Dorset Footsteps - Poems by James Crowden

DORSET FOOTSTEPS is a series of linked poems that reach right across Dorset from Ashmore in the north east on the edge of Cranborne Chase down to Lyme Regis on the South Coast. During 2006 James Crowden was writer in residence along this route, the Dorset section of the Wessex Ridgeway. Here you will find poems evoking a very real sense of freedom, rural history and terroir, fieldnames and farmworker’s lives, hillforts and radio masts, chalk downland, Liz Frink’s studio and John Fowles’s garden.

The main sequence of 25 poems are deliberately split in half, like lengths of hazel rod, and are intended to be read with two voices, using a modern version of the Anglo-Saxon mid line break to great effect. What has been wonderful about this project is that Artsreach in Dorchester was able to commission local artists to use selected words in sculptures, waymarkers and benches which are dotted along the route at unexpected locations. This use of poetry and outdoor art takes its inspiration from the works of Ian Hamilton Findlay. Many different writing workshops for adults and school children also took place along the route in all weathers..

Wessex Ridgeway Poems.

James Crowden is a poet and oral historian who has been involved with Dorset since 1980. He worked on the land for twenty years as a shepherd, sheep-shearer, woodman and cider maker. He does occasional broadcasts on Radio 4 and has written ten books, his most recent being Dorset Man and Dorset Women. These will be followed by Dorset Coast and Ciderland.