Exeter Living published an interview with me about my residency at Exeter Cathedral in October’s edition, which can be viewed here (page 66): https://epaper.exeterlivingmag.co.uk/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?pubname=&edid=99f9900a-0544-4b23-a2e5-f65237463a32
I am the new Riddler-In-Residence at Exeter Cathedral! The writing residency runs from August until November 2023. I will be creating some new work in response to the role’s environmental theme and the Cathedral’s heritage and green spaces, and working with service users at St Petrocks, a charity for people who are homeless or vulnerably housed. I will also be running various public workshops, following on from the poetry stand at BioBlitz in July, and taking part in the planned celebration event with the outgoing Riddler, James Wilkes, on Friday 6th October. I’m looking forward to a busy few months, and enjoying reconnecting with the city where I grew up. For information on events please see instagram: riddler_in_residence and the Cathedral’s website.
The ‘Riddler’ role takes its name from The Exeter Book, an anthology of Anglo-Saxon riddles and poetry made in circa 960-980AD, which is kept in Exeter Cathedral’s archives. I was fortunate enough to see this awe-inspiring book, listed by UNESCO as among the ‘world’s principle cultural artifacts’ during the public exhibition last week.
My poem ‘Losing Ground’, set on Britain’s rapidly eroding east coast, won the Spring 2022 Poetry News (The Poetry Society) competition judged by Sheri Benning on the theme of Solostalgia (a neologism meaning the emotional distress caused by place loss through environmental change). Benning commented that the poem ‘depicts a small, beautiful act of resistance’.
‘Losing Ground’ was published in Poetry News and online, and can be found here: https://poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/losing-ground
‘Shift’ and ‘Gift’ were published in Raceme No.13 Summer 2022. Developed from my research visits to archaeological sites on Orkney, the poems explore the past and present impacts of coastal erosion on communities and heritage sites.
Special thanks to Sue Dymoke (d. 2023) for encouraging me to submit my poems to both of these publications, and for all her kind support and friendship over the years. You will be greatly missed.
Raceme 2022
Poetry News article
Hamish Gray from Voice, a magazine and platform for young creatives covering arts, culture, politics and technology, recently interviewed me about my journey into the creative industry and my poetic exploration of coastal erosion. I’ve interviewed a lot of people for LeftLion Magazine and elsewhere, but I’m not used to being the subject myself. However, it challenged me to examine and summarise my career journey, something I haven’t done before in this format. Thanks Voice mag for your interest, I hope your readers enjoyed the piece and feel inspired to discover more about community arts and ecological writing.
Interview with poet and doctoral researcher of coastal erosion Aly Stoneman
Could you tell us a bit about your background?
When I was sixteen, I won a national poster design competition to visit the USA. I joined a youth project working alongside Native Americans to highlight social injustice. We were invited to a pow wow – a sacred gathering of indigenous North American people – and gave a presentation to policy makers in the Capitol. It was the first time I’d travelled abroad and the experience changed my perspective on life’s possibilities. A few years later, I moved to Nottingham to study theatre design, then English literature. As the first person in my immediate family to attend university, I didn’t really know what to expect. My favourite module turned out to be creative writing, and I gained some useful communication skills as a sub-editor on the student newspaper and during a short internship at Ministry in London.
What have your various poetry-based roles involved? What was your career path into them?
I’ve worked as a resident poet or commissioned writer with various organisations including Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature (NUCoL), Writing East Midlands, and the Nottingham and Yorkshire Wildlife Trusts. The roles included delivering community writing workshops, organising events, giving readings, and writing new poems. I actually had quite a winding path into my arts career. After university, I went travelling, then worked in marketing and sales. Driving long distances for work, I listened to drama and short stories on Radio 4, which inspired me to start writing again. Then my father died suddenly. It was a huge shock and caused me to re-evaluate how I was living and what I wanted from life. I decided to join the Creative Writing MA course at Nottingham Trent University (NTU). I was self-funded, so I worked two jobs – as a copywriter and in a pub – attending classes in the evening. The course helped me develop my writing skills and network in the creative community. After graduating, I gained my first freelance contract as Nottingham Writers’ Studio’s Project Coordinator, developing a hub for local writers.
