U. A. Fanthorpe

R. V. Bailey

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, 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.’

Love Poems

From Me To You

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, 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.'

From Me to You

Charles Causley

Elma Mitchell

Penguin Modern Poets Volume 6

"'Queueing for the Sun in Walbrook', the title poem of this, U.A. Fanthorpe's eighth collection, encapsulates many of the preoccupations that have marked her work over the years - including a love of the past, and ways of bringing it to life; and an awareness of the acts of rescue that, against the odds, have gone to save learning, buildings, people and language."--BOOK JACKET.

Queueing for the Sun

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 student at Oxford, she'd formed a cheerful view of life in a hospital, but a neuro-psychiatric hospital provided very different experiences. "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.

Berowne's Book

Safe as Houses

Selected Poems

Rosemarie Vera Bailey

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, 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, U.A. 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. "

Side Effects

Collected Poems 1978-2003

Consequences

Beginner's Luck

As Ursula Fanthorpe's critical reputation grows she stands a better-than-average chance of actually being read. Her work is very accessible, particularly to a female readership.

In her first new collection since the bestselling A Watching Brief (1987), Fanthorpe returns to the hospital territory that she has made her own. There is also a sequence of Bristol poems, and a variety of subjects from love and language to cats and canals - with a range of tones from darkness to laughter.

Neck-verse

Mortal Heart

A late-flowering poet who was the imaginative voice of the chronically ignored and a witty sceptic of conventional thinking.

U. A. Fanthorpe

Books

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