mc nuts - william wordsworth rap

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud has undergone the “rap” treatment in the bicentenary year of its publication to help the next generation of Lake District visitors connect with his work.

The new “hip-hop” version of the famous poem and an accompanying pop video can be listened to and watched for free at Cumbria Tourism’s website at www.golakes.co.uk/wordsworthrap It features MC Nuts in the leading role – better known as Sam - the Lake District Red squirrel mascot for Ullswater Steamers.

The modern re-working manages to stay true to the original sentiment but with some slight variation of the lyrics.

As well as making the works of Wordsworth relevant to a new, younger audience, it also shows how modern-day rap and its clever use of wordplay is a distant relative of poetic rhyming verse.

The video was shot on the banks of Lake Ullswater which provided the original inspiration for the poem, as well as around Ullswater Steamers, the grounds and gardens of the luxury Sharrow Bay Hotel, and Grasmere where Wordsworth made his home.

A spokesman for Cumbria Tourism, which was behind the innovative approach to the poem, said: “Wordsworth’s Daffodils poem has remained unchanged for 200 years and to keep it alive for another two centuries, we wanted to engage the You Tube generation who want modern music and amusing video footage on the web.”

“Hopefully this will give them a reason to connect with a poem published in 1807 as well as with the works of Wordsworth and the stunning landscape of The Lake District that inspired him.”

David Wilson, the Robert Woof Director of the Wordsworth Trust, said: “Wordsworth’s poem, I wandered lonely as a cloud, always achieves very high ratings in any survey of favourite English poems.

“It is a poem about the mind's growing awareness over time of the deepening value of an experience, in this case observing the dancing daffodils. Two hundred years after it was published, the poem is still reaching new audiences and inspiring people. Part of our work here at Grasmere is demonstrating how Wordsworth's poetry is relevant today and encouraging young people to enrich their lives by exploring his poetry in their own ways.”

Visitors to www.golakes.co.uk are also encouraged to give a donation to the Wordsworth Trust at Grasmere, which is dubbed “the finest literary museum in the world,” for its collection of books, manuscripts, paintings, drawings and prints from the Romantic Period. Wordsworth Trust Robert Woof Memorial Fund

The Wordsworth Trust says the famous poem was composed in 1804, two years after Wordsworth saw the flowers on the shores of Lake Ullswater. The area is also one of the last remaining strongholds of the Lake District red squirrel.

His inspiration for the poem came from an account written by sister Dorothy. In her journal entry for 15th April 1802, she describes how the daffodils: “Tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, that blew upon them over the lake.