VANE WOMEN - Key Persons

Anne Hine is a poet who thinks deeply, unafraid of questions of spirituality in a world often violent and uncaring. A love of language, sensual word-play and humour make her poetry speak as it enlightens. She has lived in the North for the last twenty years and has used her many life experiences as material for her writing. Her first collection Dark Matters was published by Vane Women Press in 2001. Follow the links to read Anne's pieces on this site:

Annie Wright works with teachers and pupils on creative writing in schools throughout North Yorkshire, and presents self-awareness and personal growth courses for adults. Her poetry has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies including Braquemard, Headlock, The Poetry Business, Sunk Island Review, Writing Women, Tees Valley Writer and Soundings East (USA). She is a founder member of Vane Women, the successful writing/performing group based at Darlington Arts Centre. This, her first pamphlet collection, was published by The Bay Press in 1995. Annie's hot first pamphlet collection Including Sex was published by The Bay Press in 1995. An original and scrupulous writer, her work is rich in sexual lyricism. The poems are sensual, and often frankly sexual, full of taut phrases and energetic explosions of imagery. Her long awaited first full collection Redemption Songs from Arrowhead Press, published April 2003, was described by Fred D'Aguiar as "unabashedly erotic". She is literacy consultant to Darlington LEA's primary schools and loves working with teachers and children on effective ways to develop and improve their creative writing. An experienced workshop leader, Annie has led writing sessions with writers aged four to seventy plus! Her current obsessions are with the interplay between art, sculpture, landscape and male/female relationships. Follow the links to read Annie's pieces on this site:

She can be cool, ice-blue cool, in her blue jeans she dances to the rhythm of the blues

Celia McCulloch has a strong American voice: wise, salty, the kind you expect to hear from a rocking chair on porches, no nonsense yet full of poetic instances. In another century she would have been a pioneer, sewing beautiful quilts, bottling fruits. It is sheer pleasure to read her poems, full of earthy energy and humour and skilled crafting, a laden table that is a delight, giving good advice on fungi and love in middle age and how to admonish yourself kindly.

Chris Powell lives in Weardale and teaches performing arts in Sunderland. On her journeys between the two she composes fragments of deathless prose in her head, and then forgets most of them. A number of the stories she has managed to recall have been published in various magazines and anthologies and broadcast on Radio 4 in the afternoon reading slot. Her first collection of short stories Burning the Blue Winged Boys was published by Vane Women Press in 2005. Chris joined Vane Women in 2006. Follow the links to read Chris's pieces on this site:

To say Diane Cockburn has an unusual view of life is an understatement. Her style is black humour with a slight bias towards vegetables, moths and assorted toothed creatures. She was brought up in Belfast during the Troubles, so Death regularly appears in various guises: sometimes as a potato, sometimes as a mound of saturated fat. Her first collection, Under Surveillance was published in 1999 by Vane Women Press. You can also seek her out at the sign of the sanctuary knocker . . . She is to be found on Durham Writers. Diane joined Vane Women in February 2001. Follow the links to read Diane's pieces on this site:

Dorothy, Dot to her friends, is wife, lover, mother, grandmother, ex-teacher, borough councillor and for one year only, Mayor of the Borough of Darlington. Her work, mostly poetry with the odd short story reflects this varied world. Family, friends, loves and irritations, politics and prejudices are her subjects and to write a novel is her ambition. Domestic in scale, though varied in style, her poetry demonstrates an interest in pattern and form, repetition of sound and rhyme. Follow the links to read Dorothy's pieces on this site:

"She writes with a marvellous control over language, and can seemingly tackle a wide variety of subjects effortlessly. This is not to say that her work is without craft, but the surface spontaneity that Yeats insisted was a requisite for good poetry is maintained throughout." -Poetry Scotland Review. "Wright confronts her feelings more openly and more 'poetically' - consider 'gold chrysanthemums arching / between stippled breasts'; or with more feminine wonder in a poem like 'Sweetheart', a poem about valentine cards in which she manages not to get sloppy. One respects the feeling - that is her strength." - William Oxley, Orbis.

