Ken Cockburn is a poet, translator, editor and writing tutor, based in Edinburgh. Formerly Fieldworker and Assistant Director at the Scottish Poetry Library, in 2006 he was the first writer-in-residence at the John Murray Archive, National Library of Scotland, and was awarded the Arts Foundation Fellowship for Literary Translation 2008. A Creative Scotland ‘Vital Spark’ Award in 2010 enabled Ken and Alec Finlay to undertakeThe Road North, a word-map of contemporary Scotland guided by the 17th century Japanese poet Basho, whose Oku-no-hosomichi (Back Roads to Far Towns) is one of the masterpeices of travel literature. He is currently undertaking another touring project with Alec Finlay, Out of Books, based on Boswell and Johnson’s Highland tour of 1773, in particular the books they read, and referred to, as they travelled. Recent publications include Overheard Overlooked: Found Poems (2011); Ink, with artists ~in the fields (2011); andSnapdragon, translations of poems by Arne Rautenberg (2012).
www.theroadnorth.co.uk
www.out-of-books.com