Linda France
Duration
The UK Literature residency offers a writer resident anywhere in Britain the opportunity to work on their own project whilst in the company of artists across other artforms. The residency, of up to six weeks in length, can be for writers in any genre, including poetry, memoir and fiction. Previous UK Writer residents include Brian Chikwava, Russell Celyn Jones, Claire Wigfall, Helen Cross.
Linda France is a poet, tutor, mentor and editor, based in rural Northumberland near Hadrian’s Wall. She has published seven collections and various pamphlets, as well as collaborating with visual artists on permanent and temporary works in stone, metal, wood, glass, textiles, ceramics, paper, sound and light. She also edited Sixty Women Poets (Bloodaxe 1993). Her latest books include You are Her (Arc 2009) and Border Song (Hareshaw Press 2012).
Since her Leverhulme Residency at Newcastle University’s Moorbank Botanic Garden in 2010-11, Linda has been exploring plant ecology, with a particular interest in Botanic Gardens as spaces where the urban and the natural meet, places for renewal, connection and inspiration. As part of her research she has so far visited Padua, Oxford, Durham, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo.
Linda’s travels in the Southern Hemisphere were a chance to investigate the effects of light and heat on plants and humans and the implications of changing global weather systems. Her current poems attempt to dismantle ideas of the dark Other, testing the limits of what is visible to the eye and language itself, inspired by her discovery of Australia’s ‘alien’ plants, trees and insects.