Many of the great British poets have a presence in Nottingham, though you might have walked past them a thousand times and not realised.
If you walk from Hyson Green past the Arboretum into the city centre, that literary link might start to dawn on you. You might walk past Tennyson Street, which joins Burns Street, which itself joins Southey Street at Forest Road West.
Even if you’re not familiar with the wonderful poetry of Scotland’s own Robert Burns - after whom Burns’ Night is named - you’re sure to have sung his most famous lines on a New Year’s Eve or two: the words of ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
Robert Southey, of the street that bears his name, is a 19th former Poet Laureate, whose most famous work is the modern working of the Goldilocks and the Three Bears fairy tale. And just a little over the hill, on the way down to Hyson Green, is Hardy Street, named after the author of Far From the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d’Urbervilles, among many other great 19th century novels.
But that’s just the start of the poetic journey.
1. Dryden Street, and of course the Dryden Enterprise Centre, are an urban homage to another 17th great and contemporary of Milton, John Dryden - England’s first ever Poet Laureate. It’s apt that this is so close to Waverley Street: Walter Scott affectionately referred to Dryden as "Glorious John". Fittingly, connecting up so many of these streets, running through them like a main nerve, is Shakespeare Street. The street named after England’s great bard is the central artery of the Nottingham Trent campus - and Shakespeare’s influence can be felt in more than just the street signs. There’s student accommodation building Bard House, and, of course, The Playwright pub.
Shakespeare Street in Nottingham and the Playwright Pub which was formerly known as The Orange Tree | Benedict Cooper
2. Head into town and you’ll likely walk down Waverley Street. If you’re scratching your head as to which author this street is named after, that’s because it has what must be the very rare quirk of being named after a series of novels instead: the Waverley Novels, by another great Scottish author, Walter Scott.
Waverley Street in Nottingham | Benedict Cooper
3. Many of the streets that criss-cross the Nottingham Trent campus have major literary connections. There’s Chaucer Street, a tribute to the first great English language author, master of The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer.
Chaucer Street Nottingham | Benedict Cooper
4. The street on which you’ll find the side entrance to the Victoria Centre, amid a cramped cluster of bus stops and taxi ranks, can feel anything but poetic, and is certainly not paradise. But it is in fact another reference to one of the huge figures of English literature: John Milton
Milton Street in Nottingham | Benedict Cooper