English poet and critic Ben Wilkinson is a keen distance runner, lifelong Liverpool Football Club fan, and among other things he works as poetry critic for The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement. His debut full collection of poems, Way More Than Luck, appeared from Seren Books in February 2018.Wilkinson is co‑editor of The Result Is What You See Today: Poems about Running.
At the Guardian he tagged a few books books that explore our love of running, including:
There are plenty of celebrated writer-runners, from Jonathan Swift to Joyce Carol Oates, Andre Dubus to Don DeLillo. Another is Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, who maps marathon running on to various aspects of life in his memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. It observes the qualities and experiences that running and the creative act of writing share: routine, transformation, joy, even defiance. Reflecting on the rigours of training, Murakami concludes that “most of what I know about writing I’ve learned from distance running”.Read about the other entries on the list.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is among Karen Campbell's ten top books about freedom and Lauren Passell's top seven books that belong on every runner’s bookshelf.
--Marshal Zeringue
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