Frances Horovitz

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Standard Name: Horovitz, Frances
Birth Name: Frances Margaret Hooker
Married Name: Frances Margaret Horovitz
Late twentieth-century poet and broadcaster FH published during her short lifetime four volumes of poetry, as well as individual poems, a series for Gallery 5 , and collaborations with her second poet-husband, Roger Garfitt . Many journals published her poetry, and her oeuvre was extended posthumously. Her poems are heavily symbolic: she uses little punctuation, and her few words are freighted with carefully chosen meaning. Known as a landscape writer, she takes nature to represent the ancient, primordial connection that exists between humanity and the created world, past, present, and future. Her favourite images are those with primal associations: stone, water, bird, leaves, stars, and moon. She often juxtaposes light with dark and change with continuity. Some of her poems deal with deeply personal subjects, particularly love, absence, motherhood, intimacy, loss, reunion, solitude, and death.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Gillian Clarke
GC contributed to her own Tenfold: Poems for Frances Horovitz, published at Wellingborough in Northamptonshire by Skelton's Press on behalf of the Frances Horovitz Benefit.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Dedications Anne Stevenson
AS published her edition of the Selected Poems of Frances Bellerby , dedicating it to the memory of Frances Horovitz , who, she said, loved these poems.
Bellerby's dates are 29 August 1899-30 July 1975.
Bellerby, Frances, and Robert Gittings. Selected Poems. Editor Stevenson, Anne, Enitharmon Press, 1986.
8
Gittings, Robert, and Frances Bellerby. “Introduction”. Selected Poems, edited by Anne Stevenson and Anne Stevenson, Enitharmon Press, 1986.
9, 40
Friends, Associates Anne Stevenson
AS 's close friends have included many well-known late twentieth-century names in British poetry: Frances Horovitz , whom she mourned in a number of poems, a trio of drinking friends in Glasgow (Tom Leonard
Material Conditions of Writing Muriel Spark
MS began her career as a novelist in illness and under financial stress. In 1954, Macmillan , who were looking for promising new writers, invited her to write a novel. Although ill and unable to...
Textual Production Anne Stevenson
AS 's The Fiction-Makers appeared in memory of her friend and fellow-poet Frances Horovitz ; many of its poems juggle past, present, and future time.
Horovitz died in her mid-forties on 2 October 1983.
Contemporary Authors, Autobiography Series. Gale Research, 1984–2025, Numerous volumes.
9: 287
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anne Stevenson
In the title-poem, each of five stanzas ends with a version of the first closing lines: we thought we were living now, / but we were living then.
Stevenson, Anne. Selected Poems, 1956-1986. Oxford University Press, 1987.
128
These we, it seems, are...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anne Stevenson
Here ASargues that change is time's one permanent condition, that it continually transforms the present into the past at the very moment it opens the future to further change. Quoting from her own The...

Timeline

10 September 2003: Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of...

Writing climate item

10 September 2003

Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of the Week a website entitled Poetry Landmarks of Britain: a map of poetic assocations plotted on an interactive map of Britain, searchable by region or category.
“Poetry Society News: News Archive”. The Poetry Society, London.

Texts

Horovitz, Michael, and Frances Horovitz. A Celebration of and for Frances Horovitz (1938-1983). New Departures, 1984.
Horovitz, Frances, and Ros Cuthbert. Birdsong and Water. Yellow Fox Press, 1994.
Horovitz, Frances. Collected Poems. Editor Garfitt, Roger, Bloodaxe Books, 1985.
Horovitz, Frances. Letter to be Sent by Air. Sceptre Press, 1974.
Horovitz, Frances. Poems. St Albert’s Press, 1967.
Horovitz, Frances, and Judy Hargreaves. Postcards. Gallery 5, 1977.
Horovitz, Frances, and Paul Stangroom. Snow Light, Water Light. Bloodaxe Books, 1983.
Horovitz, Frances. The High Tower. New Departures, 1970.
Horovitz, Frances et al. Wall. L. Y. C. Press, 1981.
Horovitz, Frances. Water over Stone. Enitharmon Press, 1980.