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FRANKS CASKET |
| BIOGRAPHIES |
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Maureen Almond lives in Teesside and is a student on the Poetry MA at Newcastle University. She has been published in a range of magazines. Her pamphlet Hot, (1997) and her first full-length collection, Tailor Tacks, (1999) are published by Mudfog Press. She has recently won second prize in the Biscuit Poetry Prize. |
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Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he has worked as a community worker, poet and publisher Keith Armstrong is coordinator of the Northern Voices creative writing and community publishing project which specialises in recording the experiences of people in the North East of England. He was founder of the Strong Words and Durham Voices community publishing series and of Tyneside Street Press, and he has recently compiled and edited books on the Durham Miners' Gala and on the former mining communities of County Durham. He is studying for a PhD on the work of Newcastle writer Jack Common at the University of Durham where he received a Masters Degree in 1998 for his studies on regional culture in the North East of England. He was Year of the Artist 2000 poet-in-residence at Hexham Races. He has written for music-theatre productions, including 'O'er the Hills' and 'Wor Jackie' (1988) for Northumberland Theatre Company; 'Pig's Meat' (1997 & 2000) for Bruvvers Theatre Company; and 'The Roker Roar' (1998) for Monkwearmouth Youth Theatre Company. He won the Kate Collingwood Bursary Award in 1986. He worked as a Community Arts Development Worker in East Durham for 6 years in the 1980s and has long pioneered cultural exchanges with Durham's twinning partners, particularly Tuebingen and Nordenham in Germany and Ivry-sur-Seine and Amiens in France, as well as with Newcastle's Dutch twin -city of Groningen. He has won Northern Arts Awards to visit Berlin in 1990 and in 2001 to pursue his studies of Dutch regional culture. His travels to Denmark, Germany, Holland and Sweden have also been supported by the British Council. He was the Judge for the Sid Chaplin Short Story Awards in 2000. He often works with folk-musicians from North East England, including Jez Lowe, Marie Little, and George Welch, and he has written the lyrics for an album by folk-rock band 'The Whisky Priests', with whom he has toured extensively in The Netherlands. Another album is planned for 2002. |
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Peter Armstrong was born in 1957 in Blaydon on Tyne. He was educated locally and read Philosophy and English at Sunderland Polytechnic. He trained as a teacher and subsequently as a psychiatric nurse, and now works in Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy as a clinician and trainer. He first published poetry in the late 1970s, his work appearing in Ten North East Poets (Bloodaxe) and various magazines and anthologies. His first collection, Risings, was published by Enitharmon in 1988, and his second, The Red Funnelled Boat, by Picador in 1998. His rate of composition may have accelerated somewhat as his third collection, Line Dancing at the Masonic, is in the late stages of preparation. |
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Vik Bennett has lived in Cumbria since 1997 and recently moved into part of a crumbling-down manor house in the heart of the Lakes. Since arriving in the north, she has founded the successful creative group Wild Women and sister-publishing group Wild Women Press. She has worked freelance as a facilitator of creative writing in schools, hospitals and community groups, and performed solo and as part of the Wild Women group around the UK. In 2000, she started at Newcastle University on their MA Poetry, working with Jo Shapcott, and later transferring for practical reasons to Lancaster University to study on their Creative Writing MA. Her first collection Anchoring the Light was published in 1999 by Wild Women Press and received a Mind Millennium Award. She also edited Howl At the Moon and appeared in Hot Pot of Passion: A Sensual Celebration of Food (Wild Women Press). These books are available c/o Rose Cottage, Crosby Garrett, Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria CA17 4PW email: radoyle@talk21.com. (Prices are as follows - Anchoring £5.99; Howl £3; Hot Pot £4; - all plus p+p of £1 for first and 60p thereafter, cheques to 'Wild Women'.) Contact Wild Women via wildvix@excite.com for bookings/workshops. |
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Joanna Boulter grew up in Wiltshire. Failed composer. Lived in Far East and Middle East, came back to UK and gradually moved further north, reaching Darlington in 1989. Poems published in magazines, occasional competition successes, pamphlet from Bay Press (1994), another, On Sketty Sands, just out from Arrowhead Press. Now doing MA in Writing Poetry. |
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I was born in Hartlepool in 1958. The song at number one was 'Great Balls of Fire' by Jerry Lee Lewis. I have been traumatised ever since. I am a writer of poetry, plays, stories and hack music journalism. My last book of poetry was called 'Public' and was published by Iron Press. They let me be Poet in Residence for Durham County Council Museums Libraries and Arts Department and at James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough. I get to stand up in front of people and impersonate Daleks under the banner of being a performance poet. I have a wife called Shabnam, three children with other names (luckily, or I would get confused) and a menagerie of pets. I live in a Victorian House and am a facetious bastard. |
