<![CDATA[Diana Durham, Writer & Poet

<![CDATA[Diana Durham, Writer & Poet - Blog & Articles]]>Thu, 10 Oct 2024 02:10:08 -0400Weebly<![CDATA[Another wonderful Poetry Anthology from Amethyst Press -]]>Wed, 09 Oct 2024 11:12:41 GMThttp://www.dianadurham.net/blog--articles/another-wonderful-poetry-anthology-from-amethyst-press

The Celtic idea of 'thin spaces' is a way of thinking about the how consciousness itself can become a 'thin place' where the borders between inner and outer open. Sarah Law has given us a collection bursting with ways of expressing people's experience of the sacred, the meaningful, the beauty in nature, architecture, human transitions and art. I am honoured to have my sonnet, 'Thin Places' included:

Thin Places

Each morning what is familiar is seen
again, as we awaken out of night
and our part of Earth spins round into light -
that day-shift still traveling while they dream.

Continents, neighbourhoods striped in darkness
and sunlight, oceans tilted warm then cold -
it is this interchange that grows the world,
makes the soft grey overlap that stretches

out the dusk, the mist that blurs the morning
land. Thin places, the Celts said, where the deep
bleeds through and shifts the hardened shape of things,
a clearing like the night that mimics sleep.

This is the world riddle that we answer
when we see one depth within the other.

]]><![CDATA[New Anthology from Amethyst Press:]]>Sun, 30 Jul 2023 09:34:58 GMThttp://www.dianadurham.net/blog--articles/new-anthology-from-amethyst-press

]]><![CDATA[We Live in a Labyrinth - Interview with Luisa of PassionHarvest Blog]]>Wed, 31 May 2023 15:14:52 GMThttp://www.dianadurham.net/blog--articles/we-live-in-a-labyrinth-interview-with-luisa-of-passionharvest-blog

Another lively and enriching encounter with Luisa's enthusiasm and passion for life and exploring spirit, in which I synthesise thoughts about the creative process, the grail myth and the meaning of the labyrinth!

Click Here to Listen and Watch: Why You Live in a Labyrinth!

]]><![CDATA[Poem 'Philosopher's Stone' featured in Watkins Mind Body Spirit Magazine]]>Mon, 18 Jul 2022 12:45:49 GMThttp://www.dianadurham.net/blog--articles/poem-philosophers-stone-featured-in-watkins-mind-body-spirit-magazine

Summer issue 2022 Watkins Mind Body Spirit features my poem Philosopher's Stone from my new poetry collection Labyrinth published by Amethyst Press.

]]><![CDATA[New Review of Labyrinth by Irina Kuzminsky]]>Mon, 04 Oct 2021 12:07:47 GMThttp://www.dianadurham.net/blog--articles/new-review-of-labyrinth-by-irina-kuzminsky

Irina Kuzminsky is a poet, songwriter and dancer. Her poems and articles have been published in England, Australia and the US in Esoteric Quarterly,poetry-chaikhana.com,Acumen, Poetrix, Phoebe, Caduceus, kundalinisplendor.blogspot.com, Arts and Academic Review, Devi, Women’s Art Register andDance Australia. Her poetry has been set to music by Kevin George Brown, James D’Angelo and Amanda Lee Falkenberg. Irina herself has recently turned to setting some of her poetry to music in the singer/songwriter tradition of the troubadour poets. More information from: http://irinakuzminsky.com/shop.html

Diana Durham, Labyrinth (Amethyst Press, 2021)
Labyrinth, Diana Durham’s new poetry collection, is a search for connection, a search for finding a way into a new land. The roots of belonging, the familiar markers of entry are no longer there. Walking the path of the labyrinth - a metaphor for the collection - becomes a way of finding the physical and spiritual centre where the epiphany of connection can take place. In her introductory essay Diana Durham writes about the circumstances in which these poems came to be written when she moved from England to New Hampshire in America, where she was to live for over twenty years. Anyone who has been uprooted and transplanted from their own homeland can relate to the feelings of alienation which echo through many of the poems.

Apart from providing the background for the writing of the poems, the introduction also provides a description of Durham’s poetic process, a process that is individual to each and every poet, and in this case gives an interesting insight into how Durham approaches her craft.

Many of the poems in the collection come under the title of what I would call densely descriptive prose poetry, a genre which has been very popular among contemporary poets. It is well executed, its language meticulously crafted, and portrays the many landscapes of America as experienced by the poet. The urban blight of interstate highways and modern soulless towns is a constant leitmotif as the poet tries to reach beyond these to a deeper connection with the land they disfigure. “Mock Nothing” is a good example of a commentary on the ugliness of urban spaces and urban life with its sham emptiness. “Planet America” is another poem that speaks to attempts to fit into a foreign culture and land, find a way into the labyrinth and discover the transcendence at the centre. A poem such as “Lonely Climb Away from What We Love” captures something of the brittle hardness and anonymity of New York.

Yet the writing is punctuated with a continued quest for these outer layers to be stripped away and become transparent, for the veils between the worlds to thin so that they can open gateways onto a deeper reality, as in “Advent”:
the vanishing layers
of matter and thought
become like tissue,
like lace lights threaded through the tree
light on light - interstices gateways, advent.

