An Evening with Stevie Smith in 2003
In March 2003 my tutor, Jan Carew and I organised An Evening with Stevie Smith at Cardiff University Centre for Lifelong Learning. This was free to all students.
I thought it might be useful to others planning the same sort of event if I made the general format of the evening available. It can be used by anyone more or less as it is, or it can be a starting point for people to adapt with their own ideas. Our format, which seemed to work well, copied the style of a reading at Palmers Green in September 2002 which was part of the festival celebrating the centenary of Stevie’s birth.
The event we held in Cardiff lasted 2 hours, with a fifteen minute break in the middle. Jan introduced and concluded the evening, and I linked the poems, which were read by students of the Centre for Lifelong Learning. Those who read were each allotted one or two poems about a week or two before the event, and it was lovely to hear the poems read very well in fresh and different voices.
The format was designed to include a variety of Stevie’s poems on different themes. All the poems can be found in ‘Stevie Smith, The Collected Poems of Stevie Smith’, which is shamefully not available in the UK, but the US edition can be easily obtained from www.amazon.com. The page numbers refer to the Collected Poems.
Introduction
The poet Stevie Smith was born in Hull in 1902 but when she was three years old her father left home and ran away to sea. Stevie’s mother Ethel and her two small daughters moved to north London with Ethel’s sister Madge and her Aunt Martha. They set up home at number I Avondale Road, in the suburb of Palmers Green. This would be Stevie’s address for the rest of her life. It takes hours to get Stevie’s suburb by train or road but we can be taken there immediately with a poem.
‘Suburb’ p81
Stevie’s suburb is unique in having sardonic paving stones and leading us to a place that’s disturbingly green , to dismembering and to death. Death was one of her favourite themes; she faced death as a child when she developed TB peritonitis aged only five and was sent to convalescent home at Broadstairs, Kent, where she was treated off and on for several years. She was fed raw eggs and milk and was very unhappy at times. She wrote: I thought of suicide for the first time when I was eight. The thought cheered me up wonderfully ... For if one can remove oneself at any time from the world, why particularly now. Her beloved mother died when Stevie was 16 of heart disease. Her aunt cared for her, and even when Stevie was adult her aunt, Stevie wrote, ‘still treated her like a ten year old child , a delicate and difficult child.’ There was always something childlike about Stevie.
‘To Carry the Child’ p 436
Stevie was by nature an anarchist, but her Aunt was not. Aunt, Stevie said, had a strong managing disposition, was affectionate, and had enormous moral strength. Stevie wrote of the anarchy of dreaming sleep, an idea she had from De Quincy, she wrote also of the need for an anchorage if one was to indulge in this anarchy: De Quincy, she observed, had his sister, who dispensed common sense and jug of laudanum, and she had Aunt, who dispensed common sense and jug of warm milk. She called her Aunt the Lion of Hull, or the Lion Aunt. Stevie had a good education in a private girls school in Palmers Green, but her anarchic nature resisted the school ethos of ‘let’s all play the game.’
‘Girls’ p167
After school she had dreams of becoming an explorer, but she ended up in a secretarial school. She got a job as private secretary to Sir Neville Pearson, a Baronet who worked as a magazine publisher. Her work gave her time to write poetry. In her twenties she also read voraciously. DH Lawrence, Gibbon, Huxley, Wilde, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Kafka. In her early thirties she took her poems to a publisher. He suggested that she write a novel, and so she did - Novel on Yellow paper - written on paper the firm used for carbon copies. The novel was very successful and she made connections with other writers, including George Orwell. She was leading a double life -with a double name, Peggy at home, Stevie to her literary friends. In the next poem she becomes Childe Rolandine, a female version of Childe Roland, the protagonist in a desolate Browning poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.
‘Childe Rolandine’ p 331
After working for Sir Neville for 30 years Stevie cut her wrists at work. One friend explained that she was very angry rather than depressed, and she was later ashamed to have upset her aunt. It doesn’t seem to have been a very serious attempt at suicide, and she recovered after a holiday in Wales, but her doctor signed her up as unfit to return to work. Stevie has been claimed by the feminists, but she referred to them as strident and aggrieved. She wrote: Miss de Beauvoir has written an enormous book about women and it is soon clear that she does not like them and does not like being a woman ‘ Stevie has also been claimed by lesbians. She had many close female friends, some of them were lesbians. However I think there’s more evidence of heterosexual than of homosexual inclinations. Here’s a love poem to a young man whose real name was Eric and who became upset when Stevie would not marry him.