What are the highlights of your career to date?
In 2011, I joined Junction Arts, a rural participatory arts charity working with ex-coal pit communities in Derbyshire. Participatory arts directly engages community members and artists in co-production of creative work, with the aim of improving quality of life and helping develop communities. At last I found the right fit, not only for my skills but also in terms of my values and motivations. Crucially, there was space to grow and develop within a positive and nurturing culture. I was responsible for planning, delivering, and evaluating multiple projects, working with community members, including the annual Bolsover Lantern Parade and a new sculpture trail. Our team also attended ICAF – an international participatory arts conference – in Rotterdam, to share ideas and expertise. Other highlights include my time as founding poetry editor at LeftLion Magazine promoting local writers and running live poetry events (where I met my partner); being mentored through Renaissance One’s performance poetry programme and winning the Nottingham Poetry Society Slam; and publishing my debut pamphlet, Lost Lands (Crystal Clear, 2012). Winning the Buxton Poetry Prize in 2015 with ‘Windfalls’ helped me gain the confidence to apply for funding to do a practice-led PhD in environmental poetry.
What’s been the biggest challenge so far in your career? How did you overcome it?
Writing my PhD thesis was a huge mental and physical challenge. Returning to academia was demanding, but fortunately I was awarded Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funding through the Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership (now M4C) to cover fees and living costs for the first three years. I made the most of any relevant networking, training and development opportunities on offer, including a residential writing week hosted by the Royal Literary Fund, and my supervisors and friends were also really supportive. The final (unfunded) year was difficult, as we were in lockdown, so there was added pressure to find work while I was trying to finish my PhD, but fortunately I was able to work with Junction Arts again and teach on the WRAP (Writing, Reading and Pleasure) programme at NTU, which felt positive. I passed my Viva exam earlier this year, and I’m looking forward to graduating in December.
What does your current job involve, tell us what a typical day looks like?
Like many freelancers, I mosaic different contracts together, often on a short or fixed-term basis. Over the past six months, with arts charity Pedestrian, I’ve worked with young unaccompanied asylum seekers, community food bank users, and LGBTQ+ young people. Listening to participants discuss their experiences emphasised the impacts of COVID-19 on young people’s mental health and wellbeing, and how participatory arts projects can help by bringing people together in shared and positive activities. There isn’t really a typical day working freelance. I might travel by train to Leicester and spend the morning working on project admin in our friendly and lively office, before packing up art materials and snacks to take to a session with young care leavers who are creating a graffiti wall in their drop-in centre. Another day, you could spot me walking to Nottingham Trent International College (NTIC), where I teach international students. I enjoy the variety of working with different organisations, and the flexibility to manage my own workload, but I have to be organised enough to shift between roles, keep on top of my admin, and also seek new contracts.
What inspired you to start writing poetry about climate issues?
Reading and writing poetry helps me to make sense of this complex world. Climate change is a huge topic and I tend to come at it aslant through writing about related phenomena such as sea level rise and biodiversity collapse or key contributors such as deforestation. I grew up in a rural household that was concerned about the impacts of human activity on wildlife and habitats, but in a very localised way connected to our working lives in an agricultural landscape – such as the effects of intensive farming, pesticides, and removing hedges. I carried these ecological concerns with me into my adult life, manifesting in poems that explore relations between people and the natural world in a changing climate. My poem ‘In The Forest’s Heartwood’, commissioned by NUCoL for World Poetry Day / International Day of Forest’s (2020), promotes the importance of forest preservation and restoration.
Could you tell us about your PhD work on poetry and coastal erosion?
