ONE of the UK’s best-known poets has been commissioned by the North York Moors and Yorkshire Dales National Park authorities to pen a poem celebrating the wonders of the county’s dark skies.

Ian McMillan, known as the Bard of Barnsley, will draw on his observations of stargazing and hunting down the Aurora Borealis, as well as the special qualities of the night sky in the areas of low light pollution found in both national parks.

The verse will be completed just ahead of the two parks’ joint Dark Skies Festival, a week-long event during February half-term (February 18-26).

Ian said: “'I'm very excited to be illuminating the Dark Skies Festival with the pure light of poetry, the only kind of light that doesn't pollute or distract.”

Planning is under way for the expanded Dark Skies Festival, which will include several new events such as a starlight cross-country run at Cote Ghyll Mill, Osmotherley, a stargazing evening run by the York Astronomical Society at the Yorkshire Arboretum, an opportunity to contribute to a huge dark skies painting at the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes and a family night hike around spectacular Semerwater.

A dark skies poetry competition will also be open to schools in and around the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

The event’s website darkskiesnationalparks.org.uk has gone live and will provide festival goers with programme details.

The site also provides information on how to get the best out of stargazing in the national parks, including visiting one of the six Milky Way Class Dark Sky Discovery sites – Hawes, Malham and Buckden in the Yorkshire Dales and Danby, Sutton Bank and Dalby Forest in the North York Moors – which have sufficiently dark skies to view the galaxy with the naked eye.