Diana Durham

To the End of the Night 

Simply like water

like black air

or the soft trajectories

of night rain

blown horizontal by the wind

or our rushing against

its silent wet softnes
the presence of what we always dreamed
or never noticed
all the ways that we were always held
in this embrace.... 

Read More....

'To the End of the Night' won the Northwoods Press 2003 annual poetry competition. The poems trace the poet's journey from England to America, and  a parallel journey through the heart to a place of renewed vision and synthesis of understanding. 

Endorsements:

'A political, poetic, and philosophic descendant of Blake, she names the nature and architecture of places where violence rhymes with benevolence.  Here in these poems, at the end of the night, "thought [is] overtaken / by sensation" and we must greet the day willing to be "taken hostage / by uncertainty." '

- Alice B Fogel author of  'Be That Empty' recipient
of the NEA Individual Artists Fellowship.   

'Diana Durham's deep clear eye for feeling truth intuits a level of spiritual reality through the fabric of her poetry that just gets better and better as time goes on.'

- Jay Ramsay, author of 'Kingdom of the Edge'
founder Chrysalis Project UK

Sea of Glass

'You offered a steely challenge

to all private quests, something

as definite as unseen mountains,

strange in its newness,

yet old as the hills and familiar

as all the green myths which grow

and die in the hearts of men....'

Read More....

'Sea of Glass'  Gathers poems written over 17 year that embody the experience of re-evaluating identity, both personally, and in relationship with others.  In the deepest sense of the word, the poems are about freedom - freedom to love and freedom to live.  At the same time, Diana's passion is for the collective as a 'body', for who we are, and can be, together...

Review comments for 'Sea of Glass':

"To convey deep feeling in language that amplifies that feeling on every reading is to go beyond language towards a deeper communication than words can ever convey.  The intonation and expression of the poet comes with each stanza, to the extent that the reader absorbs the words as his/her own, that is the gift of the poet.  Diana has that gift."  

 - Kindred Spirit Magazine, UK

"A lot of energy in this work, waves of it becoming word shaping these vulnerable and exuberant poems."

- Poetry Listings,  London

Focusing on the power of the spoken word, Diana was a member of the London poetry performance group Angels of Fire, appearing in The Voice Box at the Royal Festival Hall.  In New Hampshire she founded '3 Voices' three women writers who weave their poetry and prose together and have received state funding and  perform state-wide  including the Currier Gallery, Manchester and Pontine Movement Theater, Portsmouth.

Diana has led poetry performance and writing workshops in a wide variety of venues and for a wide range of ages, including at the Arts Education Institute in Plymouth State College, NH,  Simmons College, Boston and with seventh graders at Portsmouth NH Middle School.