I joined Julia’s screen printing class
in Southwick, Sunderland.
I can’t remember the year.
Nor did I know her as a writer…
In time one of her daughters would say
‘We’ll always have your words.’
The photograph I’d brought to screen print
was my mother.
I wanted to re-create
that single girl of nineteen
in layers of sepia like a cameo.
I know her image so well…
She’s in profile.
Her abundant, brown wavy hair,
crosses her brow and is held in place
with a tortoiseshell star
embedded with brilliants.
A generous curl, swirls
towards her face,
and turns back on itself.
She has a neat Roman nose unlike mine;
but maybe my green eyes mirrored hers.
It was good to begin drawing.
But on reaching her tapering hair
I found it coiled into a bun.
The discovery was warm.
But she’s not just a photograph
and a warm shadow.
She left behind some verses;
words that spoke her mind.
Like many another I benefitted from Julia’s various Creative Writing Classes. But it was in 1997 that I was very grateful to Julia Darling and Ellen Phethean of course, when, along with June Portlock, they published the both of us and we became the first pair in the Diamond Twig’s series of Branch Lines.
Sometimes it’s the odd thing a person says that comes to the fore: I remember meeting Julia on the stairs at the Tyneside Cinema and saying we were going to see the film of Eugene Onegin ‘Oh, One Gin’ she said.
And her writing is so direct; especially in Apology for Absence. Need I say more?