I grew up in Devon and walking the East Devon coast over many years stimulated my deep concern about the impacts of climate change on coastal habitats and communities, particularly after the winter storms of 2013/14 that devastated the area. I intended to submit a funding application to the Arts Council to do a project around poetry and coastal change – sea level rise, erosion and flooding – but then applied for postgraduate funding instead and was successful. My thesis included critical analysis of poetry by Gillian Clarke and Peter Reading, and a collection of poems inspired by my research, Side of the Sea. One barrier to writing about coastal change for me was the complexity of the science. A longer period of research in an academic environment allowed me to develop a more nuanced understanding through examining relationships between environmental data, intertidal archaeology, conservation and poetry. My research included visits to the Suffolk coast and a residency with Yorkshire Wildlife Trust at Spurn National Nature Reserve, located on one of Europe’s fastest eroding coastlines.
What message are you conveying with your poetry and research?
My writing engages with a growing global consciousness of both the fragility of shoreline ecosystems and habitats, and the impacts of climate change in coastal areas and elsewhere. In Britain, no settlement is more than 75 miles from the coast. Adapting to inevitable change requires difficult decisions. Poetry can’t turn back the tide, but I believe it can help to raise awareness, provoke dialogue and inspire action. Poetry helps us to approach problems with our imagination, and explore new ways to live in our changing world.
Have you noticed any changes in recent years surrounding artwork based on the
climate crisis?
There’s a long history of the arts directing attention to social, environmental and political issues, so it’s not surprising that artists are engaging with climate change. I have noticed there are more collaborations between artists and scientists, creating art with emotional charge founded in scientific fact, such as projects developed by Cape Farewell. Artists are also working across disciplines to communicate climate issues. However, climate art can be controversial. I recently worked with artist Raphael Daden to incorporate one of my poems into his sculpture ‘The Levels’, addressing sea level rise. There was disagreement in the seaside town council where it was being installed over whether the artwork’s messaging on climate change was too political – but the majority of councillors supported the project.
Do you have any advice for young people interested in your field?
If you’re interested in community arts, I’d suggest researching organisations in your area – some may offer work experience or opportunities to volunteer. Pedestrian in Leicester is one example of a community arts charity that focuses on working with young people. There’s lots of online support for young people interested in creative writing. Writing East Midlands has a dedicated space for young writers and there are similar organisations in each region. Live events and writing courses are also a good place to meet other writers and find out what else is going on in your area. The anthology Earth Shattering Ecopoems (Neil Astley, 2008) provides a good introduction to ecopoetry and includes a wide variety of poets and poems. Online, The Willowherb Review publishes new nature writing by emerging and established writers of colour. Young people are, of course, leading the way in climate activism, and making their voices heard in climate-engaged arts as well, as can be seen in the experience of young poet and climate activist Amelia Dye, and in Nottingham Wildlife Trust’s ‘Nottingham for Nature’ campaign, led by NWT’s youth team, aiming to inspire positive change.
alystoneman.co.uk
I recently worked with artist Raphael Daden to incorporate one of my poems into his sculpture ‘The Levels’, addressing sea level rise (Winter 2021). The sculpture is located on Weymouth seafront as part of a new sculpture trail, themed around the town’s relationship with the sea.
Sea levels are rising and will continue to rise for centuries to come, threatening communities and habitats. Areas such as the Jurassic coast, where sea level rise and increased storminess due to global warming exacerbates the natural process of coastal erosion, must consider a wide range of adaptation strategies, both now and in the future. See artist’s website
THE LEVELS
Start at sea level –
reckon the tide’s surge
metre by metre
over Domesday fields
blue outflanking you
year on year
to the threshold of your house,
your tongue slipping
on place names sunk
in sediment and brackish water.
Your home means little to a future
of eroded cliffs, toppled
tree stumps at low tide;
roads leading nowhere.
The sea sends
harbinger gulls
inland.
We must navigate
our changing world.