Joanna Boulter has cleared every hurdle to take her poetry to a higher state before she leaves us, not departing from this world but into the shade of an illness which will close down portals: memory, cognisance and time itself. Blue Horse is her farewell collection of poetry, brilliant, daring, fluent, modernist and to be read at one sitting it is so compelling. We may believe she has drunk the milk of Paradise and in a final poem ‘The Road to Xanadu' we glimpse the journey. She warns that ‘art is dangerous'. Her poem ‘Water Notes' vividly ends with a half formed merchild pleading for evolution, as the author attempts to stopper the bottle where wrecks lie. The conclusion may be that poetry is not to be denied, the blue horse takes on skycolour Joanna Boulter is a marvellous poet. She shares with the late U.A. Fanthorpe a sense for the deep and often dark craft of poetry, for the mercilessness of memory, and for the truth of the poetic act. Her concerns are the music of language, the exaction of experience, and the poetry of place. The attack of her poetry can be tough, bracing, and direct. These are poems that stare out oblivion without fear or pleading, there was a maze is a wonderfully varied, valiant, and rewarding collection. - David Morley, winner of the Ted Hughes Awar d there was a maze by Joanna Boulter and published by Epistemea Joanna Boulter grew up in Wiltshire and sampled several countries in the Far East and Middle East before moving to Darlington with her family in 1989. She's been writing poetry forever, but in common with many other women wasn't published until she was 40. Since then her work has appeared in many magazines and she's had several competition successes. Her latest is to win First Prize in the Poetry London competition. Her first collection, Running With The Unicorns, was published by The Bay Press in 1994. In 1997 she won a Tyrone Guthrie award from Northern Arts, enabling her to complete a long sequence of poems, On Sketty Sands, based on her maternal family history (right back to the ancestral Welsh pirate!), published by Arrowhead Press in September 2001. Her third collection The Hallucinogenic Effects of Breathing is from the same press, published May 2003. She won a Northern Promise Award this year to continue research into her sequence of poems on the composer Shostakovitch. Joanna received mentoring, as part of the Award, from David Morley of Warwick University. Follow the links to read Joanna's pieces on this site:

The Ship Owner's House is built on sands of displacement. Judi Sutherland echoes the cry of the refugee, the exile, a stranger in a strange land. Home is something she leaves behind. Her poems have crossed several cultural borders to the North. ‘This is a foreign England' and language rears up in ‘clints and grykes'. Memories move with her into the ‘terra incognita' of Teesdale, question what we mean by locus, a place where we belong. Intelligent, imaginative, heartfelt, these are salutary poems for our times. Judi Sutherland writes about her journeys, from south to north, from past to present using the perspective of the outsider. Whether mourning the loss of her grandfather's possessions, or abandoning the red kites as she leaves the south for life in the north, Sutherland always seems to be outside.

Julie Hogg has always lived in Redcar. East Cleveland is her homeland, Majuba Road her stunning first collection. The poems journey through the North East landscapes she inhabits. They chart urban and industrial decay, set against the constant ebb and pull of the sea - an edge ‘between lonely and alone' to which the book keeps returning. The women who people this book know all about hard times. But they are strong survivors; their sense of humour sees them through. Her voice can be lyrical, startling, staccato and also exquisitely tender, urging us to ‘live like this'.

Lindsay Balderson loves words and the intimate relationships they form with one another. Being a typical Piscean, she has a deep interest in the mystical and magical and these often weave spells in her writing. Born in Darlington, Lindsay now divides her time between there and the City of Newcastle where, in 2005, she completed her MA in Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Her work has been published in various anthologies; Northern Grit, Re-Writing the Map, Collecting Stones (Vane Women Press), Newcastle Masters, (Newcastle University), A Sudden Clatter of Voices, (Ottakars). Her first collection Stripping the Blackthorn was published by Vane Women Press in October 2008. A concoction of love, torture and reflection. Follow the links to read Lindsay's pieces on this site:

Marilyn Longstaff is an accomplished poet. In 2003 she received a New Writing North Promise Award, and in 2005 completed her MA in Creative Writing at Newcastle University. She is published in a range of magazines, in anthologies, and on the Web. Her first pamphlet, Puritan Games, was published by Vane Women Press in 2001. Her full collection, Sitting Among the Hoppers was published by Arrowhead Press in 2004. Marilyn's second full collection Raiment, poems based on the theme of how we clothe our physical and spiritual selves, will be published by Smokestack Books in 2011. Most recently, she has been part of a group Stemistry which has been working with the poet Lisa Matthews to write in response to stem cell research. Follow the links to read Marilyn's pieces on this site:

From Willington lass to Mayor of Darlington, Dorothy Long can reflect on a Northern life of public service. Her poetry, like the luminescent pearls in the opening poem, she has kept in a drawer. No Random Loving is her beautiful debut collection. Family, back terraces and woods, the former Willington slagheap, the Lake District peaks, family holidays in France, all forge strong links. At the centre is her sense of home, carried within, rooted in a happy marriage. Constancy is celebrated while seasons, tides and moods change. In the dales of Durham, Anglo Saxon words hang on and her poetry glints with kennings, fresh and sharp as the East Wind. No Random Loving by Dorothy Long £5.00 £2.50 + £2.50 postage. The postage for further copies of this or other books will be £1.00 per copy. NO RANDOM LOVING No random tracing, this, Fingers framing tacitly The words we needn't say. Fingers, merest breath of hovering air, Claiming, learning again This line from hip to shoulder. Words and bones articulating, Back and belly undulating. No random murmuring, this, These words breathed softly, lip to lip The words we want to say. Mouth, merest breath of hovering air, Stroking, loving again This line from neck to knee. Limbs frame thoughts intently Bodies moving gently. No random coupling, this, Movement forming, making The words that ever say, My dearest, this caress of hovering air Tracing, reading again This line from hair to toe, Is passion's expression Of a love, an obsession. Dorothy Long

