Judith Kazantzis

Lady Judith E. Kazantzis (born 1940) is a British poet.

Life

She grew up in East Sussex, the daughter of Lord and Lady Longford, and sister of Rachel Billington and Dame Antonia Fraser.

She took a Modern History degree and later worked for the Chelsea Labour Party, and reviewed for the Evening Standard. During the 1970s she turned to poetry, fiction, painting and printmaking. She lived in London, and spent three months a year in Key West. Around 2000, she returned to live in Lewes, in East Sussex.

In the 1990s she worked for Kalayaan - Justice for Migrant Domestic Workers. In 1999 she left Tony Blair’s Labour Party, and since 2001 helped to campaign for Occupied Palestine. In 2003, she signed the Statement for Peace of the 21st Key West Literary Seminar.^[1]

In August 2010 Kazantzis contributed to an eBook collection of political poems entitled Emergency Verse - Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State edited by Alan Morrison^[2]

Her poems have appeared in London Magazine, Stand, Ambit, Agenda, Poetry Review, Poetry London, Poetry Wales, Bete Noire, The Honest Ulsterman, Poetry Ireland, Red Pepper, The Independent, The New Statesman, Tribune, and Banipal.^[3]

Marriage

On 22 February 1998, she married lawyer and writer Irving Weinman. Harry Mathews wrote an Epithalamium for Judith Kazantzis and Irving Weinman.^[4]

Awards

• 2005-06 Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Sussex University
• 2007 Society of Authors' Cholmondeley Award

Works

• "Tropic". Poemhunter.

Poetry

• Just After Midnight. Enitharmon Press. 2004. ISBN 978-1-904634-02-7.
• The Odysseus Poems: Fictions on the Odyssey of Homer. Cargo Press. 1999. ISBN 978-1-899980-07-9.
• Swimming Through The Grand Hotel. Enitharmon Press. 1997. ISBN 978-1-900564-20-5.
• Selected Poems 1977-1992. Sinclair-Stevenson. 1995. ISBN 1-85619-552-X.
• The Rabbit Magician Plate. Sinclair-Stevenson. 1992. ISBN 978-1-85619-169-2.
• Flame Tree. Methuen. 1988. ISBN 978-0-413-17880-0.
• Poem for Guatemala. Bedlam. 1986. ISBN 978-1-870260-01-5.
• Let's Pretend. 1984, Virago Press
• Touch Papers: Three Women Poets (with Michèle Roberts and Michelene Wandor. 1982, Allison and Busby).
• The Wicked Queen. Sidgwick and Jackson. 1980.
• Minefield. Sidgwick and Jackson. 1977.

Fiction

• Of Love and Terror. London: Saqi Books. 2002. ISBN 978-0-86356-316-4.

Translator

• In Cyclops' Cave: The Odyssey, Book IX, LI 105-566. The Greville Press. 2002. ISBN 978-0-906887-74-5.

Anthologies

• Christmas Cards (Enitharmon Press, 2005)
• A Celebration of Wilfred Owen (The Interpreter's House)
• Poems On The Underground (Cassell, 2001)
• Parents (Enitharmon 2000)
• Red Sky At Night (Many Leaves Press, 2003)
• A Ring of Words (Arvon Prize Anthology, 1998)
• Mind Readings, Dancing in the Street, The Faber Book of Blue Verse and the Virago Book of Love Poetry.
• Poems on the Underground featured her poem "Freight Song" (Cassell).

Essays

• Michelene Wandor, ed. (1983). "The Errant Unicorn". On Gender and Writing. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-86358-021-5.

References

1. "Statement for Peace". The New York Review of Books 50 (2). 13 February 2003.
2. The Recusant eZine, therecusant.org.uk; accessed 23 March 2016.
3. Banipal magazine website, banipal.co.uk; accessed 23 March 2016.
4. Arlo Haskell, "The Epithalamium of Harry Mathews", Littoral, 29 May 2008.

External links

• Official website
• Profile, contemporarywriters.com
• Profile, britishcouncil.org