A visit from Beatrice Searle

We were recently lucky to welcome the remarkable artist, letter cutter, and author Beatrice Searle to our workshop. You may know her from Stone Will Answer, her acclaimed memoir about walking a standing stone from Orkney to Norway along an ancient pilgrimage route. The dedication and imagination behind such a journey capture Beatrice’s gentle defiance of limits and conventions.

Given our motto, ‘always out of the ordinary’, it felt right to have Beatrice with us, setting an example for our team. I first met Beatrice several years ago during a radio programme: I was speaking about my tenure as Stamford’s poet laureate, and Bea spoke about her upcoming journey. We hit it off on air and hatched a plan to give Stamford its own poetry stone, with the words I'd written carved by Beatrice. I should mention that none of this would have come to fruition without Karen Burrows, the arts programmer from Stamford Arts Centre

To protect the stone from the elements, Beatrice refaced and recut the inscriptions but in keeping some trace of the original carving created a palimpsest that hints at the stone’s history. The stone stands in a corner of St Michael’s churchyard reminding passers-by that ‘we are all poets’ and inviting everryone ‘step up and speak’. On top the footprints of Stamford’s first poet laureate, Darren Rawnsley are carved into the surface. The local poetry community was thrilled to see the stone receive the care it deserved, and it was re-inaugurated this April on Shakespeare’s birthday. 

I shall leave you with the beautiful words Beatrice wrote for the occasion – “I’m really proud and delighted that this day has come! To all those who have championed and facilitated this project, thank you for fighting to retain the original stone and for me to be the one to re-make it. It has been an honour and a thrill to give the Stamford poetry stone a much needed new lease of life, eight years on. Long live Stamford poetry, and all power to stones to provide a hold-fast from which to speak!”