Poetry Book Society Recommendation
Elizabeth Bartlett's powerfully evocative poems are remarkable for their painfully truthful insights into people's lives. Born in 1924, she worked for many years in the Health Service. For Peter Forbes, she is poetry's chronicler of today's 'damaged Britain' . . . 'She writes about people in extreme states, some of which she has experienced herself . . . '
'She fills her poems with ordinary, awkward lives and voices, fleshing out her casebook with a deftness that is only apparently offhand, unshockable. The emotional payload is in fact often dizzying' - Carol Rumens, Poetry Review.
'Her poems touch the tender spots without apology' - Adam Thorpe, Observer.
'Vulnerably human, there is no distinction between the professional and the personal where her response to others' pain is concerned . . . She is a remorseless truth-teller . . . Hers is the daybook of a night-nurse of the soul' - John Mole, Encounter.
'Truthful, powerful and unexaggerated. The deprivations of childhood become the deprivations of adulthood and then the disappointments and loneliness of middle age. But Ms Bartlett is captain of her own soul . . . heartening and liberating' - Peter Porter, Observer.
'Elizabeth Bartlett's Two Women Dancing is fully representative of the consistent curve of this attractive poet's career: a slow sure thrust in the right direction from 1942 (not easy in that off-vintage time) followed by a magnificent arching burst from the 1970s on' - John Fuller, PBS Bulletin.
Not currently available: reprint under consideration
