World Poetry Day: Five places around the UK that inspired famous poets

Renowned 18^th-century poet William Wordworth is well-known for his poetry inspired by the Lake District’s outstanding natural beauty. Born in Cockermouth, north of the national park, he later returned after years away studying at university to the village of Grasmere, describing it as “the loveliest spot that man hath ever found". His former home, Dove Cottage, was transformed into a museum dedicated to the writer back in 1891. His most famous work, ‘I wondered as lonely as a cloud’ is reported to have been written by Wordsworth after he and his sister, Dorothy, took a walk besides Ullswater lake, where they encountered a stunning display of daffodils, the main subject of the poem.

An author of 20 volumes of poetry and receiver of a Noble Peace Prize for literature, the late, great Seamus Heaney’s work was largely inspired by his years in Northern Ireland, where he grew up. Born in rural County Derry, in the village of Bellaghy, here you can now visit a museum dedicated to the poet and also admire ‘The Turf Man’, a bronze statue inspired by one of Heaney’s most famous poems ‘Digging’. Several kilometres away is Church Island on Lough Beg: the small lake and island feature in Heaney’s sombre poems about his cousin, who sadly died during The Troubles. 

Unlike Wordsworth and Heaney, romantic poet John Keats only spent a two-month stint in Winchester, yet it seemed to have a profound effect on the writer. What is now known as his most famous ode, ‘To Autumn’ was penned after Keats' late summer retreat to the cathedral city and was one of the last poems he ever wrote before he died two years later at the young age of 25. You can easily follow in the footsteps of Keats on a visit to Winchester, who took daily walks through the Cathedral Close to St Cross. Gazing out across the water meadows to St Catherine’s Hill, it’s easy to see why Keats was inspired by Winchester’s surrounding nature. 

Said to have visited Trossachs for the first time in 1809, Scottish writer Walter Scott soon after released his narrative poem ‘Lady of the Lake’. The six canto poem became a bestseller (a staggering 25,000 copies sold within six months) and was certainly responsible for placing this historic and natural Scottish region firmly on the map, especially Loch Katrine, a setting recurringly mentioned in Scott’s work (and where the continuously running Sir Walter Scott first launched in 1900). However, Scott was following in the footsteps of English writers before him, including William and Dorothy Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge.

Dylan Thomas was one of the great Welsh poets of the 20^th century. Although Swansea born, several pieces of his poetry are attributed to the years in spent in Laugharne, a coastal town in Carmarthenshire. Now, the town considers itself a shrine of the poet, although it’s a place he once called Dewch i mewn (meaning, the strangest town in Wales). His ‘Poem in October’ perhaps provides the best overview of the natural landscape and its wildlife here – the verses describe a walk he took on his 30^th birthday, leaving from his home called the Boathouse, through the town and harbour, past the ‘brown as owls’ caslte, and up St John’s Hill. Visitors can now recreate this walk themselves.