This book is a bit of a coming of age project for me. Not only does it write back to the lone male walking traditions of the Romantic literature that first made me want to become a poet in my early teens (yes, it was Wordsworth), it also writes back to my most epic literary influence, James Joyce, who inspired me to study literature in Dublin as an undergraduate and go on to do a Masters specialising in his work. His and the writings of Virginia Woolf are two of the formative writing walking bodies that prepare the ground for this book (T S Eliot’s influence will be obvious too), and its attempt to write the world as it appears through and with the senses, emotions, histories and associations of my particular walking, writing bodymind. The trail of influence continues back, through these writers, to Homer and beyond. Over and above the literary influence, this book is a very particular weaving through a landscape that has formed my very core. The five walks that make up this book move between my current home, my childhood home and many of the homes of friends and families that I spent time with growing up. This book is a coming of age not only in its response to literary influence but to the formative influence of family and friends inscribed in these landscapes. Or that is one version of how this book came about.
The fire that set me walking came from another source. A very personal rage that (it turns out) had been brewing for some time. In early 2019 I’d met a tall, handsome man who was about to embark upon a walking writing “odyssey”. For a year, he was going to write his way around remote Scottish islands with nothing but a tent and a notebook. We had talked about the traditions of Romantic literature and the stereotypes of white male walking, myth-making and ego. He was going to do it differently. Nan Shepherd was a big influence. He was a feminist. In a matter of weeks I was all in. A writer off on an epic adventure, braving the elements and forging a new mode of writing from his experience. What was not to like? The absence and remoteness just added to the romance. In a matter of weeks, he’d introduced me to his parents and we were planning on staying together (somehow?) while he was away. And then, predictably, he pulled up short. This was unrealistic. We should stay in touch. Maybe I could come out and visit? He had things he had to work through by himself and needed to have his mind clear for the work. Sensible. I could understand that. Never very good at reversing feelings once were flowing, I put my whole head into the task of being sensible and supportive, but my heart was reeling. I even helped crowdfund his project. Within a week of his departure, I was getting blog updates of his adventures with another girl, K. And the writing wasn’t even very good.
So, yes, EPIC was born out of a furious, jealous rage and a deep sense of disappointment. Not just with this particular man but with all the men who had left women waiting while they went off to build their empires, write their epics or whatever it was that would make their names, while we sat silently, stupidly, patiently awaiting their return. I dug into all that rage - all the groping and gaslighting, every hurt that had gone unpunished - and channelled it into this book. And it felt good. My own #metoo.
EPIC is embarrassingly heteronormative, white and ableist to boot. But it was a book I needed to write. I needed to walk out my rage and I needed that rage to take some concrete form beyond the process of tramping miles underfoot. I needed my experience to have substance. That rage made me write the kind of literature I’d wanted this man to write for me. And maybe that was part of what had made me so angry; the realisation that for all my empowered feminist ideals, there was a desire to step aside and let someone else do it for me. An inner helplessness. I needed to move out of that shadow.
I am always in search of writing that enquires into the poetics of its own creation. How do words surface out of a particular bodymindplace? I excavated this as I walked, fuelled by rage not just with this idiot man but with all the idiot men that had left women behind, bullied or brought them scurrying along behind them, drifting in their wake. Women that had enabled their adventures through their loyal support and above all, their uncomplicated, unchallenging silence. Wordsworth. Shelley. Odysseus. Joyce. These were the ones who were most on my mind. And yes, my straw men may not withstand much scrutiny because a lot of that rage was with myself. How could I have been so successfully seduced by so many of the things I actively abhorred? These were the emotional complexes I was walking with and through. EPIC enabled me to walk my way out.
