Chalk

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Poet Alyson Hallett reflects on why she's drawn to chalk landscapes and in particular the large horse at Westbury in Wiltshire. It's a soft material, she realises, that is given to drawing and mark-making, found in the caves of Lascaux as well etched into her memories of her school classrooms. This is the fifth of this week's essays in which writers reflect on how landscapes that matter to them are shaped by the geology that underpins them. 'And stones moved silently across the world' is the name of a project Alyson has been undertaking since 2001: she's engraved those words upon four particular stones which are now placed in different continents. It's a project that began, she explains, when her grandmother came to her in a dream and told her to visit Cader Idris in Snowdonia. Producer: Mark Smalley.