U.A. Fanthorpe, Elma Mitchell, Charles Causley

Penguin Modern Poets, Series II #6

by U.A. Fanthorpe, Elma Mitchell, Charles Causley

Genres: Poetry

160 pages, Paperback

First published May 30, 1996

About the author

Ursula Askham Fanthorpe (published as U. A. Fanthorpe) was an English poet. She was educated at St Catherine's School, Bramley in Surrey and at St Anne's College, Oxford, where she received a first-class degree in English language and literature, and subsequently taught English at Cheltenham Ladies' College for sixteen years. She then abandoned teaching for jobs as a secretary, receptionist and hospital clerk in Bristol - in her poems, she later remembered some of the patients for whose records she had been responsible.

Her first volume of poetry, Side Effects, was published in 1978. She was "Writer-in-Residence" at St Martin's College, Lancaster (now University of Cumbria)(1983–85), as well as Northern Arts Fellow at Durham and Newcastle Universities.

In 1987 Fanthorpe went freelance, giving readings around the country and occasionally abroad. In 1994 she was nominated for the post of Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Her nine collections of poems were published by Peterloo Poets. Her Collected Poems came out in 2005. Many of her poems are for two voices. In her readings the other voice is that of Bristol academic and teacher R.V. "Rosie" Bailey, Fanthorpe's life partner of 44 years. The couple co-wrote a collection of poems, From Me To You: Love Poems, that was published in 2007 by Enitharmon.

Reviews

[Judith Johnson]

Fantastic anthology of poems by UA Fanthorpe, Elma Mitchell and Charles Causley. Concrete images, and personal experience, that I found resonant and appealing in the way that, for me, much of contemporary abstract poetry is not. Have bookmarked lots of poems - but to mention just a few: UA's Resuscitation Team was resonant after reading Jennifer Worth's In the Midst of Life recently; Dear Mr Lee great fun for former English students and teachers; Elma Mitchell's At First, My Daughter is a wonderful evocation of meeting your child for the first time, and Charles Causley's 'found' poem I Am The Great Sun is still as memorable for me as the first time I encountered it in St David's Cathedral in west Wales. Highly recommended.