Freda Downie

Freda Downie (20 October 1929 – 4 May 1993) was an English poet.[1][2][3]

She was born in London, growing up in the outskirts of Shooters Hill. The family were evacuated to Northamptonshire in September 1939, returned to London during the Blitz, travelled by sea round Africa to Australia for her father's work in 1941–42 and returned across the Pacific, reaching London again in 1944 at the time of V1 and V2 bombs – all this she described, in her memoir There'll Always Be an England: a poet's childhood, 1929–1945, written in the last year of her life (2003, Bloodaxe, ISBN 9781852244767). She worked for music publishers and art agents, and only started to publish her poetry in the 1970s.[2] Her two main published collections were A Stranger Here (1977, Secker, ISBN 0436132508) and Plainsong (1981, Secker, ISBN 0436132516).[1] Her Collected Poems, edited by George Szirtes, were published after her death (2003, Bloodaxe, ISBN 9781852243012).[2]

Downie's poems have been described as "elegant, full of gently spiked irony, and oblique, wistful glances at everyday events and familiar landscapes".[3]

References

  1. 1 2 Cotton, John (12 May 1993). "Obituary:Freda Downie". The Independent. Retrieved 31 March 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 "Freda Downie: author". Bloodaxe Books. Retrieved 31 March 2016.
  3. 1 2 Hamilton, Ian (2013). "Downie, Freda (1929–1993)". The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry in English. p. 154. ISBN 9780199640256.

Further reading

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