Poets' archive
Stevie Smith
1902–1971
I really am awfully undersupplied with energy. I’m probably a couple of sherries below par most of the time.
‘Who and what is Stevie Smith?
Is she woman? Is she myth?’
So said Ogden Nash: straightforward but not simple questions, to use a distinction Stevie often drew. She was born on the 20 September 1902 in Hull; lived all but four years of her life in Palmers Green, North London; wrote three novels and seven collections of poetry; was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry in 1969; died in Devon on the 7 March 1971.
To come to my own poems and to try and say how and why they are written. They are written from the experiences of my own life, its pressures and fancies. And they are written to give ease and relief to me.
Curiosities
For thirty years, in which she wrote three novels, hundreds of poems, read and reviewed extensively, learnt Greek and German, she posed as secretary to Sir George Newnes and Sir Neville Pearson, the proprietors of Newnes and Pearson, a publishing house.
After reading Novel on Yellow Paper, the poet Robert Nichols, in a headstrong moment, wrote to Virginia Woolf: ‘Dear Virginia, You are Stevie Smith. No doubt of it. And Yellow Paper is far and away your best book.’
The Brothers Grimm were a lifelong influence. As a schoolgirl she’d played the wolf in Red Riding Hood, and been told off afterwards for scaring the younger children; after her death a volume of Grimm in German was found on her bedside table.
Related books
Related Dead Poets Live events
Current events
Past events
