ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the translocal relationships between two poets who are often imagined as isolated in their respective rural peripheries. Niedecker was based in Blackhawk Island, Wisconsin, though she also lived in Madison and Milwaukee. Bunting, born in Scotswood-on-Tyne, traveled and lived all over the world, from the North East of England to continental Europe, the Canary Islands, Iran, the USA, and Canada. Despite Bunting's cosmopolitanism and Niedecker's occasional city dwelling, both poets are frequently portrayed as rural and regional—the latter term sometimes a byword for triviality. Poetic technique transects an interest in manual labor in both poets' work. Niedecker's acts of location are evidence neither of regional 201supremacism nor of the reaction to fear or ignorance of the outside world. Environment, both for Niedecker and Bunting, means the symbiosis of the human and natural world: Human history is embedded in the rocks and soil that humans live and work upon.