Aly Stoneman (2021)
Towards the end of March 2020, I took a break from posting on my blog/SM. This was partly due to the pressures of trying to finish writing up my PhD thesis, pass my Viva exam, and find work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I was really fortunate to work with the amazing Junction Arts team again from April 2020-March 2021 (maternity cover), adapting programme delivery due to COVID-19 and successive lockdowns. Working closely (in a socially distanced way!) with colleagues and local partners, we (figured out how to use Zoom and) produced Year 2 of their three-year Heritage Lottery and People’s Postcode Lottery-funded digital STEAM project ‘This Girl Codes’ https://thisgirl.codes, and adapted the large-scale annual Bolsover Lantern Parade, which normally attracts an audience of around 5,000 people, to ‘Lighting the Way 2020’, which won the ‘Most Innovative Project Award’ at The Voluntary Sector Awards 2021.
During this time I also worked as a lead writer with the creative wellbeing programme WRAP (Writing, Reading and Pleasure) at Nottingham Trent University, led by the brilliant Dr Becky Cullen and fantastic student participants and volunteers.
In May 2021, I joined the inspiring Pedestrian team in Leicester in the role of arts project manager for six months (also maternity cover), delivering a participatory creative programme funded through Children in Need, engaging disadvantaged young people in arts activities, including asylum seekers, care leavers and food bank users. Then, in October, I moved to Nottingham Trent International College as a sessional tutor, teaching on their Foundation programmes in Arts, Design & Media, and Social Science.
I submitted my PhD thesis ‘Holding the Line: Contemporary Poetry of British Coastal Change’ in Spring 2021, and passed my Viva exam in April with minor corrections, graduating in December 2021 with a winter ceremony at Nottingham Trent’s beautiful University Hall. What a journey it’s been!
This just scrapes the surface of the past 21 months: the work, the worrying…the walks. Love and thanks to friends and colleagues in these challenging times. Best wishes for a positive 2022.
Now, Robin Hood can’t scarper
over castle walls – and away –
into the greenwood,
which only persists today
in Nottingham’s place names
– Forest Fields, Forest Rec –
and the city’s football team.
Twenty miles north
in Sherwood Forest’s heart,
a thousand ancient English Oaks
make homes for hairstreak butterflies,
nuthatches, beetles, bees,
jackdaws, jays.
And when sunlight splashes,
counterchanging
dark on light on dark,
we may imagine
an outlaw stepping, soft-footed,
through leaf litter, arrow nocked –
or imitating birdsong
from a perch inside the Major Oak,
the whistling of a merry tune,
minder of the people of the forest,
wood and heathland,
hares and fallow deer
but wolf, boar and bear
are all long gone
with thousands of trees used
for timber and ships
(five thousand oaks to build the Victory)
or cleared for farming and industry
(for ‘field’ read ‘felled’).
Leaf through our poems, our tales
and find the forest there, from Robin Hood
to narratives budding right now.
Speak of how to meet the world
in this well-known, well-loved wood.
Voice how, underground,
bacteria, fungi, roots
all interconnect and share:
a wood wide web.
We’re talking too, communicating
our concerns through networks,
pushing sapling-ideas up through tarmac:
how Nottingham will be re-joined
to Sherwood Forest, oak by oak –
our story worth telling.
With special thanks to Becky Cullen, Matt Turpin, Andrew West, Luna, Samantha Bird, Tim Hannigan and the staff and volunteers at Sherwood Forest Visitor Centre for your time, help and encouragement!
Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature invited me to write a poem IN THE FOREST’S HEARTWOOD inspired by Sherwood Forest to mark World Poetry Day and International Day of Forests, which both fell on 21st of March this year, linking with other cities of literature around the world. As NUCoL notes, ‘Nottingham is a city of poets and Nottinghamshire is a county of forests – not only does the local football club and the county council both use trees as their emblems, we are graced with perhaps the most legendary forest in the world, Sherwood’.
