Mapping Wordsworth

Timeframe: 2017-2019

Working with the Wordsworth Trust, academics and academics from Lancaster University, this project is a multi-disciplinary project exploring connections between the physical and literary journeys and places within Wordsworth’s poetry. The project examines and explores ways of adapting and using computational processes to visualise the physical and creative journeys embodied within the manuscripts of the poem, for example, using the text form William Wordsworth’s classic autobiographical poem (The Prelude) to generate a terrain map of the Lake District. Computational processes are used to visualise the text of the poem a series of ’footpaths’, mapped onto the landscape of Wordsworth’s home in Grasmere. Each one of the 14 books of the poem generates its own pathway of words running across the hills and fells around Dove Cottage. The full poem is visualised as both an interactive environment and as a printed ‘walking map’ allowing viewers to read and explore the text in different ways and creating a new way of reading and visualising the text.