Summer poets season - Alyson Hallett
The PRSD summer poets season is drawing to a close, and we finish with Alyson Hallett.
Poet, novelist, scrip writer and teacher, Alyson Hallett has already had a varied writing career, even being translated into the language of Lorca (that’s Spanish).
The poem Stones is part of her Migrating Habit of Stones project. ‘To study light, I go into a dark place. To study movement, I come to stone – one of the slowest and oldest movers on the planet,’ she says.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Stone
And stones moved silently across the world
hurled into an empty ship’s weightless hold
folded into a glacier’s freezing fist
quick-pocketed by tourists and children
with an eye for things shiny and round.
Bound for other lands stones sailed without papers
traffickers in freedom crossing borders
with no regard for guards
guard dogs or guns. Dumb as the tongueless
their acts alone sounded the long, low cry.
Each stone carried centuries of weight
and meaning. Ballast from Bristol belly-up
in New York’s East River, erratics paused
on the slopes of Cader Idris, fingers of quartz
startling my window sill - all of them travelled
from the place where they began, where we might
have said they belonged. Migrating past line,
border, boundary, their movements a constellation
of questions; where is home, what is home,
and who in this world can claim land as their own?
• Find out more about Alyson Hallett on her website.
Alyson will be reading in Bristol on September 11; Bath in late October (with two other South Devon poets); and is reading in London in November.
Related articles
%RELATEDPOSTS%
Get all the latest, subscribe to the People’s Republic of South Devon
———————————————————————————-
————————————————————————————
August 13th, 2008