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Bob Cooper has won many prizes for his poetry, including 5 pamphlet competitions in 6 years. His latest collections, Drinking Up Time (Redbeck Press) and Pinocchio's Long Neb (Smith Doorstop) are still available. He was awarded an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Northumbria, gaining a distinction and the Waterstones Poetry Prize for his work. He lives in Middlesbrough and works as a Creative Writing Tutor for Leeds University, Middlesbrough Adult Education, and the WEA. |
Julia
Darling Julia is a playwright, poet and fiction writer. She has worked as a performance poet with the Poetry Virgins, and published poems in their anthology Sauce, and Modern Goddess. Eating the Elephant, her last full length work, toured the country several times and was also produced in the States. Recently her monologue Venetia Love Goes Netting was commissioned and produced by Live Theatre and Yorkshire TV as part of their NE1 Project, and later staged at The Theatre Royal. Her first novel Crocodile Soup was published in 1998 by Transworld, was longlisted for the Orange Prize, published in Canada and America, and has been translated into Danish. She has also published many short stories in her own collection (Bloodlines) and in countless anthologies. Most of her short fiction has been broadcast on Radio Four. She has just finished a play called Personal Belongings, which is being performed at Live Theatre this Autumn. She is writing a new play called POST which will be produced in County Durham next Spring. She is also commissioned to write a poetry/drama called The Black Path with Sean O'Brien for Radio Three, and a shorter Radio Four piece about a female philosopher. Julia is writer in residence at Live Theatre, and a Royal Literary Fund Associate Fellow at Newcastle University. She has recently been commissioned by Newcastle Council to write poems to be cast in glass on benches throughout the city centre of Newcastle upon Tyne. |
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Ian Duhig was Northern Arts Literary Fellow 2000-2001, during which period he won the national Poetry Competition for the second time, emulating his immediate predecessor in the fellowship, Jo Shapcott, suggesting something magical about Newcastle at the moment. His books include The Bradford Count, The Mersey Goldfish and Nominies, all with Bloodaxe. |
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Linda France lives in a field overlooking the Tyne Valley near Corbridge. She writes poetry for books -- Red (1992), The Gentleness of the Very Tall (94), and Storyville (97), all with Bloodaxe -- and as Public Art installations in stone, wood, glass and metal. She is currently working on words for stations on the new Metro extension to Sunderland. She edited the anthology Sixty Women Poets for Bloodaxe in 1993, which has recently gone into its third edition, and writes a regular feature on Poetic Form for MsLexia magazine. The poems in the Casket are from a new collection, The Simultaneous Dress, due from Bloodaxe in September 2002. |
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Rima Handley lives in the Northumberland countryside. She has been a lecturer in medieval language and literature and a homeopath and is now a psychotherapist trying to write poetry. She has published articles on medieval manuscripts, books and poems about homeopathy, and had one poem published in the The Piano on Fire, an anthology of poetry prizes (The New Writer, 1999). |
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Joyce Hodgson was born in the North East of England where she now lives, after having spent several years abroad. A biologist and climber by training, she has lately come to write poetry. She is a student on the M.A. part time course in Writing Poetry |
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Douglas Houston, born in Cardiff in 1947, grew up in Scotland and Surrey and obtained a PhD at Hull University for work on twentieth century poetry. He has published three collections of poetry: With The Offal Eaters (1986), The Hunters in the Snow (1995), and The Welsh Book of the Dead (2000); and has been a freelance writer and editor since 1981, making extensive contributions to literary works of reference. |
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Joan Johnston's poetry pamphlet Breathing In was published by Flarestack in 1997. In 1999 a collection entitled What You Want was published by Diamond Twig Press in Newcastle. Her poems have also appeared in several magazines (The Rialto, Writing Women, Billy Liar, London Magazine, The Printers Devil) and in The Independent. Her writing has been anthologised by Blue Nose Poetry and The Echo Room Press. Some has also been broadcast on local radio. In March 2000 she was awarded a Hawthornden Writing Fellowship. She is currently Writer in Residence at a day centre for the elderly in Newcastle and she also runs weekly writing workshops for prisoners in Frankland Prison, Durham. |
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Nairn Kennedy was born in Glasgow, and now lives in Yorkshire, where he is a lecturer at Leeds Metropolitan University. His work has appeared most recently in Ambit, and he performs in local open mike sessions. |
