Anne Stevenson (Anne Katherine Stevenson) Biography

American poet, born in Cambridge, England, of American parents; she grew up in the USA and was educated at the University of Michigan. After working as a school-teacher in England and the USA, she settled in Britain in the early 1960s. She has held posts as writer-in-residence at various colleges and universities throughout Britain. Living in America (1965) and Reversals (1969), her first two collections of verse, established her as a poet of candour and intelligence capable of combining sharp observation and imaginative energy in her subtle critiques of American culture and society. Correspondences (1974) forms a sustained investigation of the American past through the medium of a fictitious sequence of letters. The landscapes of the north-east coast of Scotland provide settings for the stoical lyricism of Enough of Green (1977), which contains some of the most notable examples of her characteristic ability to fuse perceptual and contemplative qualities. Local observation, chiefly of the Welsh border country, forms the basis for much of Minute by Glass Minute (1982), in which her philosophical questionings centre on the individual's search for clarity of vision in the midst of the distractions presented by the past and the present. Subsequent collections, including The Fiction-Makers (1985), The Other House (1990), and Four and a Half Dancing Men (1992), extend her concern with the interactions of the imagination and objective reality. She has also published a succession of pamphlets which include Turkish Rondo (1982) and Black Grate Poems (1984). Selected Poems: 1956–1986 appeared in 1987. Among her other works are the critical monograph Elizabeth Bishop (1966) and Bitter Fame (1989), a biography of Sylvia Plath.