Josephine Dickinson



Josephine Dickinson (born January 9, 1957) is an English poet. She has been deaf since the age of six.

Early life
Dickinson was born in 1957 in South London, where she was also raised. When she was eighteen months old, she contracted meningitis, and was hospitalized for two weeks during the acute phase. At the age of six she woke up one morning to find that she was no longer able to hear. In an interview by The Times, she explains how she responded to the experience of waking up profoundly deaf. “You’d think I would have been frightened,” she says, “but I wasn’t. What worried me most of all was the thought of having to go to the doctor. Apart from that I enjoyed the attention I got.” However, after this experience, Dickinson became lonely and isolated. It was during this period that she says her “sense of vocation as a poet emerged.” This major turn in her youth caused her to begin experiencing poetry and nature in a profound way, refocusing her relationship with her surroundings. She often would just sit and stare at daffodils for long intensified moments. Despite her deafness, at age seven Josephine Dickinson began studying piano. She later went on to study classics at Oxford and continued under the tutelage of Michael Finnissy and Richard Barrett to go on to become a successful music teacher and composer.

Later Life and Works
Dickinson moved to Alston in Northeast Cumbria. In March 1998 at the age of 41, while searching for her lost geese Josephine met her husband Douglas Dickinson, a retired and widowed hill farmer. Douglas at the time in his late eighties was living alone at his home at Scarberry Hill. The two were later married and shared their life together for six years until Douglas’s death in 2004. Douglas’s life and home in Scarberry Hill played a large influential role in Josephine’s poetry. Her book of poetry Silence Fell was dedicated and inspired by her late husband highlighting their time together and divided into calendar months starting with March. Josephine once said in her book Silence Fell, he “took me into his life of sheep and the harshness of rocks and weather and the beauty of trees and rivers,” when speaking of her husband and muse Douglas Dickinson.

Collaborations
Josephine Dickinson has collaborated with fellow poets, musicians, and artists such as filmmaker Simon Wainwright and the Nuffield Theater at Lancaster University to create a series of five short films called Finding a Language. She has also worked with stonemason Charlie Gurrey to produce Riddle in Stone in 2008 which is exhibited in the Roche Sculpture Garden. Dickinson also does many collaborations with musical artists such as singers and performers, with a recent project with harp player Rebecca Joy Sharp, performing at The Wordsworth Trust and The Bluebell Bookshop. Dickinson is an occasional visiting lecturer at the University of Cumbria Creative Writing. With the support in kind of the University, she has come together with filmmaker Alastair Simmons and painter Lionel Playford to produce Earth Journey, an installation inspired by the landscape of the local upland River South Tyne.

Publications

 * Scarberry Hill (2001)
 * The Voice (2003)
 * Silence Fell (2007)
 * Night Journey (2008)