[James Brancheau]

I didn’t know Ann very well and can probably count on one hand the number of our interactions, but I was shocked and saddened to hear this. I enjoyed her work and will greatly miss her presence here.

[Martin Parker]

Dear Annie. Kind, wise and wonderfully readable. A huge loss.

[Mark Blaeuer]

I didn't know her, but I'm very sorry to read of her passing. I greatly enjoyed her poems and comments here.

[peter richards]

Without peer I say, so the rest of us all move one rung up the ladder
not that there's a ladder, and anyway it's so long and the steps so small,
but we'll miss the guiding light up ahead.

[Trish Sims]

I've only just seen the news on Roger Elkin's page. What a huge loss of such a warm and lovely woman.

My condolences to her family.

[Nicholas Stone]

Very sad news. It seems quite wrong, there's hardly anyone more alive. I got to meet Annie when she accepted my invitation to come and speak and stay at Oxford a few years ago. We discussed whether she might be bothered by the ghost of Auden on her staircase (she wasn't). I remember her being completely in accord with her generous presence here on the forum, being completely at home talking about new trends in poetry with student poets in an excessively noisy bar, and writing a sonnet afterwards based on a particularly bizarre sentence we overheard. I am very glad to have had the chance to get to know her and learn from her.

[Gail White]

Ann's poem in the latest issue of The Oldie suggests that she was in treatment for cancer. (You can read it in Drills and Amusements, under "Ill Wind".) I'm so sad to think of not hearing that voice again.