Kiss My Earth: Book on Tour Without the Author
Instead of an ‘online launch’ Alice released Kiss My Earth by 'sending the book out on tour… without the author'. She posted the book to far-flung friends and asked them to pass it on in the hope that the books will eventually make their way back to her.
“I’d love the book to be changed in ways I can’t imagine & come back bearing the intimate and wild marks of everyone my poems have met along the way. I’m relying on the kindness of strangers to give this book what they can, keeping off the predictable pathways. Perhaps you’ll take the book to visit relatives or send me postcards about your time with a poem… who knows what interesting things might happen! It might get lost! May it bring us all joy. Thank you for being part of making something mischievous, pleasurable, precious & ultimately beautiful. I will treasure what you send.” ~ Alice Willitts
Alice is Commissioning Editor of DIRT plantable poetry, an earth-positive imprint of Dialect Press.
In May 2020, JLM Morton (Dialect) and Alice launched the plantable poetry project DIRT, a new poetry imprint from Dialect Press for poetry written in collaboration, and inspired by climate science. They raised funds with a fantastic, crowdfunded campaign that enabled R&D for the publications and funded the prototype, a collaboration called Chapel. They now have a Substack to keep in touch with the growing DIRT community.
In 2024 Alice co-created the Seeds In The DIRT Imaginarium with Anglia Ruskin University's Global Sustainability Institute, who also funded the first commission, pairing experienced poet Clare Pollard with ARU's MA student Freya Sacksen.
https://www.dialect.org.uk/dirt
Alice is a co-founder of Bending The Arc, a collective of writers exploring thrutopian futures — imaginative, hopeful, and achievable visions of the world we want to live in.
The editors Laura Baggaley, Ilse Pedler, Katherine Stansfield, Hilary Watson & Alice Willitts are writers from different corners of the United Kingdom – we are poets, novelists, essayists, storytellers. They have a shared belief that better futures are achievable, and that imagination is the key to igniting change.
Their current writing practices are thrutopian. They tackle the dark and difficult challenges of the present day in a spirit of stubborn optimism. Their aim is to write thriving, desirable futures into being.
Read the latest issue and find out more here: Bending The Arc Magazine.
Alice is the founder of the 57 Poetry Collective, a craft group for sharing poetic practice who meet once a month and hold a writing retreat at Ty Newydd writers centre annually. Running since 2019 the group comprises poets Chaucer Cameron, Rachel Goodman, Elizabeth Lewis Williams, Helen McSherry, Jessica Mookherjee, Cheryl Moskowitz, Joanna Nissel, Ilse Pedler, Katherine Stansfield, Degna Stone, Christina Thatcher, Hilary Watson, Clare Whistler, Jane Wilkinson and Alice Willitts, with dear Friends Of The 57: Helen Dewberry, Elvire Roberts, Jenny Pagdin, Kirsten Irving, Carol Rowntree Jones and Kirsten Luckins.
A talking tour in 2025 for Breaking a Mare and Kiss My Earth, where Christina Thatcher and Alice Willitts shared intimate reflections on resilience and adaptation at their Silence Speaks performances — inviting the audience to reflect on what breaks us and what ultimately makes us stronger.
On 3 May 2023, Alice made a collaborative, durational piece with Clare Whistler over fifteen hours in the presence of a young oak tree outside Elspeth Owen's studio in Granchester, Cambridge. On the 15/16th June 2023, they took part in Elspeth Owen's Open Studio with two days of live editing and the scratch performances that became the book. The book launched on the 25th November 2023 with four performances, back with the oak tree.
The ongoing *Something Light Written *tour launched in 2024 on the 6th Jan with Clare's Oak - Ashburnham, Sussex.
21 March 2024 with Churchill's oak at Churchill College, Cambridge, thank you Bhanu Kapil.
22 March 2024 welcoming a sapling donated by Windsor Great Park into Royal Holloway's gardens as part of an Eco-Symposium.
15/16 June 2024 with Nancy's Oak and saplings - Norfolk, thank you Rachel Goodman.
7 July 2024 for the venerable oak by the lake, private event.
*21 Sept 2024 with Suffragette Oak, Kelvingrove - Glasgow, thank you *
*3 May 2025 with a favourite oak and its ghost oak partner, Greenwich Park, London, thank you Victoria Runce. *
23 May 2025 with a lightning-struck Sudbourne oak, thank you Clare Best
16 June 2025 with a jazzy oak in Bute Park, Cardiff, thank you Hilary Watson
9 Aug 2025 for a favourite 'custard tree' oak near Chichester, private event.
2 Nov 2025 for a spooky sunset oak in Sussex, (owls getting so involved!).
If you have a favourite Oak Tree you'd like us to bring our 26 minute performance to, please get in touch : somethinglightwritten @ gmail.com
June 22nd-26th, 2022
A multidisciplinary exhibition and public programme exploring the River Cam through art, performance, and ecology curated by Mattie O'Callaghan. Alice contributed as both poet and collaborator, performing and co-shaping a processional spoken word event along the river.
https://www.mattieocallaghan.com/curatorial-projects/immersions
An experimental poetics in collaboration with poet Anna Cathenka called p0_EM stein.
Shortlisted for the Ivan Juritz Prize (Kings College London, 2018).