Neck-Verse

by U.A. Fanthorpe

Very clean and tight copy. Front cover is creased along spine. 5 1/2" x 8 1/2". 63 pp. No marks. Binding is tight, covers and spine fully intact. Edges browned slightly. Not Ex-Library. All books offered from DSB are stocked at our store in Fayetteville, AR. Save on shipping by ordering multiple titles. Shipped Under 1 kilogram. Poetry; 1871471338. ISBN/ 9781871471335. Inventory 027542.

Genres: Poetry

63 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Ursula Askham Fanthorpe (published as U. A. Fanthorpe) was an English poet. She was educated at St Catherine's School, Bramley in Surrey and at St Anne's College, Oxford, where she received a first-class degree in English language and literature, and subsequently taught English at Cheltenham Ladies' College for sixteen years. She then abandoned teaching for jobs as a secretary, receptionist and hospital clerk in Bristol - in her poems, she later remembered some of the patients for whose records she had been responsible.

Her first volume of poetry, Side Effects, was published in 1978. She was "Writer-in-Residence" at St Martin's College, Lancaster (now University of Cumbria)(1983–85), as well as Northern Arts Fellow at Durham and Newcastle Universities.

In 1987 Fanthorpe went freelance, giving readings around the country and occasionally abroad. In 1994 she was nominated for the post of Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Her nine collections of poems were published by Peterloo Poets. Her Collected Poems came out in 2005. Many of her poems are for two voices. In her readings the other voice is that of Bristol academic and teacher R.V. "Rosie" Bailey, Fanthorpe's life partner of 44 years. The couple co-wrote a collection of poems, From Me To You: Love Poems, that was published in 2007 by Enitharmon.

Reviews

[Hallie · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

U.A. Fanthorpe wrote one of my favourite poems ever, which is all over the internet but I'll paste in here just to be nice.

ATLAS

There is a kind of love called maintenance,
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;

Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes, which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living; which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in the air,
As Atlas did the sky.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just love Ursula Fanthorpe simply because she writes in such a way that I want to keep reading and re-reading and all the time I am thinking ' what an incredibly simple image, why has nobody else ever thought of that ' but then I suppose they were all saying that about the wheel. Just one example which is so simple but it opens out so much possibility but then again that is what poetry is all about isn't it.

'The limes have the look of someone
Who has been silent a long time
And is about to say a very good thing '

This image has always echoed in me. The wisdom of trees, the mystery of nature, the ever hopeful glance towards a better future, I don't know whether any or all of these or other ideas spring inside another's head when they read that line but Fanthorpe feeds you so many. She throws in the image or the line or the joke and leaves you to get on with it. Followed swiftly by the shock or the smile or the punch in the stomach as she transforms what you thought you were reading into something quite different. Again no read date because these I return to again adn again

[Rhiannon Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lucid and sometimes amusing poems which cultivate the knack of looking at the world from other perspectives.