“Philosopher’s Stone” depicts yet another such reaching towards the transcendent, “the thing itself, / shining / into the prism world”.
“At the Surface” contains more explicit personal emotion than many of the poems (“I remember this, this is the backward / plunge, the vertigo drop / the full glittering cascade / of reasons why there is no hope”), leading to a realization that the sought after transformation could come not through rage and struggle but through a “silent and fragile” power.

Many of the poems are strongly descriptive presenting pictures for the brain to conjure up. “Icing” and “The Snows of March” are examples of successful nature studies and word paintings. “San Diego Ladies” is a refreshing vignette, a nicely wrought image of the ladies who “talk in long, slow / sentences / like smoke from a slim, white / cigarette”. “At the Women’s Retreat” touchingly portrays a woman as “a soft half-statue / shined by water / her face / framed by the grey / brown curves of her hair / beautiful / in the light.” “Black River” is another particularly successful word painting.
“Gold” is one of the best poems in the collection with its interplay between gold - radiance - temple walls - facets - and space itself as a temple. The density of imagery really works here in evoking an inner landscape of the soul.

“Soft Scalpel” is another poem that stands out, offering a possible key to the collection in its concluding stanza:
This soft speaking
constellates geometries,
opens doorways into places
we have always known existed
yet, when our hearts needed so much filling,
could not find.

The poet wanders through this labyrinth, seeking to “speak simply” (in “Clear Through to the Sun”), looking often, finding but rarely.

“Temple” is another standout for me, also for the musicality of its concluding lines which are a gem combining meaning and form:
remember when this temple gets defaced
our bodies are the fractals of its grace.

In the introduction the poet writes of how she finally came to heal her homesickness and alienation and find the transcendent connection she sought with the new land, as expressed in the poem “Labyrinth”. Yet it is the second poem in the “Labyrinth” sequence, which for me clearly evokes Glastonbury Tor, that speaks most strongly of the epiphanies generated by a connection to the spirit of place. There is a strong sense of the constant pull of the Old World, a deeper pull which grows no less.

For those who like finely crafted and densely packed descriptive poetry which reaches towards transcendent meaning this is a good collection to savour and unpack.
Irina Kuzminsky (DPhil, Oxon).

This review was first published on Amethyst Review.

]]><![CDATA[Reading from new collection of poems on West Wilts Radio The Poetry Place 25th July 3PM UK Time]]>Sat, 10 Jul 2021 14:55:54 GMThttp://www.dianadurham.net/blog--articles/reading-from-new-collection-of-poems-on-west-wilts-radio-the-poetry-place-25th-july-3pm-uk-time

Myself and Ian Royce Chamberlain who co-founded the Teignmouth Poetry Festival will be the featured readers on West Wilts Radio's The Poetry Place coming up on Sunday 25th July at 3 PM UK time.

Presented by Dawn Gorman and Peter O’Gray, The Poetry Place is a monthly poetry magazine programme that streams a mix of news, readings and interviews with both local and international poets.

The poems I’ll be reading all come from a new collection titled Labyrinth from Amethyst Press, which looks back at the 24 years of my life in America. The labyrinth is my psychic journey out of England and into New England,which forced me to grow and expand my understanding of the shadow and the gifts of both cultures.

Already available on Kindle, the printed book will be ready shortly.

Listen here

]]><![CDATA[New poetry collection 'Labyrinth' from Amethyst Press]]>Sat, 15 May 2021 13:44:48 GMThttp://www.dianadurham.net/blog--articles/new-poetry-collection-labyrinth-from-amethyst-press

A new collection of poems which trace my psychic journey out of England and into New England, and how that forced me to grow and expand my understanding of myself, and of the shadow and the gifts of both cultures. An introductory essay explores consciousness and the creative process.
Available on Kindle and as print book.

Buy on Amazon now

]]><![CDATA[Trusting Your Intuitive Mind: new article]]>Tue, 06 Apr 2021 10:56:37 GMThttp://www.dianadurham.net/blog--articles/trusting-your-intuitive-mind-new-article

New article in Spring 2021 edition of WatkinsMindBodySpirit magazine: just published!

]]><![CDATA[Coherence Essay 18 on Medium.com]]>Fri, 19 Feb 2021 14:58:19 GMThttp://www.dianadurham.net/blog--articles/coherence-essay-18-on-mediumcomPower, Meaning, Beauty, Relationship:
the creative process

The meaning goes to infinite depths. As Emerson wrote and quantum physicists discovered, ‘that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go’ expresses throughout the undimensional and the dimensional world alike. The forces of the creator are found within ourselves, and are alive everywhere within the natural world also. In fact the only place in the whole of the phenomenal world where meaning is absent or severely impaired may turn out to be in the actions and products of the malfunctioning human consciousness when it has fallen for the serpents’ — the skewed identity’s — shoddy deal...

Read the full essay here

]]><![CDATA[Coherence Essay 15 on Medium.com]]>Sun, 22 Nov 2020 11:20:02 GMThttp://www.dianadurham.net/blog--articles/coherence-essay-15-on-mediumcomThe Most Powerful Technology of All:
The Ark of the Covenant

"I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat": to commune means to communicate without words, without sound. Communion is a direct experienced sense of connection or oneness. And this is what we are able to do by means of our consciousness. We commune with the invisible source of ourselves. Our consciousness is like a receiving station for the signals, intimations, and tonal qualities of the flow of being.

Read the full essay here

]]>