Reading the 20th Century discussion

Poet and author of course


Any Stevie Smith fans in the house?

In a recent episode of Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast he discusses.....

....Stevie Smith's 'Not Waving But Drowning', along side William Carlos Williams' 'Dance Russe'

'Not Waving But Drowning' is a tremendous poem...

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

I used to regularly pass Stevie's old house in Palmers Green in north London, so feel a bit more of a connection with her...


At the age of three, Stevie Smith moved with her mother and sister to Palmers Green, then a hamlet and now an outer London suburb. Her father had left home, and in due course her mother’s sister came to live with them. This aunt, nicknamed “The Lion”, was the major influence of Stevie’s life. The Lion’s independence of mind and sharp, quirky feminism became very much part of Stevie herself.

They lived at 1 Avondale Road, which now has a plaque to Stevie, and it was here that she lived all her life, “a house of female habitation” occupied by brave women who did not let fear enter the door.

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/article...

Anybody read any of her novels?...


Smith wrote three novels, the first of which, Novel on Yellow Paper, was published in 1936.

Apart from death, common subjects in her writing include loneliness; myth and legend; absurd vignettes, usually drawn from middle-class British life; war; human cruelty; and religion.

All her novels are lightly fictionalised accounts of her own life, which got her into trouble at times as people recognised themselves.

Smith said that two of the male characters in her last book are different aspects of George Orwell, who was close to Smith. There were rumours that they were lovers; he was married to his first wife at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevie_...

I was having extensive work done at the dentist, and the drain thing wasn't working properly. As it got increasingly difficult (you can't easily swallow when your mouth is open), I flapped my hand to attract the dentist's attention.

"What are you waving about?" he asked.

I swallowed, and replied "Not waving, but drowning."

He said he liked Stevie Smith's poetry too. Fortunately, he resumed his drilling before I had to confess it was the only poem of hers I knew.

I think I've only read her poetry, which I really like, not her novels - they sound pretty interesting from the descriptions on that Wikipedia page, thank you, Nigeyb. I had heard that she and Orwell were supposed to have had an affair, but didn't realise she had based characters on him.

Stevie Smith has actually just come up in another thread, because one of the books about Catherine Howard that we are buddy reading, Young and Damned and Fair: The Life and Tragedy of Catherine Howard at the Court of Henry VIII has a title taken from one of her poems.

Die Lorelei

An antique story comes to me
And fills me with anxiety,
I wonder why I fear so much
What surely has no modern touch?

It is of Germany it speaks
One evening time; the mountain peaks
Are in the sun, but the old Rhine
Flows secretly and does not shine.

There, on a rock majestical,
A girl with smile equivocal
Painted, young and damned and fair
Sits and combs her yellow hair.

With a yellow comb she combs it,
Sings a song, and sometimes moans it,
That has a most pecular turn,
It makes the heart and belly burn.

The sailor sailing, hearing it
Falls at once into a fit,
He does not see the rocky race
His eyes are looking for a face.

The boat strikes hard, as she must do,
And down she goes, and she goes too.

This story brings me so much grief
I know not how to find relief.

Lurks there some meaning underneath?

Splendid poem


Thanks Judy

I've just listened to the Frank Skinner podcast which was interesting, thank you, Nigeyb. Very topical in that the two poems are both about loneliness/isolation, although he doesn't relate them to current events.

Will Gompertz has done a review of the first episode on the BBC website where he includes a bit of background about the poets - I knew hardly anything about William Carlos Williams so this was useful.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainm...

Frank Skinner was strangely modest and didn't mention that he is a former college lecturer, which I've read elsewhere before - I quickly looked it up and he did an MA in English at Warwick University and then lectured at Halesowen College, so he has a more academic background than he makes out. But he clearly wanted to stress that he is taking a personal view rather than academic one and encouraging more people to get into appreciating poetry, which is great.

Thanks Judy. It is interesting that he hides his academic light under a bushel. Although now I know it seems obvious that he must have studied poetry

I've just received an email newsletter from the publisher Faber which mentions that it is the 50th anniversary of Stevie Smith's death on March 7.

They gave a link to a good poem by her, Black March:
https://r1.dotdigital-pages.com/p/24K...

Also, to mark the anniversary, a film of Juliet Stevenson reading some of her poems is free to watch online until April 5 - you have to make an account with Shakespeare's Globe though. On the Globe website it says it's 67 minutes long. Here's the blurb:

Juliet Stevenson reads Stevie Smith

Filmed in the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe, Olivier award-winning actress Juliet Stevenson CBE reads one of the most original poets of the twentieth century, Stevie Smith, in a new film by Dead Poets Live.

Stevie Smith was admired by Seamus Heaney, mistaken for Virginia Woolf and asked out for lunch by Sylvia Plath, and Smith’s poems were as strange and timeless in the 1930s as they are today. In this new film, released to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Smith’s death, Stevenson brings the British poet to life, drawing on her letters, prose and Smith’s own illustrations.

Register now to watch the film online for free until 5 April:
https://bit.ly/3rjMiJR

Thanks Judy 🤠