In this new collection, Josephine Dickinson’s poems move out towards the cosmos and inwards on a journey of transformation leading to epiphany – the ‘night journey’ of the title. Psyche visits Paradise by night; a modern Creusa tries on but refuses the deadly burning dress; a crew of archetypal characters travel on board a ship by torchlight; and planetary transits, eclipses of the moon and space exploration all acquire a particularity of feeling. The long central sequence of ‘Elegies’ follows the journey of a grief. But the tone of this collection is ultimately ecstatic, its dominating influence one of light. The poet questions the equation of ‘night’ with ‘darkness’. Instead ‘night’ assumes the nature of a lover, host to dreams and to the ‘hyalite’ of what is beyond the ordinary senses.
Josephine Dickinson has published two previous collections of poetry in the UK, Scarberry Hill (The Rialto 2001) and The Voice (Flambard 2004). Scarberry Hill was the first choice of both judges in the 2005 Staple Magazine Alternative Generation contest. In 2007 her US debut collection Silence Fell was published by Houghton Mifflin.
She displays at times a rich sense of humour and a reckless artfulness, but also has the power to speak quietly and fully and lovingly, and she contains within her register every emotional flavour in between. To read her work is to feel the pleasurable shock of the piercing image, of the raw suggestiveness of language for which she has such a sharp ear.
— Galway Kinnell
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.
— Michael Donaghy
Its first strength is the rich interior world, and Dickinson embodies this interiority in poems that are both formally satisfying and tonally so different that sometimes it really is like reading a new tongue.
— Julia Casterton
Night Journey costs £7.50 and was published in October 2008.
ISBN: 978-1-906601-01-0
Josephine Dickinson was born in South London in 1957. At the age of six she became profoundly deaf overnight. After reading Classics at Oxford and teaching music for many years, she worked for Shape London, organising arts access projects in Wandsworth, and then for the South Bank Centre in music education. As a composer she studied with Michael Finnissy and Richard Barrett.
In 1994 she moved the high Pennines, where she still lives on a small hill farm close to the small Cumbrian market town of Alston.
 |
 |
 |
Web site design by Cornwell Internet. Page last updated on 9th December 2009.
Flambard Press Ltd is a non-commercial, not-for-profit limited company registered in England and Wales. Registered number: 05983763.
Registered office: Holy Jesus Hospital, City Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 2AS.