Description
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.
About the Author
U. A. Fanthorpe (1929-2009) was born in Kent and read English at St Anne's College, Oxford, before training as a teacher. She was Head of English at Cheltenham Ladies' College, and then 'became a middle-aged drop-out in order to write', publishing her first collection, Side Effects, in 1978. Enitharmon Press publish her Christmas Poems and From Me to You, love poems by Fanthorpe and R. V. Bailey. Fanthorpe was awarded the CBE in 2001 and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2003, when her Collected Poems were published. In 2010 Enitharmon published her definitive New and Collected Poems with a preface by the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.
Reviews
'The peerless U. A. Fanthorpe roots herself in the very earth of English poetry, connecting herself to Hughes and Browning, but also and more pertinently to the real experience of English living... so clear-eyed and so, well, completely poetic.' STEPHEN FRY; 'at once consoling and surprising, and heart-warmingly generous in her sympathy with the human condition.' ANDREW MOTION
Book Information
ISBN 9781910392133
Author U. A. Fanthorpe
Format Paperback
Page Count 94
Imprint Enitharmon Press
Publisher Enitharmon Press
About the Author
U. A. Fanthorpe (1929-2009) was born in Kent and read English at St Anne's College, Oxford, before training as a teacher. She was Head of English at Cheltenham Ladies' College, and then 'became a middle-aged drop-out in order to write', publishing her first collection, Side Effects, in 1978. Enitharmon Press publish her Christmas Poems and From Me to You, love poems by Fanthorpe and R. V. Bailey. Fanthorpe was awarded the CBE in 2001 and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2003, when her Collected Poems were published. In 2010 Enitharmon published her definitive New and Collected Poems with a preface by the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.
Reviews
'The peerless U. A. Fanthorpe roots herself in the very earth of English poetry, connecting herself to Hughes and Browning, but also and more pertinently to the real experience of English living... so clear-eyed and so, well, completely poetic.' STEPHEN FRY; 'at once consoling and surprising, and heart-warmingly generous in her sympathy with the human condition.' ANDREW MOTION
Book Information
ISBN 9781910392133
Author U. A. Fanthorpe
Format Paperback
Page Count 94
Imprint Enitharmon Press
Publisher Enitharmon Press
