The newly drawn Stanza Stones Trail runs through forty-seven miles of the Pennine region, some of the most strikingly varied landscape in the world. The terrain bears the deep scars of industrial exploitation, as well as those less obvious: the signs left by a hundred local generations are carved into the region s abounding rocks. Simon Armitage was born and raised here, in the village of Marsden, and in 2012 he was commissioned through the Ilkley Literature Festival to write site-specific poetry. Armitage composed six new poems on his Pennine walks and, with the help of local expert Tom Lonsdale and letter-carver Pip Hall, found extraordinary, secluded sites and saw his words carved into stone. This book is a record of that journey, containing the poems and the accounts of Lonsdale and Hall. The many layers of stone and sediment found beneath the surface of the rock reflect the drama of the landscape itself. Covered in decades of industrial soot and grime, the colours released by the carver's tools will likely never return to shades of black and grey, but become a small reminder of the changes that our natural environment undergoes, and the marks, small and large, of humankind."
About the Author: Simon Armitage lives in Yorkshire, has taught at universities in this country and the United States, and is currently Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield. He has published nine full-length collections of poetry, including Selected Poems and Seeing Stars, as well as notable translations of medieval verse including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He has published two novels and three works of non-fiction; Walking Home the prose account of his walk along the Pennine Way as a latter-day troubadour was a Sunday Times bestseller. Armitage also writes extensively for radio, television and film, is a regular broadcaster and presenter with the BBC, is the lyricist and singer with the band the Scaremongers, and has written several theatre pieces including dramatisations of both the Odyssey and the Iliad. He is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, most recently the Keats-Shelley Prize and the Cholmondeley Award, and in 2010 was honoured with the CBE for services to poetry. Tom Lonsdale is a former Chief Landscape Architect for the City of Manchester, who then launched and spent twenty years running the renowned practice, Camlin Lonsdale. He exchanged that life in 2008 for the gentler pace of mentoring and advising on design quality for organisations such as Design Council and Lake District National Park Authority, which he combines with his passion for photography, hill-walking and motor-cycling, all squeezed in with running a small farm in Marsden with his wife Dilys. Pip Hall runs a lettering studio in Dentdale. She carves inscriptions for commemoration and celebration, besides carrying out public art commissions, and exhibiting. Pip s work also includes lettering, design and illustration for books, handprinted wallpapers and painted inscriptions for interiors. She teaches short courses and recently trained Wayne Hart with support from the Lettering & Commemorative Arts Trust Apprenticeship Scheme. She is a member of the Lakeland Fiddlers and helps manage Cowgill Community Orchard."