Julia Darling – författare

Published to tie in with the legendary Live Theatre's thirtieth birthday celebrations Spanning three generations, Live Theatre is a celebration of the finest playwrights from the North East. In The Filleting Machine (Tom Hadaway), a fishing family's way of life faces extinction; in You Are My Heart's Delight (C.P. Taylor), the lights are switched out in the house of a gamekeeper and his sister who have resisted change for years; Shooting the Legend (Alan Plater) is a comedy of cultural errors in which two women prepare to make a documentary about the 'socially deprived' of Gateshead; in Wittgenstein on Tyne (Lee Hall), Wittgenstein is caught red-handed when working as a hospital porter on Tyneside; Laughter When We're Dead (Sean O'Brien) is a modern revenge tragedy set around the politics of old versus new labour while Cold Calling (Julia Darling) is a dark comedy about a door-to-door salesman.

'This book of poems is for all of us who go through illness, deal with doctors, hospitals, and experiences such as bereavement and ageing, and who struggle to find language to describe the suffering we have to go through. Medical language baffles and alienates us. It's a harsh, unforgiving vocabulary that often seems to bear no relationship to our own emotional predicament. In this uplifting anthology we see how poetry can give us metaphors and images to help us understand our feelings and communicate them to people around us. This is a book that should be in every waiting-room, and should be by the bed of every GP and consultant. It may inspire you to write poetry, and also help you to find order in the chaos of ill health. By giving us words, poetry can help cure us.' – Julia Darling & Cynthia Fuller

This collected edition commemorates the 10th anniversary of Julia Darling's death, and includes a substantial selection of unpublished work. Jackie Kay writes: "The poems are funny, irreverent, moving and never sentimental. You can recognise yourself in them, recognise your family. They are warm, full of compassion; [...] a shining bright light."