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Daphne Rock began to take her writing seriously after attending an Arvon course when she was 50. Her first collection, Waiting for Trumpets was published by Peterloo Poets in 1998 and a London Arts Board Grant in 1999 enabled her to pursue a series of geographical and social explorations.

This led to research in Derbyshire on lead mining, in Blaenafon, South Wales, on the early days of the Industrial Revolution and an exploration of the Isle of Sheppey and resulted in publication of Easy to Miss: Looking for the Lead Miner in Matlock Bath (Corundum Press, 2001), Circular Walk Through the Heritage Landscape of Blaenafon (Corundum Press, 2001), and Defoe, The Isle of Sheppey and the Fate of Things (Corundum Press, 2003). 

Her poems have been published in many magazines; she has twice been a prize-winner in the Lancaster Poetry Competition and was a runner-up in BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year in 1992. Her final collection was Is it Now? (Hearing Eye, 2007). 

During her last illness, Daphne gave this response to a question from her friend, Kate Foley… 


Kate said: what do you do? At first this seemed a hard question, immediately confronted with a supine body, eyes shut, radio filling space. But this is a different world, there is so much to say once the normal trappings of movement, travel, organisation, reflections upon tomorrow are discounted.

Waking begins a recapitulation of the night. Was night always so hazy, confused, impenetrable? The very depth of winter does of course turn everything dark. The shortest day dawns and departs almost without mark. But while I anticipate dawn itself I chart the hours of sleep and calculate the hours from the red figures on the clock how long I intend to wait before retiring downstairs. Generally about two hours. The calculation includes a rehearsal of the process. In fact much of what I do is calculation-measuring movements and process and the order in which things must occur. 

A day must follow, one which has few markers or milestones, yet it is no oasis. It opens into that world of little movement, huge tracts of space. The rectangular room which is presented for delectation the same every day yet constantly taking on a different aspect. In the bamboo cabinet cups simulate Victoriana. Those cabinets beloved of Grandmothers and Grandfathers, slightly crowded to pile up the illusion of treasure. The pure white porcelain of coronation mementoes. The thick paint of Union Jacks. Memory of childhood when the well stitched, good cloth, flag was hung out on Empire Day. The cup on closer examination no coronation but 1914, a war in prospect, so much hoped for, so dark a development. 

A strange effect as dark falls, light caught on particular paint spots, little hidden mysteries lurking under saucers. 

On the green wood stand, next wall round, a history. Repeated but not boring. Four pottery plates in browns and oranges, instant inner snapshots of Gum in Moscow, 1974, great high galleries, unworldly.

On the shelf below a journey only taken by invalids. The collection of rocks takes off into many places. How easy to remember, perhaps a trawl or perhaps serendipity, that sparkling piece of Shap, with its twin crystals and iron pyrite slowly disappearing. It was at the top of a hill, piles of broken Shap no longer used; how seldom one saw Shap in commercial use. A little curb, a little wall. Road? 

There are deep avenues of body thought-passages of travel full of shadow and mystery. What happens in gloom lights up and fades in the curious recesses of heart and head and stomach and cavity. 

Should living internally be taken for granted? The gentle lady from social services tries to open the world. A chair, that is, on wheels. Time to canvas the idea – I have a memory of one in Leighton Buzzard but that was convenience not recreation. Recreation has to be balanced against pain. In a chair the legs are vertical (well half of them) and my legs do best horizontal. Perhaps vertical will develop new strengths. The outside world? Is it safe? 

There are other strange places to explore. Perhaps I can find a poem there. The space is not empty.

Daphne Rock

Collections of Daphne’s poetry are available.
For more information and details:
visit Daphne’s Place on the Web, at www.daphnerock.blogspot.com,
or her page on SecondLightLive, www.secondlightlive.co.uk/daphnerock.shtml
or at poetry p f, www.poetrypf.co.uk/daphnerockpage.html.

For more in this issue, see BLAZE SHE BLOODY DID—A Tribute to Daphne Rock, written by some of her close friends: Adele Davide, Kate Foley, Lyn Moir, Rosemary Norman and Jenny Vuglar.