London’s Southbank Centre will be celebrating its 75th anniversary this year with a national project, A Poet in Every Port, that will tour a number of coastal communities across the UK.

Inspired by the spirit of the 1951 Festival of Britain, a nationwide celebration of arts, design, science, technology and culture that also led to the creation of the Southbank Centre, A Poet in Every Port will take to the road between July and September, visiting 11 coastal towns and cities in a specially designed Mobile Poetry Library, featuring bespoke poetry collections curated for each location, a recording suite for sharing poems, and space for poetry workshops.

During the tour poets will be able to submit their poems as part of a national competition. More details of how to take part in this will be available in May.

The Ambassador for A Poet in Every Port is the celebrated poet Roger McGough who will launch the tour in Great Yarmouth on 29 May, and join at further stops along the tour, which will also take in Weston-super-Mare, the island of North Uist in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, Dundee, Southend, Penzance, Caernarfon, Blackpool, South Shields, and Bangor in Northern Ireland. The project will also play a part in Poetry International at the Southbank Centre on 12 July.