THE home of Dorset’s best-loved poet will play host to the launch of a special writing competition.

Max Gate, the home that Thomas Hardy had built for himself in Dorchester, will host the launch of the National Trust Writing Places project on June 2, with a talk and a reading from award-winning poet Sir Andrew Motion, who will include a Hardy poem amongst his own work.

Sir Andrew was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009.

Writing Places is a partnership project between The National Trust, Literature Works and The Poetry Archive which aims to broaden audiences for literature events, to encourage public engagement with creative reading and writing as well as to bring these inspirational places to a wider audience.

Talks and events will take place led by professional writers-in-residence.

The project will initially focus on four former writers’ homes cared for by the National Trust in the South West: Max Gate, Coleridge Cottage, Greenway and A la Ronde, homes of Thomas Hardy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Agatha Christie and journal writers and cousins, Jane and Mary Parminter, respectively.

"Writing Places" hopes to help audiences engage with the places where some of our greatest writers of our literary canon became inspired to imagine and write the works that have become their legacy.

Martin Stephen, visitor services manager at Max Gate said that he was looking forward to this partnership project which would help more people to recognise the significance of the houses and their literary former owners: “Thomas Hardy’s homes meant a great deal to him.

"He designed Max Gate himself, he was a trained architect, and the cottage in which he was born and grew up in had a great influence on his writing.

"The ‘Writing Places’ project will help us to explain, celebrate and share this with a broad range of people.

"We are particularly looking forward to having a writer in residence at Max Gate and it is wonderful that such high-profile writers such as Sir Andrew Motion will be involved. in helping us with the project. It’s all very exciting”

Sir Andrew Motion said: “As a long-time member of the National Trust, I’ve always thought that the libraries in many of its properties, and the associations that many of these properties have with important writers, have been significantly under-explored.

“Now, thanks to this new partnership between the Poetry Archive, Literature Works and the National Trust, these places are being animated, and these connections are being strengthened."

For more information nationaltrust.org.uk/writingplaces