Christine De Luca

Christine De Luca (nee Pearson) was born and brought up in Shetland, spending her formative years in Waas (Walls) on the west side of the mainland. She now lives in Edinburgh.

She writes in English and in Shetlandic which is a blend of Old Scots with much Norse influence. Shetland dialect is a lively mother tongue, still vibrant and enjoyed both for its onomatapoeic quality and its classlessness. Her main interest is poetry, but she is also active in promoting work with Shetland children and has written dialect stories for a range of age-groups.

Prizes

In 1996 she won the Shetland Literary Prize with her first poetry collection Voes & Sounds and again in 1999 with Wast Wi Da Valkyries. A third collection, Plain Song, was published in 2002 and Parallel Worlds followed in 2005. One of the poems in this collection, Makkin Sooth Eshaness, won the Rhoda Bulter Prize for Shetland Dialect, 2004.

Christine's poem Seein Baith Sides won the The Shetland Writing Prize prize and also the prize for best poem in Shetland Dialect in 2006. She was also featured in the Best Scottish Poems 2006, selected by the author Janice Galloway and won the Prix du Livre insulaire 2007 pour Poésie for her new Bilingual Poetry Collection Mondes Parallèles.

International Recognition

Some of her poems have been translated into Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Polish, Austrian-German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Welsh, Bengali, Turkish and even English. She has read her poems at over 150 events including Book and Poetry Festivals, in: Edinburgh, St Andrews, Inverness, Wigtown, Shetland, Finland, Milan, Kolkata, Paris and at several Breton festivals including the Salon Insulaire on the island of Ouessant.

Her work is also found in numerous literary journals - both national and international - and anthologies including The Hand That Sees published by The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in association with the Scottish Poetry Library. She has also had many fruitful collaborations with artists.

Other Work

Christine is one of the founders of Hansel Co-operative Press which was established to promote literary and artistic work in Shetland and Orkney.

She has also taken part in several BBC radio programmes; a recording of a conversation between Christine and Rina Katajavuori was broadcast on Radio 4's Woman's Hour. It formed part of the With Love From Me To You series. Christine's poems have also been used in the "Something Understood" series on BBC Radio 4.