U. A. Fanthorpe Books

Features Christmas poems from a range of years, in a range of styles.

U. A. Fanthorpe and R. V. Bailey write: ‘Wordsworth speaks of the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. This seems an apt description of these love poems. They are not important resonant pieces of writing: they simply happened when one of us felt like writing to the other, quite often when one of us was away from home. Some of them coincided with Valentine's Days or birthdays, but that was more a matter of good luck than foresight. Quakers, rightly, maintain that Christmas Day is only one important day of all the 365 important days of the year. It's the same with love poems: they are appropriate at any time, and can be written, incidentally, to dogs, cats, etc., as well as humans. No room for Cupid. […] The pleasant thing about writing such poems, apart from having someone to write them for, is that there is no particular restriction as to subject matter. In Christmas Poems, U.A. felt the draughty awareness of the diminishing cast of subjects, from donkey to Christmas tree. With love, on the other hand, the sky's the limit.’

The late U.A. Fanthorpe (1929-2009) was a later developer as a writer, not publishing any poetry until she was 45. This gathering of her early, uncollected poems shows the latent mastery and the rapid development of the craft that would bring her wide critical acclaim and an affectionate general readership.

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. 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.

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.