
2021
After the big bout of work with the translation of the autobiography, he should have taken time off, but didn’t. Ongoing flood of mails, requests, propositions, invitations. Still pushing his work into areas more and more subtle. His monastery is in the midst of things. In classical terms, it would be “The House of Chaos-Cosmos”. In far-eastern terms, “The Abode of the Void”. Beyond personal identity, the incandescent center: both concrete and abstract, both existential and transcendental. So, the work goes on, while the world plunges into virtual reality. A particularly abundant year in terms of books: in addition to his autobiography Entre deux mondes, he published two short essays, a Biographie poétique de Gary Snyder and a Lettre ouverte du Golfe de Gascogne; saw the reissue of his essay on Hokusai ou l’horizon sensible and explored comics in his own way with La voie du vide et du vent. In parallel with the French edition, the publication of his Collected Works (begun at the Aberdeen University Press) continued with Edinburgh University Press. The first volume, of narratives, entitled Underground to Otherground includes Incandescent Limbo, Letters from Gourgounel and Travels in the Drifting Dawn. Volume two, composed of essays, is entitled Mappings: Landscape, Mindscape, Wordscape; it includes On Scottish Ground, Ideas of Order at Cape Wrath and The Wanderer and his Charts. Add to that an essay written with the Heideggerian philosopher Jeff Malpas, The Fundamental Field, plus a collection of his haikus and essays on the poetic form in Eyes Wide Open — and you have White’s most prolific year of publication.
2022
Those January mornings. Sometimes, a thick grey-yellow mist. Sometimes an iridescence, like the inner surface of an oceanic shell. A second time in years, fall on the stone steps leaving from the atelier level to yard level. A couple of days later, doctor says nothing serious. Contusion. No breakage. The launching of the rare edition of Les Cygnes sauvages was a big success. Superconcentration, serene meditation, calm contemplation. The work goes on on multiple levels and multiple fronts.
2023
Great meditative retreat on the north coast of Brittany. He was born with an undefined energy that took its first references and traits from Scotland but which, while never forgetting them, he went beyond and he is still going beyond. Another misfortune. Stretching out for a book, slipped on papers and came a cropper. This complicated his agenda and in a larger context, his plans. Publishes a lively little book in the spring, The Geopoetic Movement, as well as an interview and continues to work on several books and projects on all levels. He endures and endures. Writes his last two conferences: “Getting out of the labyrinth” and “An Atlantic habitation”. They will be read in his absence at the first “Kenneth White Geopoetics Meetings” held in Trébeurden a few weeks before his death. Their success greatly delighted him. It was there that the transformation of Gwenved into an artist’s and writer’s house of a particular kind was publicly announced. He pushed everything up to the end, beyond what humanity thought were its pride: wrath of nationalism, myth, religion, metaphysics, up into supernihilism where the beautiful new element appeared. Accompanied in his last days by his closest companion, he died of a recurrence of cancer at home, leaving this epitaph:
Kenneth White
World Poet
of Scottish origins
died in Gwenved
catastrophically happy
11th August 2023