Pennington Flash Audio Poetry Trail
In partnership with Lancashire Wildlife Trust, we have created a self-guided poetry audio trail around Pennington Flash National Nature Reserve, part of the Wigan and Leigh National Nature Reserves.
Placed within this unique landscape are six nature immersed poems by Northern poets: Jason Allen-Paisant, Kate Davis, Seán Hewitt, Zaffar Kunial, Clare Shaw and Jean Sprackland.
You can listen to the poems remotely or download the app from the izi.TRAVEL website and follow the trail in person around Pennington Flash. We hope you enjoy listening to the poems and perhaps feel inspired to make your own creative response to being in nature.
If you enjoy this trail, you can also download the Mossland Gateway Audio Trail – a two-hour walk from 21st century Irlam to the ancient boglands of Chat Moss, and let poet Clare Shaw guide you through one of the UK’s most unique and dramatic habitats featuring hidden histories, magical gateways and interactive writing exercises.
ABOUT THE POETS
Jason Allen-Paisant is a Jamaican poet and academic who teaches at the University of Manchester. He has published two collections of poetry Thinking with Trees, winner of the Bocas Prize for Poetry, and Self-Portrait as Othello with Carcanet. More info here.
Kate Davis is a poet and storyteller. Her poem Now that I’ve Come Back was inspired by the wood near Pennington in South Cumbria where she grew up and was first published in her collection The Girl Who Forgets How to Walk (Penned in the Margins). More info here.
Seán Hewitt is the author of the poetry collection Tongues of Fire, winner of the The Laurel Prize, and the memoir All Down Darkness Wide (Jonathan Cape). He was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2022. More info here. In late 2021, Seán was commissioned by Manchester Literature Festival and Manchester Art Gallery to create a new sequence of poems inspired by Derek Jarman’s PROTEST! exhibition. You can read and watch the films of Seán’s poems here.
Zaffar Kunial was born in Birmingham and now lives in Hebden Bridge. He has published two poetry collections with Faber, Us and England’s Green which was shortlisted for the T.S Eliot Prize in 2022. More info here,
Clare Shaw is a poet and creative writing tutor. They have published four collections with Bloodaxe, most recently Towards a General Theory of Love. In 2021 Clare was appointed Carbon Landscape Poet in Residence by Manchester Literature Festival and Lancashire Wildlife Trust. You can read and watch more of their Carbon Landscape Poems here.
Jean Sprackland is the prize-winning author of five poetry collections including Green Noise (Cape Poetry) and the non-fiction book Strands. In 2016 she was commissioned by Manchester Literature Festival and the Canal and River Trust to write a sequence of poems inspired by a boating trip along the Peak Forest Canal. You can read and listen to more of Jean’s Lock Songs here.
