Your England is an ambitious project – 100 poems, about 100 places, which form a history of England.
My one rule is that I have to have visited everywhere I write about, even if the original building or location has been lost, changed, or reconfigured, so I have a real sense of place. With only a year and a set budget, that will mean some compromises, that some places are just too hard to reach in the time I have.

All of the poems are sorted into a rough taxonomy:
- Creativity & Culture
- Exploration
- Faith & Religion
- Industry & Invention
- Migration
- Protest & Revolution
- War & Remembrance
And I’m aiming for a wide geographical split, to cover a variety of faiths and cultures, and (in the poems that are about people) to achieve a 50/50 male-female split, too. It’s a complicated sort.
Just to add some extra complexity, I’ve been asking people to suggest places they think I should go, and I’ll be running workshops with some partners to let more people suggest more places.

So – based on what I’ve written so far, the suggestions people have made, and where I plan to go next, here are the first fifty(ish) places on the Your England list:
Bedfordshire:
Panacea Society, Bedford
Coventry:
Coventry Cathedral – Basil Spence
Shopfront Theatre, Coventry
Essex:
Tilbury Landing Stage
Isle of Wight:
Ryde Pier
Kent:
The Grange, Ramsgate
Martyrdom, Canterbury Cathedral
Dover Castle – Sir Bertram Home Ramsay
Chatham Docks No 3 Covered Slip
Copperas works, Whitstable
Leeds:
Templeworks
London:
Granville Arcade, Brixton – Oswald Columbus Denniston
St Pancras Station
121 Centre, Brixton and the Rebel Dykes
The Poppy Factory, Richmond
Crossbones Burial Ground
Royal Albert Hall
King Henry’s corridor, Cabinet Office
Charterhouse Square, London
Eel Pie Island
Luna House, Croydon
Olympic Park, Stratford
Gardeners, Spitalfields
Lancashire:
Rochdale Pioneers Shop
Preston Bus Station
Lincolnshire:
St Botolph’s Church, Boston – ‘Boston Stump’
Liverpool:
Mathew Street, Liverpool

Margate:
Sanger’s journey
The Margate Road
Site of Margate Caves
Rowden Hall Kindertransport Hostel, Margate
Dreamland
Turner Contemporary
Northampton:
78 Derngate, Northampton
Carpetbaggers Aviation Museum
Penrith:
Clarke’s Bench, Penrith
King Arthur’s Round Table, Penrith
Portsmouth & Southsea:
Fort Cumberland, Southsea

Staffordshire:
Middleport Pottery, Stoke-on-Trent
New Vic Theatre, Newcastle
Somerset:
Glastonbury, Frost Fayre
Somme:
The Lochnagar Crater
Surrey:
Watts Chapel
Sussex:
Shoreham Airport
Gypsy Lee, Bognor
Church of St John sub Castro, Lewes
Cotchford Farm
Towner Gallery
Worthing:
Cissbury Ring
Desert Quartet, Worthing – Elisabeth Frink
Dome Cinema, Worthing
Wiltshire:
Sanger’s journey
Wildcard – all the Canals
Partners:
Turner Contemporary
Shopfront Theatre, Coventry
Dreamland
Towner Gallery
This will, of course, change – and I’m going to have to write more than 100 poems to get 100 that I’m happy with, too. These are the poems already completed:
Clarke’s Bench, Penrith
King Arthur’s Round Table, Penrith
Sanger’s journey
The Margate Road
Site of Margate Caves
Tilbury Landing Stage
Granville Arcade, Brixton – Oswald Columbus Denniston
Coventry Cathedral – Basil Spence
Templeworks
Middleport Pottery, Stoke-on-Trent