Julia Casterton died in February 2007, aged 58, after years of battle with what she, with typical understatement, called a 'wretched blood disease'. She was a much loved and inspring teacher of poetry, careful of her students, quick to praise, a great and generous enabler.

Her own poems appeared in magazines and in the pamphlets, That Shut Cleopatra (Turret Books, 1988) and Bottom's Dream (Smith/Doorstop, 1995). With Liz Cashdan she was Joint Winner of the 1990 Poetry Business Competition and their poems appeared in a double pamphlet Troublesome Cattle(Smith/Doorstop, 1991).

Her first full collection, The Doves of Finisterre was published by The Rialto in 2004: it won the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. Her reading at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival the following year was a memorable joy. 'Tender love', she once wrote, 'is the only response'.

This memorial collection, put together by her friends, includes poems written since 'Doves' and a selection of her earlier work.