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Born in St Andrews in 1966, Roddy Lumsden now lives in London, where he is a freelance writer and puzzle compiler. A first book Yeah Yeah Yeah was shortlisted for Forward and Saltire prizes. As "poet-in-residence" to the music industry in 1999, he co-wrote The Message, a book on poetry and pop music. He appeared with The Divine Comedy at the Aldeburgh Festival and collaborated with members on pop and classical music. He sits on The Poetry Society's Council and Anvil Press' editorial board. A second collection The Book of Love (2000) was PBS Summer Choice and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. He recently co-edited Anvil New Poets 3 and tutors the Next Rung Up group for The Poetry School. In 2001, he travelled to Canada on an ACE International Fellowship. His third collection Roddy Lumsden is Dead is now available. |
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Jeanne Macdonald lives in Tynemouth and is studying at Newcastle University for the MA In Writing Poetry. She has attended 'Writing from the Inside Out'at Newcastle University for the past six years, tutor, Gillian Allnutt. Jeanne's poetry has been published in several magazines. She is one of seven poets in the anthology Poets Like Us published last year by Poetry Monthly Press with a foreword by Ian Duhig . The poets are writing friends, male and female, who meet monthly to support, motivate and constructively criticise work-in-progress. The poets are widely published in magazines, though Poets Like Us is a debut collection. It can be obtained via Jeanne@millview77.freeserve.co.uk |
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Sean O'Brien is a poet, critic,
playwright, broadcaster, anthologist and editor. He was born in London,
grew up in Hull and read English at Cambridge, Birmingham
and Hull. He lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. He has held
fellowships at universities in Denmark and Japan, as well
as at Dundee, Leeds, Durham and Newcastle. At present he
teaches on the MA in Writing course at Sheffield Hallam
University and is Writer in Residence at the Live
Theatre, Newcastle, jointly with Julia Darling. |
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Jacob Polley was born in 1975, in
Carlisle, Cumbria. His pamphlet, Salvage was
published by Northern Lights in 2000 and 'Flickerman and
the Ivory-Skinned Woman' - he and Ian Fenton's short film
- is currently in post-production. Website: www.flickerman.co.uk |
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Katrina is based on the Northumberland
coast. Many of the poems in her first collection, The
Lost Music (Bloodaxe 1996), explore the life of the
local fishing community. She has led poetry classes for
adults and children from Cornwall to the Shetland
Islands, where she was writer-in-residence from 1996-7.
She has worked on many collaborations with other artists,
including the CD-ROM Book of the North. Together
with piper Chris Ormston, she recorded a CD/book of her
long Northumbrian dialect poem, The Wund an' the
Wetter (Iron Press 1999). http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/speech/poetryproms.shtml Katrina's latest publication is Turning the Tide, a collaboration with two artists on the Durham coal-coast (District of Easington 2001). |
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Alison is a Scot, and lived in Galloway until 8 years ago when she moved with her family to Cumbria where she began to write. She is currently studying for an MA in Writing Poetry at Newcastle University and is a founder member of Wild Women, a creative group of women from Cumbria. Alison has published work in Wild Women's two anthologies, Howl at the Moon and Hot Pot of Passion. Her work has also appeared in Voices of the Mountain, an anthology published by Mungrisdale Writer's Group and she has read some of her poems on BBC Radio Cumbria. |
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Anne Ryland is in the second year of the Newcastle University MA in Writing Poetry. She has had poems published in a range of magazines, including Acumen, Smiths Knoll, Other Poetry, Magma and Envoi, and is working towards her first collection. She lives in Berwick-upon-Tweed and is a tutor in Adult Education. |
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Fiona Ritchie Walker was born in Montrose, Scotland and now lives in North East England. Her collection Lip Reading was published by Diamond Twig in 1999 (reprinted 2001). Her work has been published in magazines and anthologies, including the British Council's New Writing 11 (Picador, March 2002), and broadcast on BBC Knowledge and BBC Radio Scotland. She is studying for an MA in Writing Poetry at Newcastle University. 'Meeting the Congregation' was published in Poems: 23 (Lancester Litfest). |
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Anna Woodford was born in 1973 and lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. Her pamphlet The Higgins Honeymoon is published by Driftwood Publications and her poetry has appeared in magazines including The North, The Rialto, Iron, Envoi and anthologies including Reactions 3 (Pen&Inc). In 2002 she was awarded a residency at Tyrone Guthrie (with financial help from Northern Arts). In 2001 she won a Northern Promise Award from New Writing North. |
