Peddling Poetry and Poetry Passports along the Tarka Trail 2019

“The water seeps
My mind at peace
The ebb and flow
Slowly drift,
At nightfall, as cold as
Icicles
The sun a shade too bright to touch
Tides align
And time it stops
Toes they touch, a crunch
Of rocks they budge
The times I write
A vacant smudge”

The Water Seeps, Anon

This May 2019 until August, the Peddling Poetry Project was live along the Tarka Trail in North Devon. This Arts Council and Beaford supported project was designed to connect visitors with the landscape of North Devon and playfully respond with word (which it did!)

Initially this iteration of Poetry Pin began with ten little Beaford Poetry Boxes, each with an image from the Beaford Archives to inspire and reflect on place and space. Those boxes were in place for August and September 2018 and captured around 600 poems from passersby.

150 of these were then selected and geo-located through Poetry Pin along the trail in roughly the same places they were written.

But to make this a little more interactive family fun we created Poetry Passports and installed Stamping Stations at cafes along the trail. The Stations have now been retired for the winter, but the poems remain and can easily be hunted out with your smart phone.

Just open this link http://tarkatrail.poetrypin.info

And if you want a Poetry Pin trail in your community then please get in touch here.