Milsom Street poem - Milsom Street - Bath, Somerset - Etched in Stone on Waymarking.com

"By increasing the pavement widths in Milsom Street, Bath, the council created a new space within the city. In celebration of the new space, the council's ci:te project invited stone carver Alec Peever to create a lasting art work that would further enhance the street and the city. Alec worked with Alyson Hallett and together they have given Bath a poetical pavement which draws on the city's beginnings and future as a spa.

Alec has hand carved Alyson's poem with hammer and chisel into the paving, adding individual words at the edges of the site. Their powerful collaboration has given Bath a public work of art that is available to everyone, every day, at any time."

SOURCE - (visit link)

"Alyson Hallett is a prize-winning poet and Hawthornden Fellow whose latest books are Toots (Mariscat Press, 2017), and Walking Stumbling Limping Falling (Triarchy Press, 2017) a conversation with walking artist Phil Smith. Alyson’s poetry has been carved into Milsom Street pavement in Bath, into a companion stone in the Peak district and etched into a library window in Bristol. A commitment to collaboration and embedding text in public places is central to her practice. She has worked, and continues to work, with dancers, musicians, scientists, visual artists and sculptors.

Besides publishing six books and pamphlets of poetry, Alyson has also written drama and an audio-diary for BBC Radio 4; an essay on Chalk for BBC Radio 3; drama for Sky Television; a book of short stories. She has a practice-based PhD in poetry, and is a freelance lecturer at the University of the West of England and Falmouth University. She has taught with the Arvon Foundation, runs a private mentoring programme, and gives workshops and readings in the UK and abroad.

Since 2001, Alyson has curated the international poetry-as-public-art project, The Migration Habits of Stones, and has sited work in the UK, USA and Australia. In 2010, she was the UK’s first poet-in-residence in a university geography department as part of the Leverhulme Trust’s artist-in-residence scheme. Six Days in Iceland (Dropstone Press), a book of poetry, photographs and scientific text written in collaboration with Professor Chris Caseldine, resulted from this.

Before writing full time, Alyson worked as a cleaner; a postwoman; a housekeeper on the Isle of Iona; a mental health worker for MIND and the Richmond Fellowship. Joining a creative-writing group in Pollokshields Library, Glasgow, led to the moment when she dared to change direction and follow her dreams."

SOURCE - (visit link)

Extract from the poem -
'From a crack in a rock a river springs
And sings its way to the ocean
Arise from the earth like water
Give birth to your sacred dream
This world’s an ocean of mirrors
An invitation to create and be seen
Heron trout oak stream rain
Horse fossil moon stream fire
Flesh blood mountain salt
Songs of the heart's desire’

Address: Milsom Street - Bath, Website: [Web Link]

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