I'm stunned at this news. Annie was an amazing poet and a lovely friend. I'll miss her very much.

Jayne

This is sad news. She was kind to me. May she RIP.

Quick note to say that I merged the two active threads.

xoxo, Annie

Shocked and saddened by this terrible news.

And pace Dylan Thomas,

"Go gentle, Annie, into that good night."

I'm writing this on a beach, on holiday, which feels very strange. It's really too sad to take in. Annie was the first Spherean, first poet, I met in the flesh, about 6 years ago. After chatting a while via PM, then email, we arranged I pick her up at the train station and she came to spend the night at my house: a completely adventurous whim, which I loved her for. We went to the pub, talked poetry, gossiped about the Sphere and had a fine and memorable old time of it. It was an honour to count her as a friend. She was so funny and very kind.

And the poems. Just so many clever, wise, affecting, irreverent, human poems.

People come and go here. She'd been quiet for a while but I never doubted she'd be back, that we might reignite that silly "limerflicks" thread again, and that there would be more poems from her. She emailed me fairly recently to say there was a new collection in the offing that was going to be called Housman's Rat*, and attached a wonderful potential cover of 2 cartoon rats smoking a huge spliff.

I've been reading through our email exchanges, smiling but feeling very sad. I'm really going to miss her.

Here's the Dec 2022 Zoom launch for Feeling Unusual that Nemo organised and introduces with his characteristic eloquence. What a joy she is here and how much love for her in the room.

https://youtu.be/cgGQM3bOMOU?si=8wKz2xv3T967fD1r

*I never asked her but I assume the title came from this:

"Poetry indeed seems to me more physical than intellectual. A year or two ago, in common with others, I received from America a request that I would define poetry. I replied that I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat, but that I thought we both recognised the object by the symptoms which it provokes in us."

AE Housman

.
Annie (Feeling Unusual)

I didn’t know her
but I wonder
If death took her
or she slept through it.

As I said
I didn’t know her
except to say
I felt I did.

.

Oh no. This is so sad. Annie was one of the first people to respond - and certainly one of the kindest - when I first started posting here. (I was deeply impressed by the fact, which I soon discovered, that she had been a personal friend of the great Jake Thackray.)

I loved her poems too, and cherish signed copies of two of her collections.

Unlike Mark (whom I envy, greatly) I never actually met her, although I had that on my wish list. The sea is wide, and I cannot swim over. We did exchange emails - too sporadically - and I sent her one starting "How are you?" just last Wednesday. I can stop looking forward to her reply now.

I called her my giddy poetry aunt, and she sometimes signed off her emails as that. Hail, now, Great Aunt. We are diminished.

I don't think I'll be able to read either of those collections for a day or two yet.