Rendezvous was a Live Theatre production from 28th of May to the 6th of June 2015 which marked the 10th anniversary of the death of poet and playwright Julia Darling.
Julia started her writing career in the 1980s in Newcastle before forming with a performance poetry group called The Poetry Virgins with four other female writers: Ellen Phethean, Charlie Hardwick, Kay Hepplewhite and Fiona MacPherson. The group would go on to publish poetry collections such as Sauce and Modern Goddess and perform their poems live.
Julia and Ellen would then go on to co-found Diamond Twig Press in 1992, a small publishing press for publishing works of female authors in the north of England that closed in 2018.
Julia published her first novel, Crocodile Soup in 1998 followed by The Taxi Driver’s Daughter in 2003. She was a writer in residence at the Live Theatre from 2001 to 2003 where she wrote five works: Attachments, The Last Post, Sudden Collapses in Public Places, Venetia Love goes Netting and Personal Belongings. She sadly passed away on the 13th of April 2005 due to breast cancer at the age of 48.
The production had five plays and many events in which many former colleagues, friends and associates participated including performances from The Poetry Virgins and Diamond Twig. Many performed poems written for the event, previous poems authored by Julia or popular poems that had been played on stage previously. For example, The Poetry Virgins poetry performances of the Stages of Drunkenness and at the Rendezvous Cabaret Nights where they performed their poems as solos, duos or all together. Notes on the running order of Cabaret Nights reveal hidden details of their performance with each performer drinking wine with ‘the poem mapping out Julia’s life through her refreshments’.
We also see after Julia’s death personal letters and poems being written by close colleagues of Julia reflecting on how much she meant to them.
In these letters we learn more about Julia’s personality as a leader, a lovely individual, a teacher/mentor, a friend and a brilliant writer. She is described in the postcard as ‘so energetic and sweet’. We see her important contributions to cultivating creative writing in women around the north of England through her dedication of teaching many creative writing courses and classes for women.
June Portlock first met Julia on one of these writing courses. In a letter reflecting on their first meeting, June stated that ‘Julia ran the session so orderly that it felt everyone was having fun with words, but we also accomplished a lot’. In the same letter she attached a poem named ‘After Billy Elliot’ which, Portlock stated, ‘without Julia’s course would not have existed’.
Sylvia Forrest also first met Julia through her courses. In a letter to Ellen Phethean, she talks about her re-read of Julia’s poem ‘Disrespectful to Lakes’ saying ‘I adore the poem from the beginning stanza and her illustrations in the poem’ which allow her to enjoy ‘being in a world with Julia’s purposeful and stinging remarks’. She also, like many, was positively impacted and inspired from Julia’s creative writing classes. Like June, she also attached a poem to her letter to Ellen titled ‘Remembering Julia’ in which she recounts when she first met Julia through a screen-printing class which she partook in.
All these letters reveal both Julia’s brilliant personality and the massive impact she had on female writers in the north of England, many of whom she inspired through her classes.
These classes by Julia would help inspire and cultivate new talents in female writing as seen with June Portlock and Sylvia Forrest. From these courses June and Sylvia would become a part of Diamond Twig’s ‘Branch Lines’ series and both become published authors in 1997 with their publications of Broken Biscuits and Waltzing off from Hand-Me Downs both published by Diamond Twig Press respectively.
The images included in this blog are part of the Diamond Twig archive which was donated to the library by Ellen Phethean.
