Stone Talks

About Alyson Hallett

Alyson Hallett grew up in Street Somerset. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and a practice-based PhD in poetry and geographical intimacy from St Marys University Twickenham. She has published more than 14 books: sole-authored collections of poetry short stories artists books Six Days in Iceland in collaboration with geographer Chris Caseldine and walking limping stumbling falling with walking artist Phil Smith. Her latest book LZRD: Poems from the Lizard Peninsula is co-authored with Penelope Shuttle and her recent pamphlet Toots was shortlisted for the Michael Marks and Callum Macdonald Memorial Awards. She has written an essay on chalk for Radio 3 and drama and an audio diary for Radio 4. Collaboration is at the heart of Alysons work. She has worked with dancers musicians visual artists and glass makers and received grants from Arts Council England. Her work with sculptor and letter carver Alec Peever has spanned two decades and includes a poem carved into Milsom Street pavement in Bath poems carved into boulders on a housing estate in Kew and the 5 migrating stones that make up the Migrations Habits of Stones international poetry and public art project. Alyson was the countrys first poet to be resident in a university Geography Department with a Leverhulme artist-in-residence award. She has been a poet-in-residence at Charles Causleys house and the Small School Hartland; writer-in-residence for the Arts Councils Year of the Artist and the Endelienta Trust. Alyson is a visiting lecturer in poetry at the University of the West of England and on the MA Illustration in Falmouth. She also works part-time for the Royal Literary Fund as a Reading Round Lector. Ongoing collaborative work with movement artist Deborah Black involves an exploration of embodied writing and how the body and the written word come together and inform each other. Early in her career Alyson attended a summer school run by the performance group Goat Island. This along with working as a housekeeper for the Iona Community on the Isle of Iona for a year and a half blew her mind and heart wide open and formed the foundations from which she works and lives. Alyson has also worked as a post woman bar person cleaner and mental health worker. She lives in a village near Bath loves to walk and play piano and is a Hawthornden Fellow.