UA Fanthorpe 1929-2009

The poet UA Fanthorpe has died at the age of 79. There's an obituary in The Daily Telegraph.

UA Fanthorpe was much more inclined towards humour than sentiment, and was a mistress of the anachronism: she makes St George say, "I have diplomas in Dragon / Management and Virgin Reclamation", and Christ introduce his parables with such lines as "What did the high priest say / To the belly dancer?" Her use of a weary female voice to deflate the aspirations of orotund male poets anticipated the quips of Wendy Cope and Carol Ann Duffy. Even when writing about terminal illness, she could approach the subject in the spirit of Woody Allen: "Library fines and income tax returns / Have lost their sting."