Walking Home: book proposal 2

Image credit Leeds University Library

The second book proposal was sent to the publishers Faber and Faber, and focussed on one journey: the Pennine Way. This focus allowed for a more detailed discussion about the meanings of journey and landscape in a specific region.

Armitage notes that in some parts of the Pennine Way, history and geography are fused in the public imagination: Saddleworth moor, for example, the site of the Moors murders, and Kinder Scout, where a mass trespass took place in 1932. In others, including 'Brontë Country' the borderline between the landscape and its representations in fiction and poetry has become blurred. Landscape inspires art which in turn affects our perception of a region or locale.

By taking into account these different interactions with the landscape, this proposal frames 'Walking Home' as 'a kind of indispensable and definitive companion or alternative guide': one which will locate the walker historically and culturally as well as geographically.

In this second proposal the idea of walking home has become central, with 'home' as an inclusive term combining birthplace, family, landscape, and the source of much of Armitage's poetry. Given this focus on home it is interesting to learn that the proposal was written during a trip to Chicago in 2008. Physical distance, Armitage has suggested, can often offer a useful perspective from which to write about home.