Anne Stevenson read at the Clephan Building, Oxford Street, Leicester, at 7.30pm on Friday Dec 8 2006, at the joint invitation of Leicester Poetry Society and De Montfort University, with the financial support of Leicester City Council.  Her work is distinguished for what Elizabeth Jennings described as 'a sturdy backbone of intellectual vigour... ' Peter Levi wrote, ˜She is one of the greatest women artists in the country.'  Roger Caldwell in the Times Literary Supplement described her as ‘one of the finest poets writing in English today.’ Writing in the Guardian in 2004, Alfred Hickling commented: ‘One can sense the puritan influence in the poems, which are as meticulously crafted as pieces of Shaker furniture.’ C.B. McCully in PN REVIEW, on her Collected Poems: "In a generous and beautifully-produced volume she has given the literary world not only an extraordinary talent but also an example of instinct, integrity, persistence and a rare quality of passionate thinking. These Collected Poems represent a wonderful achievement." Website: http://www.anne-stevenson.co.uk Born: January 3 1933, Cambridge. Educated: University High School, Ann Arbor, Michigan; University of Michigan. Family: 1955-60 Robin Hitchcock (one daughter, Caroline); '63-79 Mark Elvin (two sons, John and Charles); '79-80 Michael Farley; '87- Peter Lucas. Career: 1973 Literary Fellow, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; '81-82 Northern Arts Literary Fellow; '89 writer-in-residence Edinburgh University. Some poetry: 1969 Reversals; '74 Correspondences; '87 Selected Poems; '96 Collected Poems 1955-1995; 2000 Granny Scarecrow; '03 A Report from the Border. Some books: 1966 Elizabeth Bishop; '89 Bitter Fame; '98 Between the Iceberg and the Ship: Selected Essays, Five Looks at Elizabeth Bishop. Awards: 2003 Northern Rock Foundation Award.   A Marriage When my mother knew why her treatment wasn’t working, She said to my father, trying not to detonate her news, ‘Steve, you must marry again. When I’m gone, who’s going To tell you to put your trousers on before your shoes?’ My father opened his mouth to -- couldn’t -- refuse. Instead, he threw her a look; a man just shot Gazing at the arm or leg he was about to lose. His cigarette burned him, but he didn’t stub it out. Later, on the porch, alive in the dark together, How solid the house must have felt, how sanely familiar The street-lit leaves, their shadows patterning the street. The house is still there. The elms and the people, not. It was now, and it never was now. Like every experience Of being entirely here, yet really not being. They couldn’t imagine the future that I am seeing, For all his philosophy and all her common sense. Making Poetry ‘You have to inhabit poetry if you want to make it’ And what’s ‘to inhabit?’ To be in the habit of, to wear words, sitting in the plainest light, in the silk of morning, in the shoe of night; a feeling bare and frondish in surprising air; familiar. . . rare. And what’s ‘˜to make?’ To be and to become words’ passing weather; to serve a girl on terrible terms, embark on voyages over voices, evade the ego-hill, the misery-well, the siren hiss of publish, success, publish, success, success, success. And why inhabit, make, inherit poetry? Oh, it’s the shared comedy of the worst blessed; the sound leading the hand; a wordlife running from mind to mind through the washed rooms of the simple senses; one of those haunted, undefendable, unpoetic crosses we have to find.   Vertigo Mind led body to the edge of the precipice. They stared in desire at the naked abyss. If you love me, said mind, take that step into silence. If you love me, said body, turn and exist.  Review by Brian Fewster in The Stanza 33