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She died at the height of her writing
career, with a new book,
The Poetry Cure, about to be published, a collection
of her plays for radio and television underway, a play,
Manifesto for a New City,
touring the North East and with a visual art/poetry
project, First Aid Kit
for the Mind, a collaboration with the artist
Emma Holliday, in production.
Recently, Julia had been using her personal experience
of cancer as her creative subject, especially in her
poetry. She produced two life-enhancing collections
of poems, Sudden Collapses
in Public Places and Apology
for Absence, in which she creatively responded
to her life with cancer and suggested how poetry and
humour could be used to combat both pain and suffering.
She was also a fellow in writing and health at Newcastle
University's School of English, where she used her gifts
to pioneer creative writing teaching within medical
training and set up projects with hospitals and doctors.
"Working with Julia as a winner of the Writer's
Award was an honour and delight. Her uplifting and inspiring
work has already touched many lives and will continue
to do so for years to come. We're proud that our award
played a part in supporting the work of such a creative
and generous writer. Our thoughts are now with her partner
Bev and with her daughters, Scarlet and Florrie."
Fiona Ellis, Director
of Northern Rock Foundation
"The North has lost a seminal writer. A writer
who, through her work, helped to both define and challenge
the region she called home. Julia was a leading light
of the literary scene in the North East, a writer who
befriended many, who generously shared her work, her
ideas and her experiences, not only with the literary
crowd but also with the wider community. She had both
a high literary sensibility and the ability to touch
a broad range of people with her work. The region is
a poorer place without her. She will be deeply missed."
Claire Malcolm, Director
of New Writing North
Julia chronicled her life and her creative endeavours
on her website at www.juliadarling.co.uk.
The very personal and witty blog that she kept continues
to be an inspiration for many people. The website is
now also a home to tributes to her and to her work.
Julia leaves behind partner Bev and daughters Scarlet
and Florrie.
Imagine yourself in a space suit, floating through
dust,
and that you are the only life on a spinning planet,
because whatever the news, you are still alive,
and you can still tell jokes. Tell the doctor a joke.
Or turn back time, and live in a pressure pot of memory.
You can do that. You can ignore calendars and clocks.
Denial is useful. So is a kind of grinning madness.
You are very lucky to live in a warm house, and think
Of your vast bath, and the way that you lie in it, gazing
at the clouds shifting, the pigeons flying home. No
one
can take that away from you. And your mother.
Not many women have a mother like yours, brave,
original, who tends your universe, and the future.
Sometimes I think there is no such thing as terrible,
only blocked things, lost words, souls that missed
the train.
From Apology for Absence,
Arc Publications
The Poetry Cure (edited
with Cynthia Fuller)
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books, 2005
ISBN: 1852246901
Apology for Absence
Publisher: Arc Publications, 2004
ISBN: 1904614124
The Taxi Driver's Daughter
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd, 2004
ISBN: 0141012617
Sudden Collapses in Public Places
Publisher: Arc Publications, 2003
ISBN: 1900072912
Live Theatre: Six Plays from the North East
Publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd, 2003
ISBN: 0413774090
Tangles and Starbursts: Living with Dementia
(created with photographer Sharon Bailey)
Publisher: Alzheimer's Disease Society, 2001
ISBN: 187287455X
Snap Shots: Ten Years of the Ian St. James
Award
Publisher: Angela Royal Publishing, 1999
ISBN: 1899860800
Crocodile Soup
Publisher: Arrow, 1998 and Penguin Books Ltd (paperback),
2004
ISBN: 0141015160
Bloodlines
Publisher: Panurge Publishing, 1995
ISBN: 1898984255
Julia Darling was born in Winchester in 1956 and grew
up in the house that Jane Austen died in.
After attending, and being expelled from, a number of
different schools, she went to arts college in Cornwall
and then moved to the North East, where she became a
founding member of the Poetry Virgins, who performed
poetry in unexpected places to bring it to a wider audience.
Julia developed a successful career as a writer in
many forms, from poetry and novels to plays for the
stage and for radio. She published one book of short
stories, Bloodlines,
and two novels: Crocodile
Soup (Arrow) and The
Taxi Driver's Daughter (Viking).
Her first poetry collection, Sudden
Collapses in Public Places (Arc), was a Poetry
Book Society Recommendation in 2003. The book is dedicated
to the staff of the Northern Centre for Cancer Treatment
in Newcastle.
"Anyone who has ever spent any time in a hospital
or in a hospital waiting room will love these poems,
anyone who has ever been to the doctor or felt ill or
had to fill in a form will love these poems. That covers
everyone. Here are poems about a difficult, scary subject,
cancer, that circle around it lightly, on light dancing
feet, and every so often whack you on the head."
Jackie Kay
"Narrating her experience and survival of one
of the hardest-to-master kinds of loss, cancer, Julia
Darling writes it not so it looks 'like disaster', but
an adventure that carries us beyond distress and disturbance
into comedy and delightful surprise."
Carol Rumens
In 2001, Julia Darling was writer in residence at Live
Theatre in Newcastle upon Tyne. Her plays for Live include
Attachments (recently developed as a sitcom pilot,
Cold Calling, by Tyne Tees and Northern Film
and Media) and The Last
Post (a play about the importance of writing
letters, inspired by conversations with retired post
office staff).
When she died, Julia was working on a new novel that
had involved a recent research trip to Brazil to observe
the work of the healer John of God, who performs miracle
operations in the jungle.
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