Tees Valley Writers

Marilyn Longstaff

Marilyn Longstaff is a Darlington-based poet and member of the Vane Women writing, performing and publishing collective (www.vanewomen.co.uk). She got into writing by attending an evening class at Darlington Arts Centre in 1994, under the expert tuition of the poet Jackie Litherland, one of the founder members of Vane Women – a registered charity involved in a variety of community outreach work, particularly in rural areas; none of its members are paid for any of this work.

Marilyn's work was first published in Cleveland's Write Around The Year in 1994. Subsequently, her poems have been published in a range of magazines, in anthologies, and on the web. In 2003, she received an Arts Council ‘Northern Promise Award’ towards compiling her first full collection. In December 2005, she was awarded an MA in Creative Writing (poetry focus) from the University of Newcastle.

Marilyn’s first pamphlet Puritan Games was published by Vane Women Press in 2001 and her full collection, Sitting Among the Hoppers by Arrowhead Press in 2004. Her new collection, Raiment, will be published by Smokestack books in 2011. It works around the theme of how we clothe our physical and spiritual selves.The poem featured below, On Not Diving Into The Wreck, comes from this collection.

Marilyn enjoys performing her work. She has read on many occasions with Vane Women, and individually, notably at The Bishop's Palace in York and at The Poets' Table in Portugal. She likes working on projects such as Textworks, organised by Cleveland Arts for writers and visual artists to explore cross-art form collaboration. At the moment she is pleased to be involved with a group, Stemistry, writing creative responses to stem cell research.

On not Diving into the Wreck

She felt compelled to jump
although she knew even in
the heat of the day, this sea

was freezing, and that the currents
at the harbour mouth were worse than
treacherous. She had a notion

that she would sink straight down, and yet
would still be able to see and breathe
as normal. Needless to say

she didn’t do it. Common sense
(where would she leave her handbag?)
and fear prevailed. Instead

she sat basking in unexpected sun.
When she got home, she read
that poem by Adrienne Rich

about going down, down, down
confronting the wreck itself
which she herself had never done

although driving to see her friend Joanna
she had such good words in her head
good enough to release all that pain and anger.

Why didn’t she write them down?

© Marilyn Longstaff