Bio
Short bio
Alyson Hallett was born in Somerset and grew up in Bridgwater and Street. Her blood and bones are full of Glastonbury Tor, rhynes, peat, punk, bingo, factories, herons and bulrushes. She was the first in her family to go to university and studied Comparative Literature with French at the University of East Anglia. This is where her love of world literatures, translation and diverse cultural traditions took root and blossomed.
As well as working as a cleaner, housekeeper, postal worker, mental health worker, Alyson attended writing workshops in Pollokshields, Glasgow run by Janet Paisley then set off to do an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Bath Spa. Since then she has been teaching, writing, mentoring, translating, collaborating, dreaming, exploring the migration habits of rocks and stones, creating public art and exhibitions. Her next publication is The Brilliant Girl, which comes out with Bloodaxe Books in 2027.
I LOVE her – she’s fantastic, as fresh as anything, the voice just jumps straight out at you. And the poems make me laugh too.
Jackie Kay, on the pamphlet Toots
Long Bio
Alyson counts raindrops, plants, clouds, birds among her audiences. Her understanding of language in relation to democracy is three-dimensional, radical, inclusive of the more than human. She has pioneered work with rocks and stones, and studied their migration habits for many years. As a queer writer and artist she shrivels the binary of animate and inanimate and encourages a wider, more complex and respectful frame from which to experience the world.
In 2019, Alyson established the Guerrilla College of the Free Arts. Through this College she offers creative writing classes that are attended by students from around the world. All classes are donation based and there is a strong ethical approach to the texts that are taught.
Alyson has an ongoing experimental/collaborative practice in movement, poetry and somatics with California-based movement artist Deborah Black and UK poet and movement artist Scott Thurston. Their collaborations are open ended, unfunded, foundational spaces where they explore new ideas and processes.
Alyson has been awarded Arts Council grants and has won prizes for her poetry. She has undertaken many poet-in-residence and writer-in-residence opportunities and frequently travels to present her work, give poetry readings and run workshops. She was commissioned to write a poem that was carved into Milsom Street pavement in Bath by Alec Peever, and she has also written text that has been etched into library windows.
Her freshness of vision and freedom of spirit are in the great Romantic tradition, yet she has shaped her own unique sensibility and crafted enduring verse from her questing soul, perceptive eye, and wonderful ear for music.
James Harpur on Suddenly Everything
CV
For full CV, download here.