Matt Turpin and I went to do some research at Sherwood Forest Visitor Centre in north Notts (before the current restrictions on meetings and travel), meeting RSPB staff who manage the centre and nature reserve. Visitor Experience Officer Andrew West guided us on a trail that took in several of Sherwood Forest’s thousand ancient oaks, including The Major Oak, said to be 800-1000 years old and often cited as Britain’s favourite tree. The oak and birch forest that remains today looks much as it would have in the medieval period linked to the well-known Robin Hood tales. Early spring sunshine filtered through budding branches as Andrew explained to us how ancient oaks are important habitats for many organisms and creatures including lichens, mosses, beetles, spiders, moths, bats and birds. For instance, oaks often hollow out – a natural process that usually doesn’t affect the health of the tree – and many creatures live, nest or roost in the rotting heartwood or hollow trunk. We also discussed how research has shown that beneath every forest and wood there is a complex underground web of roots, fungi and bacteria helping to connect trees and plants to one another and share nutrients, which has become known as the Wood Wide Web. Our walk in Sherwood Forest invited reflection not only on interconnectedness and the wonder and complexity of the natural world, but also on what has been lost and how we can protect this amazing habitat for future generations.
Back at the Visitor Centre, we also met some of the volunteers who help to bring stories of the forest alive for thousands of visitors each year. One regular group – Heather, Valerie, Vivienne and Linda – were recreating a medieval coverlet in royal red and blue woollen fabric. I found the traditional sewing techniques they were using really interesting and I included one word – counterchanging – in my poem, relating it to ideas both of patterning and exchange.
IN THE FOREST’S HEARTWOOD aims to celebrate Sherwood Forest’s rich heritage as a place of stories and its importance as a wildlife habitat, and to raise awareness of the importance of protecting forests, which are home to 80% of Earth’s biodiversity. It is also inspired by The People’s Forest project, led by NOSF trustee and Nottingham-based artist Sarah Manton, which plans to plant sapling oaks re-connecting Nottingham City with Sherwood Forest.
NUCoL filmed the poem read by myself and RSPB staff and volunteers, celebrating poetry as a shared mode of communication that can help to affirm “our common humanity and our shared values”. Even when forced apart by circumstance, much connects us. My poem celebrates that.
I’d like to thank Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature Team and the staff and volunteers at Sherwood Forest Visitor Centre for all their help and for making us welcome including Andrew, Sam, Gemma, Helen, Ross, Samantha, Karen, Claire, Kate, Luna, Heather, Valerie, Vivienne and Linda.
IN THE FOREST’S HEARTWOOD
Now, Robin Hood can’t scarper
over castle walls – and away –
into the greenwood,
which only persists today
in Nottingham’s place names
– Forest Fields, Forest Rec –
and the city’s football team.
Twenty miles north
in Sherwood Forest’s heart,
a thousand ancient English Oaks
make homes for hairstreak butterflies,
nuthatches, beetles, bees,
jackdaws, jays.
And when sunlight splashes,
counterchanging
dark on light on dark,
we may imagine
an outlaw stepping, soft-footed,
through leaf litter, arrow nocked –
or imitating birdsong
from a perch inside the Major Oak,
the whistling of a merry tune,
minder of the people of the forest,
wood and heathland,
hares and fallow deer
but wolf, boar and bear
are all long gone
with thousands of trees used
for timber and ships
(five thousand oaks to build the Victory)
or cleared for farming and industry
(for ‘field’ read ‘felled’).
Leaf through our poems, our tales
and find the forest there, from Robin Hood
to narratives budding right now.
Speak of how to meet the world
in this well-known, well-loved wood.
Voice how, underground,
bacteria, fungi, roots
all interconnect and share:
a wood wide web.
We’re talking too, communicating
our concerns through networks,
pushing sapling-ideas up through tarmac:
how Nottingham will be re-joined
to Sherwood Forest, oak by oak –
our story worth telling.
With special thanks to Becky Cullen, Matt Turpin, Andrew West, Luna, Samantha Bird, Tim Hannigan and the staff and volunteers at Sherwood Forest Visitor Centre for your time, help and encouragement!
