U.A. Fanthorpe

I know what was the first poem poem I read by U. A. Fanthorpe, who died last week, and I know when I read it: her poem Rising Damp, about the lost rivers of London, won third prize in the Arvon poetry competition in 1980. It was published in The Observer in February 1981 (accompanied by a photograph of the poet, well wrapped up in a tartan coat, against that insidious damp), and I loved it enough to cut it out and keep it. So I tend to regard her as my own personal discovery.

I heard her read at least twice. The first time was an intimate affair, as part of the proudWORDS festival of gay writing: an upstairs room, scattered tables and a conversational tone. The second was a more formal affair in the great hall of Durham Town Hall, under-amplified and only one item in a programme which included other poets and all together too much question and answer: I wanted to stand up and say, "Cut the padding and give us more Fanthorpe!" Was this the occasion on which her partner, Rosie Bailey, was called forward to participate in the reading of a poem set in the north-east "because she can do the accents"? Or was that another, a third time? I don't know. I'm just sad there won't be more readings, more poems...

She wrote a poem for Saint Peter - one of the early ones, composed while she was working as a medical receptionist:

I have a good deal of sympathy for you, mate
Because I reckon that, like me, you deal with the outpatients.

Let's hope that sympathy's reciprocated.