The team
Ruth Harrison
Angela Hicken
Madelaine - the book thief
Penny- Rose Ratcliffe
Rachel the editor- Jane the Archivist
Cordelia Gray- Friday Next
- Jacky Percival
Other teams
Coffee with Date and Walnut Loaf Find!
When I first met Elizabeth Bewick I didn't know that she was a poet. I was beginning an Oral History project about the area of Winchester where I live and Elizabeth was the first person to put herself forward as an interviewee as she had lived in Hyde for more than 40 years. We set a date and armed with my tape recorder I visited Elizabeth in her 400 year old cottage one Monday afternoon ready to record her memories.
I have to admit this was my first Oral History interview and it wasn't very good (my fault - I was more nervous than I expected) In the end it took three interviews to capture Elizabeth's thoughts on life, Hyde, and eventually poetry. I also visited on a number of other occasions and we became friends. The tradition is to share coffee and a slice or two of Date & Walnut Loaf. Sometimes Elizabeth will share with me a poem on which she is working and for this I feel very priviledged.
Many of Elizabeth's poems are dedicated to friends and at her recent 90th birthday party at Hyde Parish Hall a number of guests returned the favour with readings of poems that had written especially for her. Typically Elizabeth's thank you letter to all her friends and family was a specially composed poem.
Jeremy Hooker wrote of Elizabeth in 2003
'Given that Elizabeth Bewick was born in the north-east and has retained strong attachments to that area, but has lived in Winchester for over forty years, it would be tempting to describe her as a poet of two, contrasting landscapes. This would be an exaggeration, however - not least because she writes out of the fullness of experience where she finds it, not out of a partial view that sets the 'harsh' north against the 'soft' south. There is, nevertheless, an obdurate quality to the character manifested in her poetry that may derive from her upbringing in the north. Elizabeth was born in County Durham in 1919. She came to Hampshire in 1961 to set up the School Library Service. Although she has been writing poetry most of her life, she only seriously considered publication in retirement.'
The full article can be found on the Poetry Magazine Website http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=14370 along with a number of Elizabeth's poems.
Elizabeth's several volumes of poetry are hard to come by especially her first Comfort Me with Apples which was published in a limited edition in 1987 with wood engraving illustrations (Elizabeth is a relation of the famous engraver Thomas Bewick).
In addition to being a poet herself Elizabeth has helped and encouraged many other writers by running workshops and poetry groups.
I'll leave the last word to Jeremy Hooker who says it rather better than I can
'Her poems are a rich gathering, drawing together past and present, the years in County Durham and the years in Winchester.'
30 September 2009 from Madelaine - the book thief
Finds
- A Daughter of Winchester
- And here is one we missed
- And, finally, one for Hallowe'en
- How did we miss this one?
- John Wyndham's Hampshire connection
- Reading the countryside
- New Milton's new Milton
- Heywood Sumner in South Gorley
- PG Wodehouse in Emsworth
- Walking In My Sleep
- Nicola Slade's Victorian Mysteries
- England's Lost Eden
- June Tate
- Bullington
- Speed The Plough: A Country Song
- A Hampshire scarecrow: Worzel Gummidge
- Queens Arms
- Haslar Hospital Memories
- Magical writing for children
- Inspired by the Tichborne Claimant
- Gypsy Girl Trilogy
- Rev. Gilbert White (1720-1793) and The Natural History of Selborne
- Coffee with Date and Walnut Loaf
- The Play Room
- Kipling's dislikes
- Deadman's Plack
- Netley Abbey Ruins
- Portsea Sagas
- Lilian Harry's Family Connections
- Crossing the Bar
- John Betjeman and Bevis Hillier
- Growing up in Portsmouth
- More Edward Thomas
- Two blokes and a shed
- In the shadow of the Cathedral
- Hampshire Days
- Mr Hardy Writes a Poem
- "Steep" is apt
- Thackeray in Fareham
- Forgotten Favourite?
- Daniel Clay's 'Broken'
- Pell and Tess
- Edward Thomas and Froxfield
- Betjeman explores hidden corners of Hampshire
- Rebecca Smith
- Right of Access
- Hampshire songs, poems, and ditties
- In this house
- Words & Walks
- England, Their England
- An Ode to a Road
- The story of a house
- Crime Connections to the City
- John Keat's Ode to Autumn
- William Lisle Bowles, poet
- Future Princes of Winchester
- Spike Island by Philip Hoare
- The marriage of souls
- Rural Rides: William Cobbett
- Elinor Brent-Dyer remembered
- Dornford Yates' Hampshire connection
- The Marlows, their maker and stealing a corner of Dorset
- Saint Cross: England's Oldest Almshouse
- Winchester the whole day through
- HOW TO BE A BETTER PERSON
- Otterbourne's Enid Blyton? Charlotte M. Yonge (1823-1901)
- Odo's Hanging is missing
- The Warden
- Charles Kingsley's Letters
- Owslebury Bottom
- See it My Way
- Introduction to Melesina Trench
- Some Hampshire road signs read Jane Austen Country
- Flora Thompson: published poet
Recent posts
- Postscrpt to a previous find
- The uses of a detective
- Reading Detectives film
- Virginia Smith remembered
- Mary Sumner
- A272: An Ode to a Road (by Andy)
- The hunt continues
- Winchester MP Mark Oaten to publish book
- Chalet School
- Bags of Books and Enthusiasm
- Chalet School author
- Poetry in the pub
- Wealth of words in Winchester
- Hampshire Gets Going
Help the team
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