Ruth Fainlight

Standard Name: Fainlight, Ruth
Birth Name: Ruth Esther Fainlight
Married Name: Ruth Sillitoe
RF is a poet active since the mid twentieth century who says she is always either writing a poem or waiting with a variety of emotions for the next poem to announce itself. Other forms of writing—stories, translation, libretti—can divert me for a while, but if too much time passes without work on a poem, I feel uneasy.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
She is a remarkably international writer, having published in France and Mexico, as well as having her work translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian.
qtd. in
“Ruth Fainlight”. writersartists.net.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Elaine Feinstein
While she was teaching at Essex, EF met a number of poets, including Ed Dorn , who fed her interest in American poetry. She was also involved during these years with a group including Tom Pickard
Friends, Associates Sylvia Plath
SP felt like an outsider in England. One highly promising friendship she made there was that with Ruth Fainlight , another aspiring young, female, married poet of US origin. But this was largely a friendship...
Friends, Associates Doris Lessing
At this time Lessing's friends included a number of writers: Ruth Fainlight and Alan Sillitoe , Arnold Wesker and his wife Dusty, Naomi Mitchison , Ted Hughes , and R. D. Laing .
Diski, Jenny. “Doris and Me”. London Review of Books, Vol.
37
, No. 1, 8 Jan. 2015, pp. 21-3.
21
Literary responses Seamus Heaney
The TLS review, despite SH 's earlier appearance in the pages of that journal, appeared to think this was his first book, grouping it with debut works by Karen Gershon and Ruth Fainlight . The...
Literary responses Judith Kazantzis
Ruth Fainlight praised the poet's ability to imagine herself into many roles, and Marina Warner wrote that Kazantzis had made of the well-known ordeals of Odysseus, both physical and mental or emotional, a vivid meditation...
Literary responses Judith Kazantzis
Ruth Fainlight , in picking this book as her Christmas choice in The Independent, called it a three generation story woven against a rich and complex political background.
qtd. in
Judith Kazantzis. 2008, http://www.judithkazantzis.com/.
Occupation Elaine Feinstein
EF 's introduction to Russian literature, which set her seriously reading and then translating Russian authors, significantly influenced her thinking.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
14
Since 1972 she has earned her living as a writer. She has lectured for...
Textual Features Carol Ann Duffy
Many poems here feature women answering back to canonical male voices: Liz Lochhead to Donne , Jenny Joseph to W. S. Gilbert , U. A. Fanthorpe to Walt Whitman , Wendy Cope to A. E. Housman
Textual Features Carol Ann Duffy
She selected slightly more carols by women than by men, and recalled that Christina Rossetti 's In the Bleak Midwinter was the result of a commission from Scribner's Monthly in 1872. Her own contribution concerns...
Textual Features Carol Ann Duffy
The sixty poets were each commissioned for a poem marking a particular year. They included Gillian Clarke (1955: Running Away to the Sea), Ruth Fainlight (1963: World Events), Liz Lochhead (1966: Photograph, Art...
Textual Production Monica Furlong
This journal's first issue (with Ruth Fainlight as the only female contributor) had appeared in 1965. The other female contributors to this volume were Birk, Karen Gershon , and Pamela Melnikoff .
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Textual Production Jeni Couzyn
The other poets included are Kathleen Raine , Denise Levertov , Elizabeth Jennings , Elaine Feinstein , Ruth Fainlight , Sylvia Plath , Jenny Joseph , Anne Stevenson , and Fleur Adcock .

Timeline

14 October 1958: Alan Sillitoe, husband of Ruth Fainlight,...

Writing climate item

14 October 1958

Alan Sillitoe , husband of Ruth Fainlight , had his first success with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, a novel resulting from Robert Graves 's advice to write something honest about his native Nottingham.
Graves, Richard. Robert Graves and the White Goddess, 1940-85. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995.
286 and n
Sillitoe, Alan. Life without Armour. HarperCollins, 1995.
251, 263

By September 1959: Alan Sillitoe, husband of the poet Ruth Fainlight,...

Writing climate item

By September 1959

Alan Sillitoe , husband of the poet Ruth Fainlight , published the second of his best-known works, a short-story volume entitled The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.
Sillitoe, Alan. Life without Armour. HarperCollins, 1995.
261

Texts

Fainlight, Ruth. A Forecast, a Fable. Outcasts, 1958.
Fainlight, Ruth, and Alan Sillitoe. All Citizens are Soldiers. Macmillan, 1969.
Fainlight, Ruth. Another Full Moon. Hutchinson, 1976.
Fainlight, Ruth. Burning Wire. Bloodaxe, 2002.
Fainlight, Ruth. Cages. Macmillan; St Martin’s Press, 1966.
Fainlight, Ruth. Climates. Newcastle upon Tyne, 1983.
Fainlight, Ruth. Daylife and Nightlife. Deutsch, 1971.
Fainlight, Ruth. Dr Clock’s Last Case and Other Stories. Virago, 1994.
Fainlight, Ruth. Fifteen to Infinity. Hutchinson, 1983.
Fainlight, Ruth. “Making a poem”. Mslexia, No. 63, p. 49.
Fainlight, Ruth. Moon Wheels. Bloodaxe, 2006.
Fainlight, Ruth. Sibyls and Others. Hutchinson, 1980.
Fainlight, Ruth. Sibyls: A Book of Poems. Gehenna Press, 1991.
Fainlight, Ruth. Sugar-Paper Blue. Bloodaxe Books, 1997.
Fainlight, Ruth. The Region’s Violence. Hutchinson, 1973.
Fainlight, Ruth. This Time of Year. Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993.
Fainlight, Ruth. To See the Matter Clearly. Macmillan, 1968.
Fainlight, Ruth. Twenty One Poems. Turret Press, 1973.