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U. A. Fanthorpe was that rarest of literary beings, a poet who was
hugely popular with the general public and at the same time very
seriously regarded by fellow poets and literary critics for her
originality, wit and humanity. Since her death, much of her work
has been out of print. Selected Poems, chosen from over thirty
years of Fanthorpe's distinctive and accessible writing by her
partner R V Bailey, will delight all her existing fans as well as
those who come to her poems for the first time.
Berowne's Book was written by U. A. Fanthorpe before she began to
write the poetry that was to make her reputation as one of
England's most popular contemporary poets. 'In 1974, having found
that the way to get a job was to conceal my qualifications,' she
wrote, 'I contrived to be taken on as a clerk/receptionist in a
small hospital.' As a patient at the Radcliffe when she was a
student at Oxford, she'd formed a cheerful view of life in a
hospital, but a neuro-psychiatric hospital provided very different
experiences. It was the shock of discovering this that tipped her
over into poetry. 'Poetry' she said, 'struck during my first month
behind the desk'. With Berowne's Book she had already written a
witty commentary on what she saw around her as she typed. Her
observations are accompanied here by some of her very earliest
poems. Hilarious, tender, profound and deeply humane, this series
of snapshots of hospital life in the 1970s shocks partly because so
much is immediately familiar today.
U.A. Fanthorpe's Christmas Poems gathers together the poems she
wrote and sent to friends as Christmas cards from 1974 to 2002. Now
readers can enjoy Fanthorpe's yearly output in its entirety. Her
subject matter covers a broad range of seasonal characters, from
angels to personified Christmas trees, and a variety of styles to
match, from moments of beautiful lyricism to the comically touching
Gloucestershire foxes begging baby Jesus to visit: 'Come live wi we
under Westridge / Where the huntin folk be few'. Fanthorpe is witty
and highly original, rethinking the Christmas story from quirky
angles, to create her own alternative Christmas legend from the cat
and the sheep-dog left out of the stable, to the wicked fairy's
gifts for Jesus. Above all, these poems are celebrations of
Christmas joy and love."
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Beginner's Luck (Paperback)
U. a. Fanthorpe; Edited by R.V Bailey
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R305
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When she died, in 2009, Anthony Thwaite described U.A. Fanthorpe as
a 'smiling subversive with a voice like bird-song'. An encouraging
example to all late developers, this particular bird's voice took
its time: she didn't become a poet until she was 45. But these
examples of her very earliest work show the latent mastery and the
rapid development of the craft that would bring her wide critical
acclaim and an affectionate general readership. The mysteries of
the trade gradually reveal themselves as rooted in a wide and
uncensored range of subject-matter, a life-time's love of words,
and an intuitive grasp of the mechanics of form and voice.
Recognising her role so late, she was a woman in a hurry; there
wasn't time for self-consciousness or grandiose notions of
'vocation'. 'A poet,' she said, 'is a smuggler. He imports things
clandestinely which are not supposed to have got through the
customs.' Poetry 'happened to me', she would say. Her job? To
listen, to pass it on.
U. A. Fanthorpe and R. V. Bailey write: 'Wordsworth speaks of the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. This seems an apt
description of these love poems. They are not important resonant
pieces of writing: they simply happened when one of us felt like
writing to the other other, quite often when one of us was away
from home. Some of them coincided with Valentine's Days or
birthdays, but that was more a matter of good luck than foresight.
Quakers, rightly, maintain that Christmas Day is only one important
day of all the 365 important days of the year. It's the same with
love poems: they are appropriate at any time, and can be written,
incidentally, to dogs, cats, etc., as well as humans. No room for
Cupid.""(...) The pleasant thing about writing such poems, apart
from having someone to write them for, is that there is no
particular restriction as to subject matter. In "Christmas Poems",
UA felt the draughty awareness of the diminishing cast of subjects,
from donkey to Christmas tree. With love, on the other hand, the
sky's the limit.'
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