I joined my friend Dr Ksenia Chmutina and her colleague Dr Jason Von Meding on Disasters: Deconstructed podcast to discuss poetry as a medium for communicating about environmental change and society and read some poems…
Full episode at https://disastersdecon.podbean.com/e/s2e7-poetry/
Nottingham City of Literature Blog
I’ve been working with two fantastic primary schools in Hyson Green and Mansfield for the MyVoice Young Voices programme, which aims to help Year 6 pupils develop their confidence and creative writing skills ahead of transition to secondary school. I’ve also mentored a member of staff at each school to help develop and encourage their own creative writing.
During my five sessions working with the children, we have read poems on a broad range of topics, using the poems and resulting discussions to spark collaborative and individual writing. Working with a small group of eight pupils and a TA or teacher allowed us to sit around a table and write together, creating a buzzy and communal atmosphere where, as the participants put it, ‘it’s easier to focus, be heard, and get more done’.
For this project, writers used lesson plans developed by Becky Cullen at Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature. One of the workshops I delivered mid-way through the programme focused on ‘How to’ poems, using writing instructions as a way of building self-confidence. We read ‘How to Hang Washing’ and ‘Instructions for Writing Poetry’, and talked about poetic techniques, unfamiliar vocabulary, and what the children liked best about the poems – such as the lines ‘now those little/words are sprouting/poetry/inside your head’. They visualised words as seeds from which something beautiful might grow and flourish. Interestingly, the groups objected to the idea of instructions for writing poetry – they felt it should flow instinctively, although they agreed that they sometimes struggle to think of topics to write about. I reassured them that many writers feel the same! This led into a discussion around writing strategies to get their ideas down onto paper, creative processes, and taking inspiration from everyday activities and hobbies as well as from our imaginations.
After reading the two poems again, with everyone reading a few lines or a stanza each, we moved on to listing things the children can do well, or would like to do, writing ideas up on a whiteboard. Here, the groups diverged a bit. My Mansfield group were particularly interested in sports such as basketball, as well as gaming and ‘How to bake a cake’, while in Hyson Green, topics included ‘How to make a Patronus’ (by a big fan of the Harry Potter books) and ‘how to keep your glasses safe’. After creating a quick collaborative poem on the board, to try out ideas and provide some scaffolding, the children did some individual writing, creating wonderful titles including ‘how to daydream’ and ‘how to detect bad presents’ – take note, gift-givers: if it isn’t special or nice, it’s a bad present! Pupils also addressed big topics such as ‘how to face your fears’ and ‘how to live’; ‘how to stay calm’ was a popular subject with both groups. As usual, during individual writing time, I offered advice, prompts and plenty of encouragement, referring them back to the poems we read for inspiration and structure. At the end of the session, everyone read their poems out and we discussed whether we would follow each other’s instructions!
It was important to bear in mind that English is an additional language for some of the participants, and the sessions seemed to really help the children to build confidence in their self-expression, expand their vocabulary and develop their writing skills. It was great to see them enthusiastically sharing their poems with the rest of the group in workshops and also with teachers and friends. They are looking forward to seeing their poems published in a book, as NUCoL is printing anthologies for each school.
The groups said they felt sad that our poetry sessions were coming to an end, and I will also miss our chats about favourite books, pets, and dreams for the future. I hope they all keep on writing! The teachers that I mentored are interested in continuing a culture of creative writing in school as a legacy of the project, which would be fantastic. However, we’ll all meet up again at the MyVoice celebration event in March at Nottingham Council House, so the fun’s not over yet!
Richard Grochowski
Berridge Primary School
“I want to thank you for the work that you did with our pupils. They all thoroughly enjoyed the creative writing and working with you; they are all very excited about seeing their published work! I feel that it has been a rewarding and engaging project that they have taken a lot from. It has also been rewarding for me in writing creatively for pretty much the first time since school. I cannot promise anything, but I intend to put pen to paper in the future should the inspiration arise!”
Sarah Austin
Asquith Primary School
“Many thanks for the hard work you’ve put into the workshops. The children have really enjoyed a different approach to writing.”
Aly Stoneman 
You must be logged in to post a comment.