it’s not just for students LIVES Alysson Hallett, street poet

© SEAN MALYON

ALYSSON HALLETT You may not know this Bath poet, but you know her words; some of them are carved into Milsom Street

When I was growing up we used to visit Bath once a year. We’d always eat in DiMaggio’s pizza place on Milsom Street – there were no restaurants in the town where I grew up, and pizza was the most exotic and wonderful food I’d ever come across. I can’t walk up Milsom Street now without remembering the excitement I felt as a child.

I now live in Southstoke, and love the sense of community here. I work part time for the Royal Literary Fund, occasionally teach poetry at UWE and Falmouth Art School, and offer mentoring through the Poetry Society in Bath Library.

I was upset recently to discover that the number three bus into Bath had upped its ticket prices and halved the service at the same time. At this time of year I really like using my Discovery Card to visit the Roman Baths. I go underground and pay my respects to the goddess Minerva, and love to see the hot water gushing out of the earth and reddening the nearby stones.

My first memory of writing poetry is when I was six years old and a teacher asked us to write poems. I wrote one about a dove. I remember feeling as if the room was flooded with light and that I’d found something I loved. There are so many influences – not least being taken to see Ted Hughes when I was sixteen. I’m not sure I understood anything, but I loved being swept up in a flurry of magic, as if words were like snow that came to make things new again.

I love the way the poetry world is opening up now. The punk in me enjoys a Post-it note poem stuck on a bench as much as one that wins a big prize.

Many moons ago Alec Peever approached me and asked if I’d be interested in writing a poem that could be carved into a Bath pavement. We met for lunch

“The idea of rocks as travellers blew my mind”

and talked about life, family, friends, politics – seeing if there was a connection, if it might be possible to work together. I think this is really important when you collaborate with someone – you need to like each other’s work, but you also need to be able to find a thread of friendship, an enjoyment in each other’s company. We’re still working together twenty years later – and I feel incredibly lucky as Alec is a master craftsman, a totally brilliant sculptor and letter carver.

Not long after my paternal grandmother died, she came to me in a dream and told me to climb Cader Idris. I woke up and thought, there’s no way I’m doing that. Her voice wouldn’t go away though, and so I cancelled work, hired a car, threw a tent in the boot and set off – wondering what on earth I was up to. Halfway up the mountain I came across a huge boulder. It looked really out of place. At that point a man came along and told me that the boulder was an erratic, a rock that had travelled from one place to another in a glacier. I had always thought of rocks as fixed and solid – and the idea of them as travellers blew my mind. I became obsessed, and applied for Arts Council funding – when I was told I’d been successful, The Migration Habits of Stones project was born. If it has a purpose, it’s to create a sense of astonishment in the natural world.

I’ve been overwhelmed by the reactions to this work. I’ve yet to meet someone who isn’t connected with stones in some way. Every one has a story to tell and the work has taken me all over the world. I’ve talked about it at the Geological Society in London; made an audio-diary for Radio 4; and was invited to present the work at the Bellarmine Forum in Los Angeles.

The journeys that I make with the migrating stones present different logistical problems. The most interesting was the one I took to the Isle of Iona in the Inner Hebrides by public transport in a box that I’d had specially made for it. The stone was too heavy to lift on my own, so I had to have help from friends and strangers every step of the way. All the migrating stones that I travel with have been carved by Alec, and they’ve all been washed in water from the Chalice Well in Glastonbury.

I’ve been writing forever. I’ve written a play for Radio 4 (Dear Gerald) and drama for Sky Television. I’ve done a lot of poetry residencies. I was the first poet to be resident in a geography department at Exeter University in Falmouth. I love to collaborate with scientists and was resident in the Lyell Centre at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, working with geologists, recently.

I started growing trees when I was a child; a book I’d been given showed me how to take a seed from a fir cone and put it in soil. The magic of that moment never left me and so I’ve always gathered up acorns, planted them and, when they’re big enough, I give them to my Uncle Bryan and he plants them out on a piece of his land.

I’ve been working with Deborah Black, a dancer from New York, for several years now. I’ve always been interested in the body, in yoga and chi gung, dancing and butoh, and the ways in which every inch of the body seems to carry memory, awareness and intelligence if you know how to listen. Most recently we ran a poetry and movement workshop for more than 50 people at a Somatics Symposium in Berlin – it was co-organised by Thomas Kampe from Bath Spa Uni. n

Alysson’s latest book, Stone Talks (Triarchy Press), is available now at Mr B’s, and you’ll find her books at Toppings too; www.thestonelibrary.com; www.alysonhallett.com