YOU wait for ages for a poet to come along, and then two come along at once...!

Poets Kim Moore and Clare Shaw are teaming up with bus company Stagecoach later this month to bring poetry to travellers.

The initiative is to help hail the reopening of Dove Cottage, William Wordsworth’s home during his ‘golden decade’ (1799–1808), and as part of a yearlong celebration of the poet’s 250th birthday.

Wordsworth Grasmere and Stagecoach are organising the poetry day on the 555 and 599 buses, on Thursday, March 19, between Windermere and Keswick.

Kim and Clare will perform their own work as well as sharing some of Wordsworth’s words with passengers as they journey through the landscape that inspired some of Wordsworth’s greatest poetry – and continues to inspire poets today!

Tom Waterhouse, Operations Director for Stagecoach Cumbria and North Lancashire, said: “We are delighted that our 555 and 599 Lakes services will become a place of celebration for Wordsworth and his work as we welcome poets Kim and Clare on board.

“Our bus services connect people to the areas of natural beauty Wordsworth was so greatly fond of, including Grasmere, the place he made home. His passion for sharing the wonders of the Lakes are deeply aligned with our own, making the poetry bus a fitting tribute on such a momentous anniversary.”

Kim Moore’s first collection The Art of Falling (Seren, 2015) won the 2016 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. She won a Northern Writers Award in 2014, an Eric Gregory Award in 2011 and the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2010. Her pamphlet If We Could Speak Like Wolves was a winner in the 2012 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition. She regularly performs at festivals across the UK and Europe, and her work has been translated into several languages. She is currently a PhD candidate at Manchester Metropolitan University and is working on her second collection.

Clare Shaw has three poetry collections from Bloodaxe: Straight Ahead (2006), which attracted a Forward Prize Highly Commended for Best Single Poem; and Head On (2012).

Her third collection, Flood, was published in June 2018.

To coincide with Wordsworth’s birthday celebrations in spring, Dove Cottage will reopen after an authentic restoration and the visitor experience will be transformed with newly animated spaces.

For more information about the project visit www.wordsworth.org.uk or www.stagecoach.com