‘Freddy’ p 65
Stevie wrote that she never married ‘ for fear of what would have happened if I had not been able to draw back in time from the husbands-wives-children and pet animals situation in which I should surely have failed.’ She was a close and penetrating observer of her friends’ marriages.
‘The Jungle Husband’ p 332
What are we to make of this absurd poem, of the hittapotamus, the plop of appalling sun, of the controlled desperation. The poet Philip Larkin once bought copies of her collection ‘Not Waving but Drowning’ and gave them to friends. They were worried, he said, and asked if they were meant to take this work seriously? Yes, said Larkin. The friends became more worried. An unfortunate episode, said Larkin. He said of Stevie that her strengths were that her poems were ‘original, occasionally moving, and written with authority of sadness.’ Here is an authoritative poem.
‘Forgot’ p201
In Forgot Stevie adopts a male persona. She said that 'In my poems I have tried to shift feelings outwards by fixing them on imaginary people’ And ‘My whole life is in my poems, everything I have lived through, and done, and seen, and read and imagined and thought and argued.’ Why did she put her feelings onto imaginary people? ‘ because it gives proportion and eases the pressure, puts the feelings at one remove, cools the fever.' Here is Stevie in mythical mode.
‘The River God’ p238
This is a rather gruesome tale - she was very fond of Grimms fairy tales. In the next poem Stevie puts on another mask, she’s the Frog Prince waiting for Princess to kiss him. Stevie’s playing games with the reader and the Frog Prince who’s not sure if he wants to be heavenly and disenchanted.
‘The Frog Prince’ p 406
Stevie wrote a great deal about water - she was fond of swimming and loved the sea, something she had in common with the father who she never liked or forgave for his desertion. Stevie also loved woods. In her childhood she played. ‘On the other side of the railway cutting, there was a large pipe that ran under the railway line -to a part of the woods we used to call paradise. To be alone in Stevie's woods can be disturbing.
‘Alone in the Woods’ p 32
Now we’ll come out of woods for an interval. When you’ve had a break come back and we’ll have a look at Stevie’s expanding universe.
Interval
Welcome back. In the 1950’s Stevie listened to some radio lectures on astronomy and wrote: I am much indebted to Mr Fred Hoyle for he gave me this sense of freedom, of liberation, in those talks he gave on the expanding universe, and the years going on a million million times, and the flatness, he gave me that, and the large space to lie out in.
‘In Protocreation’ p 284
This poem was written 50 years ago but is fresh today. The next poem is about evolution and a cat called Tidzal. In the 1950’s she wrote the words for the Batsford book of cats in colour. Larkin was disparaging- he thought that: ‘a book about cats casts a shadow over the most illustrious name.’ Stevie probably needed the money: her pension was only £5 10 shillings a week, and her writing career was in the doldrums. Cats, she wrote, ‘they are not ours, to possess and know, they belong to another world and from that world and its strange obediences no human being can steal them away. It is a thought that cheers one up. ... It was the indifference, the beastly, truly beastly - that is appertaining to beasts - indifference of poor dear Tidzal that I so relished.’
‘Nodding’ p 500
Stevie hated cruelty to animals, but she was unsentimental about beasts and humans as the next poem shows
‘The Zoo’ p172
Stevie has been compared to Blake, with his songs of innocence - but Stevie was not innocent. Here is a wonderful beastly poem, in monosyllables.
‘The Best Beast of the Fatstock Show Earls Court’ p 412
Stevie has been compared to Ogden Nash, but in my opinion his poems can be read once, and that’s it - but Stevie’s poems stay with me, fermenting away. In the next poem the howls are not animal but the muse. Stevie wrote that the human creature is alone in his carapace - Poetry is a strong way out ... She compares it to an explosion. - the passage she blasts is often covered in splinters, covered in blood, but she can come out softly. ..but in another mood Stevie talks of lines that come to me when I’m half asleep and surprise me. She asks herself - hasn’t the muse anything better than that, than to throw such nonsense about.’ - The literal minded might deduce from this that the muse is an explosion of nonsense.
