Publications

Accidental Pilgrim
Tom D'Evelyn

18 panels, 3.75 x 9 inches
Accordion folded, packaged in polypro sleeve. First edition.
Illustrated throughout
ISBN 978-0-9740895-4-6
Photos by Toby Hatchett.
Design by Susan Kress Hamilton at Phineas, Portsmouth, NH

$18.00 (includes shipping and handling)

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Travel literature often focuses the reader on the universal pattern of human life: going out and returning. Traditionally, this pattern is implicit in many narratives, from those of the culture hero to those of the imperial exile to those of the mystic. Imaginatively engaged, this pattern is intrinsically paradoxical, circles within spirals. It’s said the journey is the goal, the end a new beginning.

Building on Chinese and Japanese literary travel genres, the Japanese haiku master Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) developed a mixed-genre form, creative nonfiction prose and haiku, called haibun. As expressions of his wayfaring life, Bashō’s haibun—for example, the oft-translated Narrow Road to the North—are perhaps his greatest legacy.

Today, along with memoir, haibun is among the emerging literary forms of creative non-fiction. In his haibun sequence Accidental Pilgrim, Tom D'Evelyn, the editor of Single Island Press, writes about a recent trip to Rome. The publication unfolds concertina fashion, and this unfolding, and ultimately circular, book form helps express the paradoxes of travel.

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Click desired item for more information:

- Under the Moon
- A Boy's Seasons: Haibun Memoirs
- Empty Boathouse: Adirondack Haiku
- Accidental Pilgrim
- Shaped Water: A Haiku Year
- Raymond Oliver His Book of Hours
- Sophia & The Gringo