U.A. Fanthorpe (1929-2009) was born in Kent and read English at St Anne’s College, Oxford, before training as a teacher. She was Head of English at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, and then ‘became a middle-aged drop-out in order to write’, publishing her first collection, Side Effects, in 1978. Her eight volumes of poetry were all published by Peterloo, and her Selected Poems was published by Penguin in 1986. Enitharmon Press publish her Christmas Poems and From Me to You, love poems by Fanthorpe and R. V. Bailey. In 1994 U. A. Fanthorpe was the first woman to be nominated for the post of Professor of Poetry at Oxford. She was awarded the CBE in 2001 and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2003, when her Collected Poems were published. In 2010 Enitharmon published her definitive volume New and Collected Poems which features a preface by The Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.

Other poems by U.A. Fanthorpe in Verse Daily:
December 25, 2003:  "Bird Psalm" "The Swallow said, / He comes like me..."

Books by U.A. Fanthorpe:

Other poems on the web by U.A. Fanthorpe:
Three poems
"Not my Best Side"
"Atlas"
"Atlas"
"The cleaner"

U.A. Fanthorpe According to Wikipedia.

About Selected Poems:

"U.A. possessed an endearing patriotism that was founded lastingly on love, not shakily on superiority. All her poems, in fact, were sourced in love. She could make the difficult accessible and accessible complex. She had not a smidgeon of pomposity or ego or self-regard. Indeed, if she had a fault as a poet, that fault was a closet virtue – modesty. She would have demurred herself, but U.A. Fanthorpe exerted a great influence on contemporary poetry."
—Carol Ann Duffy

"The peerless U. A. Fanthorpe roots herself in the very earth of English poetry, connecting herself to Hughes and Browning, but also and more pertinently to the real experience of English living... so clear-eyed and so, well, completely poetic."
—Stephen Fry