Diana Durham
Diana Durham is a writer and poet who has been involved in the collective life of intentional community in England, the United States, and Canada over the past thirty years. In the 1980s she was among a grouping that explored dialogue and collective intelligence with the theoretical physicist David Bohm. Out of these experiences Durham began a deep enquiry into the possibility that our current ecological and social crises are reflections of a prevailing dysfunctional sense of identity and consciousness in us as human beings. In all her work – poetry, non-fiction, and fiction – Durham draws on both archetype and the numinous presence of the natural world to explore why our deeper identity is the root of creativity and the visionary power of imagination – essential forces in challenging the reductionist and literal-minded approach of contemporary culture.
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Diana’s books include three poetry collections – Sea of Glass (Diamond Press), To the End of the Night (winner of Northwoods Press’s annual competition), and Between Two Worlds: a series of sonnets (Chrysalis Poetry) – the non-fiction The Return of King Arthur (Tarcher/Penguin), and a debut novel, The Curve of the Land (Skylight Press). Her poetry has featured in numerous anthologies and journals in the UK and USA, including Orbis and Parabola. Diana was a member of the London poetry performance group Angels of Fire, with whom she appeared at the Royal Festival Hall’s Voice Box. In New Hampshire she founded 3 Voices: three women writers who received state funding and performed state-wide. Diana has also written, performed, and co-produced an audio-drama retelling of the grail myth entitled Perceval & the Grail. She presents on the meaning of the Grail/Arthur myths for the New Hampshire Humanities Council and many other organisations. With her husband, Diana owns a production company and is currently making a series of short documentary films on the theme of ‘When Being Smart Is Not Enough’.
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Diana is a graduate of University College London, with a BA in English literature, and was a visiting research scholar at Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center in 2011.
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Awen publication:
Diana has contributed six poems to Soul of the Earth: the Awen anthology of eco-spiritual poetry
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Website: http://www.dianadurham.net/
Other publications:
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Coherent Self, Coherent World: a new synthesis of myth, metaphysics & Bohm's implicate order
Sea of Glass
To the End of the Night
Between Two Worlds: a series of sonnets
The Return of King Arthur
The Curve of the Land
