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I first came across U.A. Fanthorpe’s poems in 1984, when she was reading with Elma Mitchell at Newlyn in Cornwall. As a junior doctor, I was attempting at that time to make sense of my bewildering impressions of hospitals by writing wordy diaries, letters, and the odd excruciating poem. Here, in Side Effects, was another way; concise, witty, tender. I was astonished to see how uncomfortable truths could be combined with empathy in so few words, in contrast to laborious medical histories ‘limited by prose’. At her funeral, one of her colleagues from hospital spoke of how U.A. ‘saw what we couldn’t see’. But it was what she did with that seeing, those ‘unauthorised versions’, that quiet subversiveness, which makes us see differently, take notice.

Soon after coming to Gloucestershire, I attended the small Quaker Meeting at Wotton-under-Edge, to find that it was taking place in U.A. and Rosie’s house. I was new to Quakerism, and hadn’t written anything remotely publishable. I remember feeling overawed at the prospect of being in the company of such a learned, famous poet and was amazed to find them both so homely, unassuming, so quietly welcoming.

She inspired many people to begin, or persevere with, reading and writing poetry – more than she knew. There were workshops, of course, and generous feedback, but mainly it was the poems, with their wry humour, clarity, and many voices, which somehow gave us permission to try out our own. When Not My Best Side was first published it was new and different: it was, after all, long before The World’s Wife.

Many people in this area of Gloucestershire, where U.A. lived for 35 years, were unaware that they had ‘a national treasure’ in their midst. The animal rescue charity knew they could count on her for help, and the staff at the vets, the local shopkeepers, all knew her as ‘that lovely lady’. Together with Rosie, she continued to take part in readings and to support local arts events even when she was becoming frail.

Any attempt to write about U.A. evokes her humorous self deprecation: her self-portraits as Mr Smart in Dear Mr Lee, as Unpromising Subject and ‘middle aged drop-out’. Then there is the absolute seriousness and integrity with which she resigned from her post as head of English at Cheltenham Ladies College, saying ‘I began to see that power had an effect on me that I didn’t like’. She is a great role model for all of us who could do with a bit of ‘late flowering’ as the obituaries insist on putting it.

At the funeral, much of the ministry concerned love. And not being sad. No-one read it then, but the unspoken poem was, of course, Atlas. So many people can quote a kind of love called maintenance without remembering the title or the last line: how love is not only personal and domestic but global, demanding, essential. Like poetry.

Emily Wills
June 2009