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  Danielle Hope    
 

Danielle Hope was born in Lancashire, now lives in London where she works as a doctor.

Her poetry is accessible and has broad appeal – and is currently being displayed in doctors’ waiting rooms in New Zealand as part of the waiting room project. She performs on the London scene – contemporary and slam. Her work explores contemporary themes, and in the latest collection she develops a new alter ego – who struggles to cope with everyday life such as booking appointments.

She founded and edited Zenos, a magazine of British and International Poetry, edited the work of the Turkish poet, Feyyaz Fergar, was a Trustee and advisor of Survivors Poetry, and is editorial advisor for the Literary Magazine, Acumen. She has also won prizes for her work, judged several competitions and co-written two comedy plays with Martin Orrell – Weddings of Mass Destruction and Oil Well at Ends Well. Recently Danielle Hope has started translating Italian poetry, especially the work of Nobel Prize winner Eugenio Montale.

Danielle Hope has published four books of poetry – Fairground of Madness, City Fox and the latest – The Stone Ship – all with Rockingham Press. Her work has appeared widely in diverse magazines, newspapers and journals, including the Independent, the Guardian, The Morning Star, Acumen, Amit, Poetry London, The Rialto, Poetry Salzburg Review, Quattrocento, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Journal of the Royal College of Physicians.

Her first collection of poetry --- `Fairground of Madness', a collaboration with the artist Shirley Barker was published in 1992, followed by. `Fairground of Madness'(1992), `City Fox'(1997), `The Stone Ship'(2003) and Mrs Uomo's Yearbook (2015), all from Rockingham Press

Giraffe under a Grey Sky is DANIELLE HOPE's fourth collection of poetry and her first new volume for over five years. "In it we encounter a new character – Mrs Uomo – who muddles through modern urban society – dealing with health care bureaucracy and the Hadron Collider, then finds herself corrupted by a game of monopoly. There are new poems delving social, imaginative, natural and personal worlds – in turns serious and comic – including the workings of the heart, a world ruled by buttercups, grief, and a sequence on the Potter’s Bar rail crash."

Mrs Uomo's Yearbook: "With an unerring eye and ear both for the urban and for the coastal and rural, Danielle Hope is an explorer reporting from many diverse worlds. Like Hardy, the presiding spirit of the second section of this collection, she is someone ‘who notices such things’.

The varied realities, tribulations, griefs, and muted triumphs of life are portrayed here with confidence, wit and lyricism. There’s a beautifully-steady and cleanly-stated respect for and questioning of life present throughout. This is developed to its furthest extent in the poems given to Mrs Uomo, an alter-ego of the poet. The unsinkable Mrs Uomo’s experiences, reflections and actions refract the bad stuff of contemporary concerns; her year takes us through recognizable and difficult territories all lifted into a better perspective by Mrs Uomo’s life energy and her instinct as to what is right and what is ridiculous. Mrs Uomo possesses the quality of joy mixed with apprehension.

Her methods of tackling present-day meanness and cruelty have unique purpose and grace. Here is a guide to travel with as we struggle to make sense of life." Penelope Shuttle

Danielle Hope can’t manage a washing machine and likes reading Italian poetry and wearing hats. Her day job is as a doctor in a London hospital, and some of her work draws on these themes. How did she get into poetry from Medicine – good question!

Reviews and comments

"She displays a sharp eye, a humourous mind and has a delivery that somehow makes the extraordinary 'every day' ." The Petersfield Herald

“Danielle Hope shares with William Carlos Williams a gift for observation; with Dannie Abse a lyricism and satirical edge; and with Chekhov a compassion manifesting itself in elegies and political poems borne out of long acquaintance with suffering," John O’Donoghue in Poetry Express.

“..the poetry is a direct, pared-down, non-sentimental verse which gets to the heart of her concerns. ..Danielle Hope is also a biting satirist, hitting out at the sham in all departments of life.” Patricia Oxley

“Danielle Hope weaves and twists words with a seeming playfulness, yet her poems are rich with whispered ideas.” Mandy Smith

“Hope is good at writing about people, ready to feel, understand, taking the exhibits of life seriously. .. For her, things and people have inscape; they deserve our attention because things do – or should.”

RV Bailey

‘Her capacity for speaking fully though images is unflagging.. the modernist dictum ‘no ideas but in things’ frequently springs to mind… the diversity of subject matter indicates experience of a wide front, a powerful engagement with contemporary life in its many complexities and intricacies” Tom Rubens in Ethical Record

‘Between rigour and romanticism, Danielle Hope’s poems, enlivened by telling images, display a doctor’s openness to experience.’ Dannie Abse

‘The most striking feature of Danielle Hope’s poetry is her successful articulation of empathy, a quality much missed in a century dominated by ‘cool’. That she has accomplished this with elegance, wit, imagination and tact is a tribute to her equal respect of language and people, and a particular spirituality which as yet has no name.’ Leah Fritz

 

 
 
 
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

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