The Press Launch for Sudden Collapses was held on May 27th 2003 in the Foyer of the Newcastle Playhouse. A good crowd came to enjoy the strawberries, champagne, songs with Maggie Thacker, Zoe Lambert and assorted members of The Tulips, and of course a short reading of poems from the book.
Afterwards, everyone mingled and copious copies of the book were sold - if you missed out see below to find out how you can get a copy.
Read Julia's diary entry about the launch.
Sudden Collapses received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Summer 2003.
You can buy the book:
Sudden Collapses in Public Places was turned into a song cycle which was performed at the Sage Gateshead in September 2006. You can now buy this song cycle on CD from New Writing North. The CD is priced £10 (plus £1.50 p+p, regardless of how many copies you order), and features all the music and songs from the show, as sung by Zoë Lambert and performed by Dave Scott, Neil Blenkinsop and F. To get hold of a copy, just send a cheque to New Writing North (Newcastle University, Culture Lab, Grand Assembly Rooms, Kings Walk, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE1 7RU) with an explanatory note, and they'll despatch them to you as soon as possible.
Here are two of the poems from the book:
like buildings, people can disintegrate
collapse in queues, or in a crowded street
causing mayhem, giving kids bad dreams
of awkward corpses, policemen, drops of blood
but I'm stood here, a miracle of bones
architecturally balanced in my boots
I feel each joint, each hinge and spinal link
jolting to the rhythm of my breath
aware of every tremor in my joists.
And yet I'm scared I haven't done enough
to be re-enforced and girded. Christ, I fear
those flowers tied to lamp posts. Fear the crash.
Dear Doctor,
I am writing to complain about these words
you have given me, that I carry in my bag
lymphatic, nodal, progressive, metastatic
They must be made of lead. I haul them everywhere.
I've cricked my neck, I'm bent
with the weight of them
palliative, metabolic, recurrent
and when I get them out and put them on the table
they tick like bombs and overpower my own
sweet tasting words
orange, bus, coffee, June
I've been leaving them
crumpled up in pedal bins
where they fester and complain.
diamorphine, biopsy, inflammatory
and then you say
Where are your words Mrs Patient?
What have you done with your words?
Or worse, you give me that dewy look
Poor Mrs Patient has lost all her words, but shush,
don't upset her. I've got spares in the files.
Thank god for files!
So I was wondering,
Dear Doctor, if I could have
a locker
my own locker
with a key.
I could collect them
one at a time,
and lay them on a plate
morphine-based, diagnostically,
with a garnish of
lollypop, monkey, lip
Anyone who has ever spent anytime in a hospital or in a hospital waiting
room will love these poems, anyone who has ever been to the doctor or
felt ill or had to fill in a form will love these poems. That covers
everyone. Here are poems about a difficult, scary subject, cancer, that
circle around it lightly, on light dancing feet, and every so often
whack you on the head. Oddly enough, Sudden Collapses is compulsively
readable. The poems are funny, irreverent, moving and never
sentimental. You can recognise yourself in them, recognise your family.
They are warm, full of compassion; Julia Darling's imagination is a
shining bright light.
~ Jackie Kay
Julia Darling's first collection, Sudden Collapses in Public Places (Arc £6.95), deals with life as a cancer patient. it is observant, inventive, witty, wildly funny at times and wholly unsentimental. The sternest curmudgeon will be hooked by her blend of pragmatism, romance, anarchy and art: "Be late Be sordid. Eat six pies", she urges, since "Beneath your feet / worms aren't worrying."
The sick confront not just illness but institutions and moral expectations. Language is a weapon here, and Darling opposes her gleeful invention to the official list of "lymphatic, nodal, progressive, metastatic" She can also write with beautiful plainness about ordinary life. It is the world, not the self, which she elegises: "When I go, you'll be alone by the window / in this tilting house hanging over the vale, / with the hawthorn, the pond, the rebellious garden, / the light in the evening that fills every room."
~ Sean O'Brien, writing in the Sunday Times
This collection is dedicated to the staff and other waiting patients at the Northern Centre For Cancer Treatment.
The cover drawing is Copyright © 2003 Emma Holliday.
Emma is pictured here with Julia at the press launch.
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Created by Julia Darling and Cornwell Internet. |
Last updated on 6th February 2007 by Roger Cornwell.
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