Alstonefield is a small village in the north Staffordshire Peak District, close to where Peter Riley once lived. Alstonefield is a long poem that mediates on place and landscape, memory and imagination, culminating in a night walk through the valleys and hills of the area. The details of the place and its history are specific and accurate, but the monologue ranges recklessly over reality and dream, reportage, symbolism and fantasy. Readers who accompany the speaker on his journey will encounter a giant dancing rabbit, the ghost of Shostakovich, an inquisitor or Sphynx who fails to turn up, hawthorn bushes bursting into song, a false knight on the road...and a protagonist who at one point divides into two people. Philosophical and humorous, Peter Riley\'s poem is grounded in the calm and telling facts of the real: the glowworm by the path, water falling over stones, the pre-dawn birds voicing their hunger...always with an eye towards the world beyond.