Stevie Smith Books

The essential edition of one of modern poetry’s most distinctive all Stevie Smith’s flabbergasting poems, now in paperback Stevie Smith is among the most popular British poets of the twentieth century. Her poem “Not Waving but Drowning” has been widely anthologized, and her life was celebrated in the classic movie Stevie . This new and updated edition includes hundreds of works from her thirty-five-year career. In addition to the poems and illustrations from all her published volumes, the Smith scholar Will May discovered never-before-published verses and provides fascinating details about their provenance. Satirical, mischievous, teasing, disarming, Stevie Smith’s poems take readers from comedy to tragedy and back again, while her line drawings are by turns unsettling and beguiling.

This comprehensive and welcoming edition draws on the whole of Stevie Smith's output in poetry, prose and drawings from Novel on Yellow Paper (1936) to Scorpion and Other Poems (1972).

Picture a frustrated office worker of twenty-five. One rainy, miserable Monday he resolves to grab life with both hands and embark on an adventure: the first entirely human-powered journey around the world. Although he had never been on an expedition of any kind and had no money, Stevie and his friend Jason dreamed up a voyage that would take them from England to Hawaii by bicycle, inline skates and ocean-going pedal boat. For 111 days, they pedalled 7,500 kilometers across the Atlantic, and then crossed the United States to take on the challenge of the Pacific. Pedalling to Hawaii is hilarious, entertaining and refreshingly non-heroic, packed with thrills and spills as the intrepid and sometimes blundering duo make their way around the world. It is also a meditative account of a search for simplicity and integrity.

The Collected Poems and Drawings of Stevie Smith is the essential edition of modern poetry's most distinctive voice.

Stevie's alter ego Pompey is young, in love and working as a secretary for the magnificent Sir Phoebus Ullwater, Bt. In between making coffee and typing letters for Sir Phoebus, Pompey scribbles down - on yellow office paper - her quirky thoughts. Her flights of imagination take in Euripedes, sex education, Nazi Germany and the Catholic Church in England, shattering conventions in their wake.

With a unique blend of dark themes and humor, Stevie Smith's poetry captivates readers through her sharp wit and ironic perspective. Her work features characters who frequently confront mortality, yet maintains an unsettling lightness. Deeply knowledgeable in classical literature, she enhances her poems with whimsical doodles, creating a distinct and engaging style. Her first collection encapsulates this dichotomy, offering a glimpse into her extraordinary ability to blend levity with profound reflections on life and death.