Today in our round-up of the poetry news, we look at the road named after one of the 16 Great War Poets. We also have a short article about the first event of Wordsworth 250 that will be taking place towards the end of the month.

Road to be Named After Poet

A road on a new housing development in a village in Suffolk is to be named after a First World War poet.

A decorated veteran who fought on the Western Front, Edmund Blunden was also a scholar and leading war poet. The road, Blunden Close, will be part of the Elms Croft development which is currently under construction in Long Melford.

Blunden moved to Long Melford in 1964 and lived there until his death 10 years later. It was here that he wrote much of his poetry.

The road is the first one that is encountered as people enter the new development, putting Blunden name very much in people’s minds. His daughters, who attended a short unveiling ceremony recently, are delighted with the honour being paid to their father.

Edmund Blunden was born in 1896 in London. He served as an officer at the Western Front as part of the Royal Sussex Regiment. He fought at the Somme, Passchendaele and Ypres. He survived a gas attack and in 1917 was awarded a Military Cross.

He didn’t begin writing poetry until after the war when he met and became friends with Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon. He continued writing poetry during the 1920s and ’30s and also spent time at Oxford University where he was a tutor.

He is one of the 16 Great War Poets who are remembered on a slate stone that is located at Westminster Abbey in Poets’ Corner.

He moved to Long Melford on the occasion of his retirement.

Anniversary Celebrations Marked with Wordsworth Walk

The first event in a series that have been put together to celebrate Wordsworth 250 – a 12-month long celebration that will mark the 250^th birthday of the poet William Wordsworth – has been announced.

Walking Home: A Celebration of Arrival will be a pony and trap ride that has been carefully designed to replicate the journey taken by William and his sister Dorothy when they journeyed to their new Grasmere home 250 years ago.

The four-mile route will open to the public on 20^th December exactly 220 years to the day after the brother and sister moved from their Yorkshire home in Sockburn to Dove Cottage in the village of Grasmere.

Dove Cottage is where Wordsworth wrote the majority of his famous poems and it how the home of the Wordsworth Museum and Trust.

 The tour will begin at the Church of St Mary in nearby Ambleside and on arrival at Dove Cottage, a special poem written for the occasion will be read. The organisers are hoping not to have a recreation of the original weather that marred the Wordsworth’s arrival when there was a snowstorm.