The Wayland Word Journey was inspired originally by a town Poetry Trail in Romsey, Hampshire. There, poems by famous writers were carved on paving stones to be read as you followed the verses and explored the town. For some time we pondered how this lovely idea could be replicated in Wayland where we have few pavements, and finally decided that we could create a book of trails that would illustrate how special and distinctive Wayland is. As not too many famous poets have written about the Wayland area, we decided to turn to the group of people who value the Wayland area the most and seek their help – the Wayland Community.
The Wayland Partnership would like to extend a special thanks to everyone who took part in this project by sending in such a wide range of prose and poetry. The response from the Wayland community has been just wonderful. The selection and editing of the material took far longer than anticipated, partly because there were initially 125 items and partly because though interesting and lovely, many were too general to include in the trails which required writing that was about specific buildings, features, people or sites.
In the end we ‘commissioned’ some of the original contributors to write another piece so that we could create visitor trails that make sense and we were finally able to put the book together with the help of Adam who created the art work and maps together with Jenny Ralphs’ sketches, and photographs from our collection. Rapide Design and Print were as always extremely helpful in suggesting improvements to the final design of the book and the first print run was completed and the books with us by May 2nd. The launch took place on May 16th followed by some pleasing press coverage and the books are selling well.
Because of the tremendous response to the project some work may unfortunately not be included in the final guidebook. We wanted, however, to ensure that all the contributions were recognised and so in addition to the book of trails, we have re-produced every single piece of writing in a nice but photocopied version called The Wayland Book of Words and we hope that this will allow every contribution to be shared and valued equally.
As some people did not include their names on their contribution and others specifically asked not to be named, we have not included any names in the books. We wanted people to focus on the words and the places they related to rather than on comparing one writer with another. All of the contributors will recognise their own work.
The books are available from the Tourist Information Centre which is in the Dragonfly Centre at Wayland House. The Word Journey is £5.00 and the Book of Word is £2.00
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