The Golden Bowl: 2018

About Alyson Hallett

Alyson Hallett is a prize-winning poet and artist. She grew up in Street Somerset where her father worked for Clarks Factory and Alyson attended Crispin Comprehensive school. After a working in mental health and as a housekeeper on the Isle of Iona in the Inner Hebrides Alyson joined a writing group run by Janet Paisley in Glasgow and from there went on to do an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. She has been a full time writer and artist since 1993 and in 2010 gained a PhD in poetry with research into geographical intimacy. Alyson's latest book of poems LZRD was co-authored with Penelope Shuttle. Her pamphlet of poems Toots was shortlisted for the Michael Marks and Callum MacDonald Memorial Awards. Alyson has published two sole-authored books of poems Suddenly Everything and The Stone Library; a book of short stories The Heart's Elliptical Orbit; a book co-written with a walking artist Limping Stumbling Walking Falling and one co-written with a geographer Six Days in Iceland. She has also written drama for Sky Television and Radio 4 an essay for Radio 3's Cornerstones programme and an audio-diary for Radio 4's Nature Series. Alyson has received several Arts Council England awards for her ground-breaking project The Migration Habits of Stones. This is an international poetry as public art project with work sited in five different countries. Alyson has presented this work extensively including the Geological Society London; Bellarmine Forum LMU Los Angeles; In Other Tongues symposium Dartington Hall. She has a long-standing collaborative practice with sculptor Alec Peever which began when he carved one of her poems into Milsom Street pavement in the city of Bath. Alyson was poet in residence at the Small School in Hartland for three years; the country's first Leverhulme-funded poet-in-residence in a Geography Department at Exeter University in Cornwall and poet-in-residence for the Charles Causley trust. She currently works as a Lector for the Royal Literary Fund and a visiting lecturer at Falmouth University on the MA Authorial Illustration and on the BA in Creative writing at UWE. ffi. www.thestonelibrary.com