Dinah livingstone biography

Later, she published two of my collections through her own press, Katabasis. Dinah has, for the most part, been self-published, a choice which has let her control the production of her books and allowed her to branch out into publishing the work of others, usually with the support of Arts Council grants, now rarely available. The wide range of her publications can be seen on the Katabasis website, link given below.

As well as publishing poetry, Dinah has also published several volumes of prose, discussing her views of poetry and theology. These works are an intrinsic part of her output , which has remained consistent and coherent from the outset, founded on her interest in religion, her early training in theology and her persistent engagement with politics, from Greenham Common, to the Sandinistan revolutionaries in Nicaragua to the Occupy movement which briefly set up camp next to St Paul's Cathedral.

However, despite her commitment, Dinah has never been a joiner, and has preserved her authentic, sometimes lonely, voice throughout her long career. At the same time, she has retained a generous openness to poets and poetic voices very different from her own, placing quality ahead of dogma.

Dinah livingstone biography

She has also worked all her life as a translator, partly to earn her bread, but also for love, as in her many translations of South American poetry. Lists of her publications are given below together with a short biography. I hope this episode of Poetry Worth Hearing will mark my appreciation, and that of many others, of this remarkable poet.

Dinah Livingstone had a rural childhood in the West of England and has lived in the same house in Camden Town, London, since She has published in magazines and anthologies, four prose books and ten collections of her poetry, the most recent being Embodiment She ran the Camden Voices Poetry Group from She is a translator from French, Spanish, German and Italian, runs the small press Katabasis and edits the magazine Sofia.

She has three children and two grandsons. Her translations from Spanish, French, Italian and German include:. Tongues of Fire by Alfredo Cordal ed. Dolto, A.. Bello Sheldon Press, Texts of Dinah's poems from the interview:. Nature and Grace. The book comes in the post,. Pregnant with my first child. I went straight out to buy an early.

My husband was angry:. He looked bewildered,. We liked theology and discussed. Would he have preferred. Appliances, I maintain, are an asset. What is a gift and cannot be bought. And when, at last, your living child is born,. Keeping Faith. We know the truth and you are in the dark. Insistently dogmatic, they believed. The park was paradise, not in this world.

The locked-out doubters fled that attitude. Hijacked by dogma, must faith then be lost? So are you faithless if you be yourself,. I play the roles but never can become. Self-seeking is the curse of selflessness. I can no longer find them credible. I knew that I was me when I was five,. Likeness in Difference. In whatever language,.

Could it be Bulgarian? But I do understand what she means. Translating that German book. Huge compound words,. Verbatim it would sound ridiculous. I laboured to sort it out,. Sometimes I needed. A few days later,. Yet actually I am glad. German is so German. As Wordsworth says,. In my garden I enjoy herb robert,. Just ordinary living can be difficult.

In imagination that translates. Burning Bush. The fuchsia in my back garden is a sturdy shrub. It keeps on growing. This summer again and again. Deep yellow and supported. Like the burning bush. Here is the voice of Sophia, female wisdom, speaking words of love, fellowship, and reminding us that as fellow creatures, we stand or fall together, but acting together in Love, we can indeed build that City.

I am pleased to say that Embodiment , like all Katabasis books, is a properly printed and handsome book with an attractive and distinctive look. This book deserves to make a window display in Waterstones Camden High St. You must be logged in to post a comment. Our most recent posts are listed below. Older posts can be explored via the search box and topic list.

Home Home new poetry. Then what can be heard is conversation. In many tongues these voices cry out Help me. I am a human being. Fellow creatures, weep, weep for me. The poem concludes Who Listens? Something is very wrong. What can we do? Living in a community has its benefits, but there is also the inevitable loss, of saying goodbye to friends such as Maureen, She know everyone and everyone knows her.

She is the spirit of St. Green-fingered herself, the red camellia by her front door is the best in the street. She is also a translator and editor of the magazine Sofia. She has three children and two grandsons. Her first published book collection of poems was Saving Grace , published by Rivelin Grapheme in Click for a list of her publications and extracts from some reviews.

She has given many poetry readings and talks in all kinds of venues at home and abroad.