One of the reasons for initiating The Rialto First Collection Series was to help poets kick-start their careers. We certainly succeeded with Josephine Dickinson. Scarberry Hill was quickly followed by a second collection from Arc and now there\u2019s a new volume published by Houghton Mifflin in America.<\/p>\n
Scarberry Hill has as its core a modern Shepherd\u2019s Calendar – accounts of daily life on the Cumbrian hill farm that Josephine seems at first to have wandered into and then fallen in love with – both with the way of life and with the farmer, who she married. The writing is often raw and gutsy – literally so in \u2018The Lambs Were Still Running With The Ewes\u2019. But there\u2019s more to it than country life.<\/p>\n
Profoundly deaf since childhood, Josephine is a musician by training (if ever there was a song waiting to be set it\u2019s \u2018There Was A Darkness In the Air\u2019), and she worked in London for years – so a rich mix of experience informs the work. Anyway, I applaud her success. We do have a few copies of Scarberry Hill, the starting point of it all, available (it\u2019s still my favourite, but I would say that wouldn\u2019t I).
\nMichael Mackmin<\/p>\n
Scarberry Hill<\/strong><\/p>\n Inside the house is silence. We sit and look Josephine Dickinson was born in South London in 1957. Profoundly deaf from childhood, she studied classics at Oxford and taught music for many years. She has lived in Alston, a small Cumbrian town high in the Pennines, for more than a decade. She has gone on to publish a second collection and a volume of her selected poems, Silence Fell, in the USA.<\/p>\n ‘Josephine Dickinson’s poems are exceptionally original. Hers is a vision edged with mystery and rendered with arresting, occasionally breathtaking craft. She bears, with no small authority, an air of independence reminiscent of Emily Dickinson.’ Jospehine Dickinson ‘Scarberry Hill’<\/p>\n Buy from The Rialto here<\/p>\n (The Rialto First Collection Series 2001) One of the reasons for initiating The Rialto First Collection Series was to help poets kick-start their careers. We certainly succeeded with Josephine Dickinson. Scarberry Hill was quickly followed by a second collection from Arc and now there\u2019s a new volume published by Houghton Mifflin in America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":4218,"template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[170],"product_tag":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1915","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-books","7":"product_shipping_class-books","9":"first","10":"outofstock","11":"shipping-taxable","12":"purchasable","13":"product-type-simple"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/1915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=1915"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=1915"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=1915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nacross the room. You shift your elbows, smoke
\nand tap your pipe by turns. I write my words
\nin my little book. We look across the room,
\nor read, or meet to talk from time to time.
\nOn Scarberry Hill the shadow under the white cloud spreads
\nand rolls our way. It\u2019s far away. Perhaps
\nit won\u2019t come down this far before it stops –
\nabove the white washed house, the tumbling river
\nwashing the valley below. Perhaps we have
\nto wait until it passes over. Just
\na bit of rain, that\u2019s all. And when it\u2019s past,
\nthe sun will shine again. The wind sock pulls
\nto east. It might yet rain. The moment stays.
\nAs tiny cars are shuttling, changing place
\nacross its darkening pastures, Scarberry Hill
\nappears to frown. You\u2019re shuffling papers round,
\nI\u2019m writing in my notebook still. It passes.
\nOn Scarberry Hill the blinding streaks of green
\nflood out, the sky\u2019s all sun, we wipe our glasses.<\/p>\nAuthor biog<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\nMichael Donaghy<\/p>\n
\nISBN 0-9527444-3-0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"