I think a great deal. She began drawing in school when she was working as a secretary. They were all gathered together in boxes. And then when she was actually writing her poetry and gathering them together for a collection, that would spark off another drawing which would start off another poem. It's true that critics have been rather unsettled by them. So I think Philip Larkin, when he was writing at length, reviewing her selected poems, thinks they should have ended up more or less in the fire. But I think he's also quite dismissive, so talks about the fact that because she writes about cats all the time and because she doodles, she shouldn't be taken seriously.
In 1957 Stevie Smith published a poetry collection called Not Waving But Drowning – and its title poem gave us a phrase which has entered the language.
Its success has overshadowed her wider work as the author of more than half a dozen collections of poetry and three novels, mostly written while she worked as a secretary. Her poems, printed with her pen and ink sketches, can seem simple and comical, but often beneath the surface lurk themes of melancholy, loneliness, love and death.
With
Jeremy Noel-Tod
Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia
Noreen Masud
Lecturer in Twentieth Century Literature at the University of Bristol
and
Will May
Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of Southampton
The photograph above shows Stevie Smith recording her story Sunday at Home, a finalist in the BBC Third Programme Short Story competition in 1949.