Kubla Khan was written in 1797 and, according to Coleridge, was based on lines that came to him in an opium-induced dream after he had been reading about the summer palace of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan.

The poem was intended to run to possibly 300 lines, but Coleridge was interrupted by the arrival of “a person from Porlock.” When he tried to resume the work he found he could no longer remember the lines from his dream.

The poem was published in 1816 with the encouragement of Lord Byron.

Read by Duncan McGibbon, Convenor for Poetry.