Pitter, Ruth

RUTH PITTER (1897 – 1992)

Pitter’s Collected Poems, originally published by Enitharmon in 1990, gathers together the finest of her poems, which in Kathleen Raine’s judgement ‘will survive as long as the English language, with whose expressiveness in image and idea she has kept faith, remains’. In the introduction Elizabeth Jennings, herself among the most distinguished of contemporary poets, pays tribute to Pitter’s ‘acute sensibility and deep integrity’ and refers to her precision in observing Nature, her skill with verse forms and the frequency with which she achieves a ‘beautifully communicated vision’.

‘One of the truest and most dedicated poets of her time … her poetry combines grit and tenderness, harshness and fragility, sensual experience and intellectual vision.’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

‘She is a mistress of form, writing in sapphics, couplets, villanelles, mock heroics, every kind of rhyme scheme in poems that are graceful, charming, often witty, and seemingly effortless.’  CHOICE (USA)

‘Both a profoundly observant nature poet… and a mystical religious poet … The intensity of her insight into nature had a quality only seen in the poems and notebooks of Gerard Manley Hopkins.’  THE TIMES

‘A remarkable consistent body of work spanning 65 years – not fashionable but powerfully individual. Her whole life was devoted to her craft, her writing grounded in the natural world, in common things and people portrayed with love and painterly clarity – sometimes too with a grotesque even rough humour, yet penetrating far deeper.’ GUARDIAN