Biography
Biography
Diane was born and brought up in Leicestershire, where she attended Loughborough Girls High School. She read history at Westfield College, University of London and has maintained her interest in medieval history. For the last 20 years she has been part of a Norwich group reading Old English texts. This has had an effect on her poetry in the choice of words with Old English roots and the rhythms of the line.
Her first collection
Lessons from the Orchard published September 2022, takes its title from the opening sequence of poems based on her childhood spent on her grandfather’s farm in a hamlet near Loughborough. The poems about rivers and the sea in Threat of Water deal with current concerns arising from climate change.
She has won several poetry and flash fiction competitions. The opening poem in Lessons from the Orchard won the Deddington Festival prize and sparked the sequence. She won the Café Writers Norfolk prize. She had two micro-chaps published by Origami Poems –
On the frayed rope of my imagination and
King Crow. She has also been published in The Rialto, Outposts, Poetry Space, snakeskin, Grey Hen Press, Happenstance Press and numerous competition anthologies. Her poetry has appeared on many American asites and this year she was a finalist in Science Fiction Poetry Association (USA)’s Dwarf Stars Award for short poetry.
She runs a poetry café in Brandon, Suffolk in the heart of Breckland, England’s desert.
Before concentrating on poetry she wrote children’s books for younger readers and bedtime stories for various publishers. The books have been translated into five languages.
She was married to composer, Andrew Jackman who died in 2003. She wrote many choral lyrics for him and the libretto of Pinocchio, a music theatre piece for the Kings’ Singers and the London Symphony Orchestra premiered at The Barbican in 1992. Her second husband Jack died shortly before the first lockdown. She has two sons, a film composer and a novelist. Her daughter died suddenly in 2020.
She is currently writing a sequence of poems about the Fens.
history at Westfield College, University of London and has maintained her interest in medieval history. For the last 20 years she has been part of a Norwich group reading Old English texts. This has had an effect on her poetry in the choice of words with Old English roots and the rhythms of the line.
Her first collection
Lessons from the Orchard published September 2022, takes its title from the opening sequence of poems based on her childhood spent on her grandfather’s farm in a hamlet near Loughborough. The poems about rivers and the sea in Threat of Water deal with current concerns arising from climate change.
She has won several poetry and flash fiction competitions. The opening poem in Lessons from the Orchard won the Deddington Festival prize and sparked the sequence. She won the Café Writers Norfolk prize. She had two micro-chaps published by Origami Poems –
On the frayed rope of my imagination and
King Crow. She has also been published in The Rialto, Outposts, Poetry Space, snakeskin, Grey Hen Press, Happenstance Press and numerous competition anthologies. Her poetry has appeared on many American asites and this year she was a finalist in Science Fiction Poetry Association (USA)’s Dwarf Stars Award for short poetry.
She runs a poetry café in Brandon, Suffolk in the heart of Breckland, England’s desert.
Before concentrating on poetry she wrote children’s books for younger readers and bedtime stories for various publishers. The books have been translated into five languages.
She was married to composer, Andrew Jackman who died in 2003. She wrote many choral lyrics for him and the libretto of Pinocchio, a music theatre piece for the Kings’ Singers and the London Symphony Orchestra premiered at The Barbican in 1992. Her second husband Jack died shortly before the first lockdown. She has two sons, a film composer and a novelist. Her daughter died suddenly in 2020.
She is currently writing a sequence of poems about the Fens.