Going to the Pine: Four Essays on Bashō

Shortlisted for the 2019 Touchstone Distinguished Books Award administered by The Haiku Foundation. Given Honorable Mention place in the Prose category of the 2020 Haiku Society of America Merit Book Awards.

This collection of essays considers the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō (1644-94) from four different and, in some respects, unconventional perspectives. It begins by likening Bashō and John Keats as travellers, open to all experience and convinced that they must 'annihilate self' to achieve...