Released to mark the 50th anniversary of Smith’s death, Juliet Stevenson (star of Dead Poets Live‘s Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop show in 2019) brings the British poet to life in a new film that draws on her letters and prose, and includes Smith’s own illustrations. ‘Death, loneliness, God, and the Devil’ – is how Stevie Smith described the ‘main business’ of her life and poetry, and she faced them with the same unsparing, often hilarious honesty. Admired by Seamus Heaney, mistaken for Virginia Woolf and asked out for lunch by Sylvia Plath, her often-underestimated poems were as strange and timeless in the 1930s as they are today. Poems performed include: ‘Not Waving but Drowning’, ‘The Frog Prince’, ‘Away, Melancholy’, ‘Emily writes such a good letter’, ‘God the Eater’ and many more. This film is available here on demand until September 2025.