Stevie Smith

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2023

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1957 Stevie Smith published a poetry collection called Not Waving But Drowning – and its title poem gave us a phrase which has entered the language.

Its success has overshadowed her wider work as the author of more than half a dozen collections of poetry and three novels, mostly written while she worked as a secretary. Her poems, printed with her pen and ink sketches, can seem simple and comical, but often beneath the surface lurk themes of melancholy, loneliness, love and death.

With Jeremy Noel-Tod Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia

Noreen Masud Lecturer in Twentieth Century Literature at the University of Bristol

and

Will May Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of Southampton

The photograph above shows Stevie Smith recording her story Sunday at Home, a finalist in the BBC Third Programme Short Story competition in 1949.

Transcript

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0:48.7	program. Hello in 1957 Stevie Smith published a poetry collection called Not Waving, but Drowning.
0:56.4	And its title poem gave us a phrase which has entered the language.
1:00.0	Its success has overshadowed her wider work as the author of more than half a dozen
1:04.1	collections of poetry and three novels mostly written while she worked as a
1:08.7	secretary. Her poems printed with her pen and ink sketches can appear deceptively simple, but often beneath the surface there are themes of melancholy loneliness, love and especially death.
1:21.0	We'd mean to discuss Stevie Smith are Jeremy Earl Todd. death. Nore Masood, lecturer in 20th century literature at the University of Bristol, and Will May,
1:36.6	professor of modern and contemporary literature at the University of Southampton.
1:40.9	Jeremy, Jeremy Nol Todd, she had a very unsettled childhood, to put it mildly.
1:45.6	Can you just fill the list us in about that?
1:47.6	Stevie Smith was born in 1902 in Hull, in Yorkshire.
	...

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