Frances Horovitz - Frances Horovitz

Frances Horovitz's poems have the clarity of ballad and the power of myth. Her finely honed lyrics 'strike to areas of the soul as old as humanity itself'. Many were inspired by the remote Cotswold valley where she lived for ten years; others by the border country of Cumbria and the Welsh Marches. Her Collected Poems (1985) was one of the landmark volumes of postwar British poetry. She was one of the finest ever readers of poetry, and this new edition includes an audio CD of her reading a selection of her poems, along with an interview.

Frances Horovitz (1938-85) was greatly loved and respected not only as a poet, but also as a broadcaster and performer of poetry. She was one of the finest poetry readers this country produced, possessing a rare ability to hear a poem and become its voice. She published four collections of poems, including Water Over Stone (Enitharmon Press, 1980) and Snow Light, Water Light (Bloodaxe Books, 1983). She died in 1983, aged 45, after a long illness. Her Collected Poems (1985) was edited by her husband, the poet and critic Roger Garfitt, with a new edition issued in 2011 with an audio CD of her reading her work included.

'She has perfect rhythm, great delicacy and a rather Chinese yet very locally British sense of landscape - her poetry does seem to me to approach greatness' - Peter Levi.
'Frances Horovitz inherits the mantle of Kathleen Raine and of Frances Bellerby. It is an honour to be able to say that her voice is not that of the "age" but of the earth' - Anne Stevenson.
'The Collected Poems are, after all, what we are left with when all the symposia and elegies have withered. One is reminded, gratefully, of John Updike's appreciation of Wallace Stevens: "What a good use of life, to leave behind one beautiful book".' - James Wood, The Times.