Pat Maycroft's photography has long been recognised as a stunning evocation of the Northern scene, particularly the lower fell landscape of South West Durham where industrial decay mixes with wild flowers and larksong. This selection ranges from Pat's home fell of Cockfield in County Durham, to memories of Middlesbrough where she was born. There is no doubt that Pat is a poet of the lens, she is also a poet on the page. She's joined by her fellow writers in the Vane Women collective who have contributed poems inspired by her work. On the fells of the upper Gaunless Valley in the wind, rain and snow is the place where Pat feels at home. A visual artist who writes about the history of place, the events of daily life, of death, and of the after life. In 1998 Pat gained a first class Honours Degree in Photography at Cleveland College of Art and Design. As a member of the Royal Photographic Society she recorded some of the Nation's listed buildings for a website created by English Heritage. Through this work and the discovery of ancient parish boundary stones, Pat has been inspired to write some of her best poems, appearing here. A major selection of her photography appears with poetry from Pat and Vane Women in Northern Grit (Vane Women Press 2002). Why not take a look at some of her other photographs on the Royal Photographic Society website. More recently, Pat has returned to keeping fit by swimming. Not for the faint hearted as she swims in open water whenever she can! She has raised 2000 swimming for charity. You can also find her photographs here on www.imagesofengland.org.uk Follow the links to read Pat's pieces on this site:

Pru Kitching has a theatrical instinct whether her backdrop is high Weardale where she lives or her foreign journeyings. Her voice is dramatic, intense, but played against glimpses of the absurd. Irony and passion are her comfortable companions. Pru Kitching: born in Sunderland, schooled in North Yorkshire and County Durham; wrote a lot; trained in theatre in Manchester; wrote a lot; married a painter and was widowed; didn't write; ran away to Copenhagen; travelled a lot; came back to Weardale in the North Pennines; writes a lot again. She has had poems published in several anthologies and was longlisted for the 2007 Bridport Prize. Her first poetry pamphlet All Aboard the Moving Staircase was published by Vane Women Press in 2004. She joined Vane Women in 2006. The Krakow Egg, Pru's second poetry pamphlet, was published by Arrowhead Press in 2009, the same year that she was awarded a Northern Promise Award from New Writing North. Follow the links to read Pru's pieces on this site:

S.J. Litherland's work encompasses love, politics, loss, and philosophy. She has five published collections of poetry, The Long Interval (Bloodaxe 1986) Flowers of Fever (Iron Press 1992) The Apple Exchange (Flambard 1999), a four-part book, The Work of the Wind published by Flambard in July 2006, and a sequence of poems about former England cricketer Nasser Hussain The Homage from Iron Press, nominated for Cricket Book of the Year 2006. Her work has appeared in various anthologies, New Women Poets (Bloodaxe), Forward Book of Poetry 2001 and North by North-East (Iron) She has received two Northern Writers' Awards for her writing. Originally from Warwickshire, she has lived in Durham City since 1965, bringing up a son and daughter. She has four grandsons. Her sixth collection The Absolute Bonus of Rain is forthcoming from Flambard Press in Spring 2010.

Sheila Binks has never lived more than 10 miles from the tiny Durham village of Mordon where she was born. Rooted in her practical Northern working class life, stacking shelves at Tesco and raising four sons, nevertheless she is a dreamer, one who is wild at heart. Her compass points West to the Great Plains and California, where there are ghosts of buffalo and Indians, and the San Andreas Fault is like a knife-edge to live on. All she has are maps on her knee but poets need only one hand waving free. This is a beautiful and intelligent collection drawn from her life on the ground and inspired by her head in the clouds. Sensitive, observant, her work never fails to impress with a spirit that sparkles. And if you have ever wondered what a Durham lasses' night out is like, read on. "Whether roaming far in imagination or revisiting memories of a rural childhood, adolescent nights out in Durham or trips taken as an adult, Binks conjures up instant pictures in the mind's eye via crisp and rhythmic verse, inventive juxtapositions and bold metaphor. Overall this is a publication containing much to enjoy and reflect upon." Pru Farrier, Darlington and Stockton Times

Vicki Thomas uses language much as a Viking on the field of battle. She gives no quarter. Sharp poems with deadly wordpower. She is mistress of a tradition that combines warrior and poet. Her language crackles with menace and rare lyric beauty.