Poetry embedded into the Quantock Hills of Somerset, discoverable as audio with your smartphone!

The Quantock Poetry Trail Poets are a group of some 12 poets and writers, all of whom either live in or near or have an intimate connection to the Quantocks and surrounding areas. The group is led by Bristol-based poet, writer and located audio designer, Ralph Hoyte. We have since July 2022 been wandering together over the Quantock Hills of Somerset, walking, talking, being inspired by the locations, views and literary associations these wondrous hills offer – and composing poetry in response.

The resulting curated compositions have been literally embedded into the Quantock landscape in the form of 7 geo-located poetry walks, which range across the whole of the Quantock Hills* (and down to Watchet on the sea). You can download any one – or all – of these 7 self-guided walks to your smartphone, then download, or take along paper copies of the included maps – go to the start of the walk – and hit the hills! When you find ‘a soundpool’ containing a poem by any of the 12 of us, that poem plays automatically.

Further information and all download instructions for your phone are here: quantockpoetrytrail.uk. The website also contains the work of all 12 poets in written form.

A screenshot of what you will see on your phone screen. You are the blue arrow. The ‘soundpools’ are all labelled, with the distance you are to the middle of each soundpool also shown. The poems in the soundpools trigger automatically when you enter one. Play with the soundscape, see what it does – in some soundpools you get different poems if you swivel on the spot!