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Poetry left in boxes across Exmoor to be compiled for book Brexit poems and dirty limericks: poetry left in boxes across Exmoor to be compiled for book
(about 1 hour later)
Following in the footsteps of Wordsworth and Coleridge and encompassing everything from dirty limericks to love sonnets, thousands of visitors to Exmoor have added their poetic contributions to tin boxes, left out for the last three years to entice passersby.Following in the footsteps of Wordsworth and Coleridge and encompassing everything from dirty limericks to love sonnets, thousands of visitors to Exmoor have added their poetic contributions to tin boxes, left out for the last three years to entice passersby.
Conceived by the poet Chris Jelley and supported by the Lynmouth Pavilion Project, the venture has been running for the last three summers. It has amassed more than 6,000 poems written by people lured by the boxes’ message: “Draw, read or write inside,/ And leave for the next to scribe and confide.”Conceived by the poet Chris Jelley and supported by the Lynmouth Pavilion Project, the venture has been running for the last three summers. It has amassed more than 6,000 poems written by people lured by the boxes’ message: “Draw, read or write inside,/ And leave for the next to scribe and confide.”
The first year, the six boxes were left in the Valley of Rocks, the second year, they were at Tarr Steps, and Jelley has just collected the boxes from their last locations, around the village of Dunster. He is now going through more than 6,000 contributions, sifting out the best, to be photographed and published in book form by Fly Catcher Press in October. The originals will be displayed at Lynmouth Pavilion.The first year, the six boxes were left in the Valley of Rocks, the second year, they were at Tarr Steps, and Jelley has just collected the boxes from their last locations, around the village of Dunster. He is now going through more than 6,000 contributions, sifting out the best, to be photographed and published in book form by Fly Catcher Press in October. The originals will be displayed at Lynmouth Pavilion.
“We weren’t expecting that amount of response from strangers,” Jelley said. “But whenever I’d go to check the tins, I’d find people reading the poems in them, too, not just writing … We have a perception that everyone has got to have a gadget in their hand, but we are a nation of book lovers; we love the simplicity of a book and a pencil, and when we are totally unobserved, we are happy to write something.”“We weren’t expecting that amount of response from strangers,” Jelley said. “But whenever I’d go to check the tins, I’d find people reading the poems in them, too, not just writing … We have a perception that everyone has got to have a gadget in their hand, but we are a nation of book lovers; we love the simplicity of a book and a pencil, and when we are totally unobserved, we are happy to write something.”
The contributions range from limericks, some of them dirty, to memorised poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge, who conceived their joint work, Lyrical Ballads, while walking along the Exmoor coast to the Valley of Rocks near Lynton.The contributions range from limericks, some of them dirty, to memorised poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge, who conceived their joint work, Lyrical Ballads, while walking along the Exmoor coast to the Valley of Rocks near Lynton.
There are poems both pro- and anti-Brexit, as well as marriage proposals. “Some people just sit down and write – you can see their train of thought when they’re writing. At the beginning they have no idea where they’re going … The poems I find the most moving are the ones people have written about walking in the location, but without their partners, because their partners are too ill, or because they’ve passed away,” said Jelley, who describes the project as a “love letter to Exmoor”.There are poems both pro- and anti-Brexit, as well as marriage proposals. “Some people just sit down and write – you can see their train of thought when they’re writing. At the beginning they have no idea where they’re going … The poems I find the most moving are the ones people have written about walking in the location, but without their partners, because their partners are too ill, or because they’ve passed away,” said Jelley, who describes the project as a “love letter to Exmoor”.