“Walking Gloucestershire with Ivor Gurney : Poetry & landscape explored through 20 circular walks” by Eleanor Rawling

Ivor Gurney is one of Gloucester’s famous sons, whose reputation as a poet and musician is steadily growing. This book introduces
readers and walkers to the Gloucestershire places that inspired and grounded Gurney’s poetry. Twenty circular walks follow his footsteps
through the landscape, drawing on his poetry and letters to understand more about his experiences and creative activities.

Specially commissioned hand-drawn maps and illustrations are provided to show each route, to identify the actual places revealed
in his poems and to illuminate those historic, cultural and landscape features that defined it for Ivor Gurney.

Gurney’s childhood, roaming along the Severn riverside near Gloucester, was followed by explorations of the Cotswold Edge,
youthful rambles with his friends Will Harvey and Herbert Howells, sailing on the River Severn and by his long and lonely walks on the
scarp edge between Cleeve Hill and Cooper’s Hill 1918–22 after he returned from Flanders.

Tracing Gurney’s footsteps makes it possible to recognise how the themes and language of his poetry echo his
close relationship with these places.

The hand-drawn maps, illustrations and photographs make this an attractive guide – both to Ivor Gurney, the poet
and to some of Gloucestershire’s most scenic and historic landscapes – for those who walk and for those
who wish to travel from the comfort of their armchair.

Catgories:

.1. Local Interest
.2. Walking
.3. Poetry