The Oxford Poetry Pin is a digital pinboard-map of poetry run by the Oxford Poetry Library. Visit the Poetry Pin on your smartphone while you’re out and about in Oxford, and you’ll be able to find poems that other people have pinned at your location, and add your own.

It’s free and simple to use – a virtual collaborative literary treasure-hunt through the city streets.

We love seeing the poems that people have added – poetic descriptions of a place, or more abstract expressions of the emotions and thoughts experienced there.

We particularly enjoy poems which ‘reply’ to other poems nearby. OPL’s crack team of cyclists have scattered some historic “Oxford” verses around the map, so your poems will be rubbing virtual shoulders with those by Oscar Wilde, William Wordsworth, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

In Oxford right now? Click here to explore the Oxford Poetry Pin

Our Poetry Pin project is sponsored by Seven Fables (a gorgeous emporium of books, arts and inspiration on Exmoor). We’re using the Poetry Pin system – check out poetrypin.info for more information, and to find other towns with pinned poetry.

Poetry Pin works best when people physically go out and pin their poems. However, if you’ve written a fabulous Oxford poem but can’t get out and pin it yourself, message it to us and we’ll be able to add it on your behalf.

Get (more) involved!

If you run or are involved with an organisation, institution, green space, or business in Oxford, and are interested in working with OPL on this project, do drop us a message. We’re keen to get other organisations involved, and encourage ‘hot spots’ of poems in interesting spaces.

If you’re super-super-enthusiastic and want to visit every poem on the map, we’ll give you a jar of Oxford Marmalade. We’re not actually expecting anyone to do this, but will be massively impressed if you succeed. Contact us to claim your prize.

If you want some Oxfordian inspiration, we recommend the following poetry anthologies (most of which can be borrowed from the Oxford Poetry Library):

  • England: Poems from a School (Picador, 2018)
  • See How I Land: Oxford Poets and Exiled Writers (Heaventree Press, 2009)
  • Island City – Oxford Poems by Living Oxford Poets (ed. Rip Bulkeley, 1999)
  • Oxford in Verse (ed. Glyn Pursglove and Alistair Ricketts, 1999)
  • Oxford And Oxfordshire in Verse (ed. Antonia Fraser, 1993)
  • The Oxford Book of Oxford (ed. Jan Morris, 1978)
  • In Praise of Oxford: An anthology for friends (Frederick Muller Ltd, 1955)