Polesworth Poetry Trail, Warwickshire

Off to the pretty town of Polesworth in North Warwickshire tomorrow, to read some of my poetry and celebrate the opening of the Poetry Trail there, with which I was involved as Warwick Poet Laureate two years ago. Fellow poet John Siddique will also be there, as guest poet, and probably some of the other poets involved in the project. There may be music, dancing, a knees-up, perhaps even booze. Well, music anyway.

My commissioned poem on the River Anker has been set into several matching blocks of granite positioned beside the river itself. So human civilisations may rise and fall, an ice age may cover the earth and then thaw away, but Jane Holland's poem will remain etched in granite beside the River Anker in Warwickshire - no doubt much to the bemusement of future inhabitants.

"The Poets Trail, which was funded through the Advantage West Midlands Better Welcome programme, provides a series of poems showcased on small-scale sculptures.  The ten bespoke sculptures are dotted around Polesworth and up onto the canal towpath.  The poems were sought through a competition which saw entries come in from around the world.  The poems were decided by a panel of judges including the then Warwick Poet Laureate, Jane Holland."

My "Anker" Poem to be installed at Polesworth

Polesworth Poets Trail

To mark National Poetry day on the 8th October, the Polesworth Poets Trail project team are pleased to announce that the first poem installation will be take place during this week.

The poem, The River Anker by Jane Holland, has been etched into copper plate and fixed to five large pieces of Mancetter stone which were kindly donated by Tarmac at Mancetter Quarry and have been sculpted by Planet Art. The stones, which will also include Michael Drayton’s poem, To the Ancor, will be placed on the river bank in Abbey Green park close to the foot bridge.

This is the first of ten contemporary poems that will be installed over the coming weeks, the poems coming from two commissions and eight poems chosen from a national competition. The installation of these ten poems will complete the first phase of the trail which has been funded from a generous grant from Advantage West Midlands.

Project Director, Malcolm Dewhirst said “This is the culmination of a lot of hard work from a dedicated team of people who shared the vision of bringing poetry back to Polesworth. We hope that the poetry trail will attract poets from all over the world to come to Polesworth and that this will be the first of many poetry events to be held in this literary town, which saw the greatest poets of the 16th century meeting at Polesworth Abbey.”

Me & Michael Drayton - thick as thieves

Last year, I was commissioned to write a poem for Polesworth, a village (or small town, technically) in North Warwickshire. The poem has now been written and presented to the local council, and is soon to be displayed on the Polesworth Poetry Trail. There's also a poetry competition in hand - see link below for details - for which I will be one of the judges.

Now for the amusing part of this story. After researching the history of Polesworth, I chose to write about their local river, the Anker, blissfully unaware that the other poem they had already chosen for the Trail was the Elizabethan poet Michael Drayton's poem on exactly the same theme - apparently one of his sonnets from the sequence, Idea's Mirror.

Great minds think alike, clearly.

Here's a link to a local newspaper report about the poem and the Polesworth Poetry Trail & Competition, with a nice photograph of me in my back garden - looking oddly presentable for once - available online.