LINDA FRANCE
I was born in Wallsend, Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1958. My family moved south to Dorset 
when I was five. I returned to the north east in 1981 after some time living in Leeds, 
London and Amsterdam. The north is important to me in terms of my identity and this 
is reflected in my work.

My poetry collections are published by Bloodaxe Books: Red (1992),  The Gentleness of 
the Very Tall (1994, Poetry Book Society  Recommendation/Los Angeles 
Times Book Award longlist), Storyville (1997)and The Simultaneous Dress (2002). 
Bloodaxe is also to publish The Toast of the Kit Cat Club, a verse biography of 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) poet, traveller and letter-writer. In 1993 I edited the 
acclaimed anthology Sixty Women Poets (PBS Special Recommendation) which went 
into its fourth edition in 2002.

Since early 1990 I have been involved in various Poetry in Public Spaces projects, 
collaborating  with visual artists in different media on text to be installed into the landscape 
or within buildings. My favourite pieces have resulted from working with stone carver 
Alec Peever - at Royal Quays, North Shields, and in Mowbray Park, Sunderland. 
I have also collaborated with the painter Birtley Aris on several works for gallery 
spaces and publication (Acknowledged Land, 1993; Storyville, 1997 and Wild, 2003). 
Sundered Sonnets, designed in collaboration with Andy Edwards, will be installed in 
stations of the Sunderland Metro in autumn 2003. I have contributed to several conferences 
on the subject of `Public Poetry' - Logos in Middlesbrough in 1996 and Poetry in Public 
Spaces at the British Library in 1999.

I have written two stage plays: Diamonds in Your Pockets, commissioned and performed 
by Theatre sans Frontieres in 1996, and I am Frida Kahlo, commissioned and performed 
by Cloud 9. I have worked on various stage pieces with No Limits Theatre Company 
(for adults with learning difficulties), most recently a collaboration with Subhadassi titled 
Silver Street, which premiered in London in June 2003 before touring.

My poetry has been performed on radio and television and I give regular readings and
workshops around the country. Poems have appeared in The Independent, The Sunday Times,  
Poetry Review, The Rialto, The North, Stand, Writing Women and various other little magazines. 
I am also represented in many anthologies, including New Women Poets (ed. Carol Rumens), 
Making For Planet Alice (ed. Maura Dooley), The Firebox (ed. Sean O'Brien) and Scanning the 
Century (ed. Peter Forbes).

I have received various awards and fellowships for my work, including the first Arts Foundation Poetry 
Fellowship in 1993, as well as the Basil Bunting Award two years in a row (1989 & 1990) and fellowships 
at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre,  Eire, Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, USA and Hawthornden, 
Scotland.

I have taught creative writing in schools, universities, for the Arvon Foundation and with community 
groups since 1985. I currently write a regular feature on the craft of poetry in Mslexia magazine.

 


               Dreaming the Real

 I’m lying down looking at the colour
 of sky falling through trees, dreaming
 the real, tasting what it feels like to love it.

 Why did it take me so long to let go, simply 
 exhale, so the day could breathe itself in 
 and open without me standing in the way?

 How could I forget the grace of my own body,
 strong as this blue, tender as the white
 of the wild blossom, warm as midday light?

 Let me practise a patience bold enough
 to hold every weather, trusting the elements,
 the beauty of rain, all its shades of grey.

 I want whatever’s real to be enough.  At least 
 it’s a place to begin.  And to master the art 
 of loving it; feel it love me back under my skin.



 Joy


 From an upstairs window, black-and-white
 illuminates all the green, juicy with summer rain: 

 two magpies loiter, wing to wing, at the lip
 of the pond; dip big bills into its dark bowl.

 A patina of cobalt flashes behind bellies, fat
 and soft as cream.  There is chattering

 and nodding.  Later, through the gate,
 over the glade of cottongrass, they’re still

 together, slicing the sky in two; spelling
 it out – inky feathers, skin and bone.



 Sorrow


 Every morning at five I’m woken
 by thuds and taps at the window.
 I tune them out, tunnelling under
 my white cotton dark.
		After a week
 of early alarms, I get up
 to find myself face to face
 with a magpie, caught mid-peck,
 trying to steal the silver;

 the glint of candlestick and chimes
 all it takes to fire his desire,
 deny the fact of glass.
	 	I cover
 the shine with a cloth as if
 it were a sleeping bird, close
 the curtains and return to bed,
 unable to settle for thinking about
 all the things I’ve ever wanted