Sep 5: Icelandic Books : Moon Country

During the early 20th Century, poet W H Auden visited Iceland and wrote about it in the company of Louis MacNeice in a book published in 1937.

Simon Armitage visited the country with another poet Glyn Maxwell in the mid 1990s to follow in their footsteps and create a range of work inspired by the poet's style.

Simon is the current Poet Laureate and also studied Geography.

Each poet contributed poetry and travelogues to the book, which is quite unusual in format. There are a few images in the book as well.

You can read a great deal more about the original journey made by Auden and MacNeice and a comparison with Moon Country in this essay.
(PDF download)

The book is published by Faber and Faber.