‘Who is this who howls’ p370
In a 1961 interview she was asked if she was a ‘typical example of a contemporary poet?’ She said ‘I’m alive today, therefore I’m as much a part of our time as everybody else. The times will just have to enlarge themselves to make room for me, won’t they .’ The 1960’s made time for Stevie, her poetry readings on stage and radio were very popular. It was also a sad and difficult time for Stevie as Aunt became ill and died in 1968. After that Stevie lived alone. She belonged to no school of poetry.
‘To School’ p 269
In the Stevie Smith centenary festival at Palmers Green there was a poetry reading walk around her suburb, and the walk was wonderfully accompanied by a man wheeling a harmonium on a handcart; it gave the event the feeling of a mediaeval carnival. These carnivals mingled the sublime with the ridiculous, the sacred and profane, and undermined hierarchies and authority. Her is Stevie is mixing the sacred and profane.
‘Mother among the Dustbins’ p118
The dustbins poem was about God, and the next poem is a variation on the story from Genesis. In it she shows death as something good. She looked on death as a friend, ‘ he is a scatterer, he scatters the nerviness and the great pain.’ Stevie died from brain tumour in 1971 and was cremated in Torquay cemetery.
‘From the Coptic’ p281
Stevie had an Anglican Christian upbringing. She loved hymns ancient and modern. But she rebelled against 'the monstrous doctrine of eternal hell - I threw away the sweetness of Christianity and remembered the harsh bones , and said, it is immoral '- but she still remained friends with the local vicar, and watched programmes on his TV as she didn’t have one. She also said, I’m a backslider as a non believer. Here is one of her poems about God
‘God the Eater’ p339
The Benedictine monk and trappist writer Thomas Merton wrote ‘I love her, I’m crazy about her’ he found ‘ a lot of pathos under the deadpan sad funny stuff,’ and as well ‘ a lot of true religion’ Sylvia Plath admired her, and wrote that Stevie was one of ‘the poets I delight in are possessed by their poems as by the rhythms of their breathing.’ Sylvia wrote to Stevie after her break up with Ted Hughes and asked to meet Stevie, saying after ‘I better say straight out that I am an addict of your poetry, a desperate Smith addict.’ However Sylvia committed suicide before the meeting was arranged. Here to finish is Stevie’s most famous poem.
‘Not Waving but Drowning’ p 303
Stevie is sometimes thought to be a lightweight poet because she is amusing - seaside amusing - her little waves tickle the feet. But further out there are cold currents, wonderful depths, and the possibility of drowning. Will Stevie still be waving in another 100 years? I hope so. She is a poet of contradictions: in Not Waving but Drowning the man is both dead and alive, and Stevie is religious and agnostic, absurd and deadly serious, simple and cunning, she puts on masks to reveal herself, she is suburban and universal. I've read many wonderful poets, but I always come back to Stevie, and she continues to grow in my estimation.
Concluding words, thanks to all etc.
* * * Anne Bryan
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If you want to quote from this page for course work or assignments you are welcome to do so as long as you attribute the work to Anne Bryan and this web site.If you aren't familiar with Stevie’s poems give yourself a treat and buy Stevie Smith’s ‘Collected Poems’ available in American bookshops or on www.amazon.com or, as a second best, buy the ‘Selected Poems’, available in UK bookshops or from amazon.co.uk.
Stevie Smith homepage Stevie Smith Biography - a short account of Stevie's life and work. Stevie Smith Festival at Palmer’s Green
Childe Rolandine - Browning's 'Childe Rolande to the Dark Tower Came' as a source for Stevie's 'Childe Rolandine'. The Jungle Husband - the jungle is 'green on top' but dark inside The Frog Prince - a dive into a deceptively simple poem with hidden depths Stevie's religious poems - Stevie questions God Stevie and her contemporary poets - Stevie in the poetry scene of her day A Turn Outside - A Radio Play by Stevie, adapted and set to music by Simon Rowland-Jones Stevie links - links to other sites on Stevie Smith An Evening with Stevie Smith - a reading of Stevie Smith's poetry in Cardiff Blue Plaque the Poet Laureate unveils a blue plaque at Stevie's house Remembering Stevie at Torquay - where her ashes were scattered Back to Strange Attractor homepage
