b. Sept. 20, 1902, Hull, Yorkshire, Eng.

d. March 7, 1971, London

pseudonym of FLORENCE MARGARET SMITH, British poet who expressed an original and visionary personality in her work, combining a lively wit with penetrating honesty and an absence of sentiment.

For most of her life Smith lived with an aunt in the same house in Palmers Green, a northern London suburb. After attending school there, she worked, until the early 1950s, as a secretary in the London offices of a magazine publisher. She then lived and worked at home, caring for her elderly aunt who had raised her and who died at age 96 in 1968. Palmers Green and the people there are subjects for some of her poetry.

In the 1960s Smith's poetry readings became popular, and she made radio broadcasts and recordings. She also wrote three novels as well as short stories, literary reviews, and essays, but she is remembered chiefly for her poetry.

The Collected Poems of Stevie Smith (1975), illustrated with her Thurber-like sketches, includes her first book of poems, A Good Time Was Had by All (1937) and Not Waving but Drowning (1957), the title poem of which appears in many anthologies. The lines of her verse are often short and telling. They slip in and out of metre and rest on assonance and broken rhyme in ways that arrest attention. She addresses serious themes with a clarity critics often call childlike. The theme of death recurs often. Me Again: Uncollected Writings of Stevie Smith, Illustrated by Herself (1981) is a posthumous compilation of her prose writings, letters, and previously uncollected poetry.

   (ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA)

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry

    A Good Time Was Had By All (1937)

    Tender Only to One (1938)

    Mother, What is Man? (1942)

    Harold's Leap (1950)

    Not Waving But Drowning (1957)

    Selected Poems (1962)

    The Frog Prince and Other Poems (1966)

    The Best Beast (1969)

    Two in One (1971)

    Scorpion and Other Poems (1972)

    Collected Poems (1975)

Prose

    A Very Pleasant Evening with Stevie Smith: Selected Short Prose (1995)

Fiction

    A Novel on Yellow Paper (1936)

    Over the Frontier (1938)

    The Holiday (1949)

    Some Are More Human Than Others (1958)

    Me Again: Uncollected Writings of Stevie Smith (1981)

Not Waving but Drowning

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.  

Pad, pad

I always remember your beautiful flowers

And the beautiful kimono you wore

When you sat on the couch

With that tigerish crouch

And told me you loved me no more.

What I cannot remember is how I felt when you were unkind

All I know is, if you were unkind now I should not mind.

Ah me, the power to feel exaggerated, angry and sad

The years have taken from me. Softly I go now, pad pad.

In the Night

I longed for companionship rather,

But my companions I always wished farther.

And now in the desolate night

I think only of the people i should like to bite.

I do not Speak

I do not ask for mercy for understanding for peace

And in these heavy days I do not ask for release

I do not ask that suffering shall cease.

I do not pray to God to let me die

To give an ear attentive to my cry

To pause in his marching and not hurry by.

I do not ask for anything I do not speak

I do not question and I do not seek

I used to in the day when I was weak.

Now I am strong and lapped in sorrow

As in a coat of magic mail and borrow

From Time today and care not for tomorrow.

Deeply Morbid

Deeply morbid deeply morbid was the girl who typed the letters

Always out of office hours running with her social betters

But when daylight and the darkness of the office closed about her

Not for this ah not for this her office colleagues came to doubt her

It was that look within her eye

Why did it always seem to say goodbye?

Joan her name was and at lunchtime

Solitary solitary

She would go and watch the pictures In the National Gallery

All alone all alone

This time with no friend beside her

She would go and watch the pictures

All alone.

Will she leave her office colleagues

Will she leave her evening pleasures

Toil within a friendly bureau

Running later in her leisure?

All alone all alone

Before the pictures she seemed turned to stone.

Close upon the Turner pictures

Closer than a thought may go

Hangs her eye and all the colours

Leap into a special glow

All for her, all alone

All for her, all for Joan.

First the canvas where the ocean

Like a mighty animal

With a wicked motion

Leaps for sailors' funeral

Holds her painting. Oh the creature

Oh the wicked virile thing

With its skin of fleck and shadow

Stretching tightening over him.

Wild yet caputured wild yet caputured

By the painter, Joan is quite enraptured.

Now she edges from the canvas

To another loved more dearly

Where the awful light of purest

Sunshine falls across the spray,

There the burning coasts of fancy

Open to her pleasure lay.

All alone all alone

Come away come away

All alone.

Lady Mary, Lady Kitty

The Honourable Featherstonehaugh

Polly Tommy from the office

Which of these shall hold her now?

Come away come away

All alone.

The spray reached out and sucked her in

It was hardly a noticed thing

That Joan was there and is not now

(Oh go and tell young Featherstonehaugh)

Gone away, gone away

All alone.

She stood up straight

The sun fell down

There was no more of London Town

She went upon the painted shore

And there she walks for ever more

Happy quite

Beaming bright

In a happy happy light

All alone.

They say she was a morbid girl, no doubt of it

And what befell her clearly grew out of it

But I say she's a lucky one

To walk for ever in that sun

And as I bless sweet Turner's name

I wish that I could do the same.

The Pleasures of Friendship

The pleasures of friendship are exquisite,

How pleasant to go to a friend on a visit!

I go to my friend, we walk on the grass,

And the hours and moments like minutes pass.

Happiness

Happiness is silent, or speaks equivocally for friends,

Grief is explicit and her song never ends,

Happiness is like England, and will not state a case,

Grief, like Guilt, rushes in and talks apace.