The poet Stevie Smith

Stevie Smith (1902-1971) was one of the last of the real English poets. Indeed, one of a relatively small number or women who were (by my criteria) genuine lyric poets (Emily Dickinson is another). 

I have been re-reading the 1988 biography by Frances Spalding, which is good on information - although I found its literary criticism to be rather uninspired. 

Stevie was a superb performer of her own work; with a peculiar upper class, sing-song way of speaking; and in the nineteen-sixties she was to be found performing alongside trendy pop poets forty years her junior, in major venues. 

She was also fairly typical of women geniuses in being semi-insane in real life, and much in need of looking-after - which was mostly accomplished by her beloved aunt in the suburb Palmers Green where she lived her entire life from age three.   

She was unmarried and mostly, perhaps entirely, celibate; although she knew almost everyone in the literary scene, and went to all the parties. At one point had some kind of relationship with "George Orwell" who features, as two characters, in her last novel The Holiday. 

Steve Smith's great appeal, apart from her poetic gift (here is a selection and some more here), is her unique and uncompromising perspective on life and (especially) death; which was unlike anyone else's, and derived from her absolutely centred-on-self nature, and her unflagging desire to give this expression in all its minutiae and contradictions. She often included peculiar, apparently naive, illustrations; which sometime add considerably to the poems.

The theme and tones veer between extremes; encompassing (or rather hinting at) flippancy, despair, bitterness, joy. Some are very harsh and shocking, like The Face:

There is a face I know too well,
A face I dread to see,
So vain it is, so eloquent
Of all futility.

It is a human face that hides
A monkey soul within,
That bangs about, that beats a gong,
That makes a horrid din.

Sometimes the monkey soul will sprawl
Athwart the human eyes,
And peering forth, will flesh its pads,
And utter social lies.

So wretched is this face, so vain,
So empty and forlorn,
You well may say that better far
This face had not been born.