Diane's chapbook collection, No Longer Always, is available from
Finishing Line Press.
Diane was featured in the "Poetic License" column of the Providence Journal in 2009, and her
poems appear in the numerous publications, including Rhode Island Writers'
Circle 2010 Anthology, the Talking
River Review, Naugatuck River
Review, and Hope Street: Nine New England Poets on Love and Loss (Main street Rag). Her poem, "Gestation, (Meditation)" was included in Hera Gallery's Ekphrasis Exhibit in 2010, and was featured in the exhibit brochure. Several of her poems have been exhibited in the Wickford Art Association's Ekphrasis: Poetry & Art exhibits, and published in their companion book. She is a contributing poet to the Origami Poems Project and has published several micro chapbooks with the OPP.
Diane was awarded second prize in the 2009 Rhode Island Writers'
Circle National Poetry Contest, and was named finalist in the 2011 Naugatuck River Review 3rd
Annual Poetry Contest, the 2009 River
Styx International Poetry Competition and for the 2009 Margie Marjorie J. Wilson Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the Fish Memoir Prize. She also received an
International Merit Award from The
Atlanta Review 2010 International Poetry Competition, and was a
semi-finalist for the 2010 Diagram Hybrid Essay Competition.
Diane has worked as a writer, video producer and communications consultant to many of Rhode Island's nonprofit organizations. She has produced and directed several television documentaries, including Beacon on the Bluff: The Rescue of the Southeast Lighthouse, which aired locally and regionally on PBS stations. Her most recent project, with co-producer Sally Kingsbury, for the RI ACLU's 50th anniversary, featured lawyers and plaintiffs in key ACLU civil rights cases from Viet Nam war protests to the first RI Gay Pride Parade to a little girl who wanted to play Little League baseball.
Diane is a communications instructor at Rhode Island College and Visiting Lecturer in Communication Studies Bridgewater State University. She lives with her Weimaraner in an 1813 stone mill workers' house on a mill pond in Smithfield, Rhode Island.
Diane is available for poetry readings and workshops, as well as freelance writing and communication projects, communication training and video production. She can be reached at d_dolphin@cox.net.
Why I Write
For me, writing poetry is more of an organic experience than other kinds of writing. I'm amazed at the power of the mind to tap into that unconscious, spiritual part of ourselves where deeper meanings and universal truths are stored, a place where all of this makes sense. In the past few years, poetry has quite literally "spoken" to me. A lot of writers talk about this; it's a little like channeling.
After my husband passed away in 2006, it took a good year for my brain to process everything. It was like I only had access to half my brain; the other half was off in a room somewhere sorting through papers, going through scrapbooks, watching old home movies. Then one day I heard Garrison Keillor read a narrative poem on NPR's Writer's Almanac. And my brain started talking to me, almost in a third person voice, reciting a narrative poem about the experience I'd had with my neighbors expressing condolences in a wide range of ways. When I wrote the poem down, I was struck on re-reading it just how much unconscious processing came out beneath the narrative. After that, I started paying attention to these poems that my brain was sort of bringing to me, saying, "look what I found!"
Although I have always been a writer and documentary producer, I've always considered myself a storyteller first, and wrote very little poetry because I didn't feel I was very good at it. But now I feel it's a great form for me. I find the process very satisfying; to mull over, express, and then condense experience into snapshots of time, place and/or character is great. I also enjoy working with sounds and tone and multiple meanings in simple language. Finally, I love finding a musical rhythm that brings out the tone of a piece, whether it's conversational, comic or spiritual.
