Story Boxes along the Coleridge Way

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Christopher Jelley, innovative storyteller, is bringing the spirit of Romantic poetry to life on the Coleridge Way this summer.

His Storywalks are story trails with a difference. To access the tale you walk in Coleridge’s footsteps. Once a chapter has been read you are then given the directions for the next stage of your journey. Like a bread crumb trail, the tale will lead you along the Coleridge Way.

He has created three projects, funded by Artlife and Somerset County Council, to encourage children and adults to discover Coleridge’s poetry and the landscapes that inspired it.

The first project is Story Boxes. Six boxes will be installed along the Coleridge Way. The concept is simple: find one, read the story so far, add a paragraph or drawing but no more, then leave it for the next walker to find. The first box is located in the Lime Tree Bower at Coleridge Cottage. The story books will be exhibited as part of Somerset Art Week in September as well as at Coleridge Cottage later in the year.

For the QR Code Poetry project, pupils of Dunster, Nether Stowey and Porlock schools created poetry inspired by their immersion in the environment just as Coleridge and Wordsworth did. Their poems have been rendered into QR codes, then laser etched onto slate and installed along the trail. So 200 years after Coleridge and Wordsworth came this way, you can use your mobile device to decode a poetry walk.

Coleridge called his notebooks Fly Catchers, as he used them to snatch ideas before they flew away. The Fly Catcher project will use Coleridge's own manuscripts and re install them digitally in the places which inspired him, Nether Stowey for Frost at Midnight, for instance, and Porlock for Kubla Khan. Go to the right location, and see the poem on your mobile device exactly as Coleridge wrote it.

To find out more, visit http://www.poetrypin.info

To see a short film by Christopher Jelley about the Story Boxes visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtRZL3z7pTE&feature=youtu.be

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