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Poems from the Summerlands
Friday 29th August 2025
Ten Poems from Somerset
The old name for Somerset is Summerlands – a word that seems to contain the pastoral and slightly nostalgic atmosphere of this lovely area of Britain. These poems, selected and introduced by poet Carrie Etter, celebrate the intimacy of hidden valleys and tumbling rivers, and there’s a woodland walk which makes Samuel Taylor Coleridge long for the company of his beloved Sara.
The county is also a place of glorious towns and cities; Bath appears with its “gold-toned islands” and there’s also a “honey-gold, ever-sunlit” town remembered from childhood.
What emerges here is the very particular character of Somerset – reflected in its treasury of local words, as well as in its deeper history when parts of the county lay under the sea.