Making sense of world through her poetry

May 7 2010 by The Journal

A lyrical new collection of poetry by Linda France is influenced by a horse-riding accident, Capability Brown and her mother's leek pudding, she tells Tamzin Lewis.

IT CAN often be the little things which provide inspiration to poets. The title poem of Linda France’s new collection You are Her may be a nice play on words, but was just taken from an old information board at Cawfields Quarry on Hadrian’s Wall. It should have read You are Here.

Linda says: “The sign was faded and weather-beaten, and as I am interested in language I was fascinated by the way the last letter had eroded. The board isn’t there any more, but it made me think about place, belonging and identity.”

You are Her is Linda’s sixth collection, and draws together miscellaneous poetry written since 2002. The book is divided into three parts, You, Her and Here, with the central section dedicated to the work of the 18th Century Northumbrian landscape architect Capability Brown.

Much of the collection concerns identity and place, firmly rooted in the landscape of Northumberland, where Linda has lived for 16 years. The poet’s sense of the North was dramatically shaped during her childhood when her family moved from Newcastle to Dorset.

“I was born in Wallsend and grew up speaking with a Geordie accent,” Linda says. “When I was five we moved to Dorset. I couldn’t understand people and they couldn’t understand me. Culturally it was a completely different place to Newcastle.

“I was also the youngest of three children and there is a big gap between me and my sister, so I was like an only child and quite bookish and solitary. I had to negotiate this change on my own and I felt a sense of detachment as if I was an observer, almost like I was living a double life.”

Linda left home to study English and History at Leeds University and lived in London and Amsterdam before moving back to the North East in 1981. After finding her way “home” Linda, who has two grown-up sons, has been here since. Now living near Corbridge, not far from Hadrian’s Wall, many of Linda’s recent poems are inspired by her surroundings.

She says: “I used to write more about the city, but now find myself writing about the landscape. It can be hard to write about things you love, such as your children, and also about something as expansive as Northumberland. In some ways it is difficult writing about things you are too close to without being too indulgent or too serious.”

Linda’s collection doesn’t avoid the serious though, and a series of poems is inspired by a terrible horse-riding accident she suffered in 1995. She fractured her spine and cracked her pelvis in the fall and was hospitalised for a month.

Linda, 51, says: “My children were still quite young at that stage and I had to get on with things. It was the same week that Christopher Reeve had his horse-riding accident and I felt slightly as though I couldn’t complain! It was only when my children left home that the enormity of what happened hit me.”

Several poems are inspired by the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo whose back, collarbone and ribs were fractured when she was hit by a bus. She spent the rest of her life in constant pain.

Linda’s injury re-emerged 10 years after her accident when five of her friends died in close succession, leading her to suffer flashbacks and chronic pain. Recent poems chart the passage of pain, grief and resolution.

She explains: “There were five deaths of friends within a two-year period, and this led me to think about impermanence and mortality. When my friends died it also made me deal with my parents’ deaths.”

Linda is one of the foremost creative writing tutors in the region, teaching an MA at the University of Newcastle.

“I can’t imagine a life without poetry,” she says. “It’s how I make sense of the world and my place in it. It is a way to get beyond the superficial and ephemeral – I’m not very good at small talk and I like the way poetry cuts to the quick.”

Linda has recently collaborated with artist Kim Lewis on Flying, an exhibition of poems, wood engravings and drawings at Queens Hall Arts Centre, Hexham, until May 22.

:: You are Her is published by Arc Publications, www.arcpublications.co.uk