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Going, Going... the
latest collection of poems by Leah Fritz, Alan Brownjohn writes about this volume: 'These are the poems of a wide-ranging intelligence greedy for experience - but also offering us her own sharp and entertaining "criticism of life".' Before she moved to London from New York in 1985, two prose non-fiction books by Leah Fritz were published in the U.S.: Thinking Like a Woman (Winbooks, New York), a collection of essays and journalism on what was known in the 1960s and '70s as the ‘counterculture’ and Dreamers & Dealers: An Intimate Appraisal of the Women’s Movement (Beacon Press, Boston). In connection with these writings, she frequently spoke at universities and churches across the U.S., and in debates on radio and television. Although Leah Fritz had been writing poetry since early childhood, it wasn’t until she came to Britain that she accepted it as a vocation. Three collections of her poetry, From Cookie to Witch is an Old Story, Somewhere en Route and The Way to Go, were subsequently published by Loxwood Stoneleigh in Bristol, and individual poems frequently appear in magazines and anthologies. She won 2nd prize in the London Writers Competition in 1996, and Highly Commended in the Exeter and Devon Poetry Competition the following year. In 2009, she was commended by Carol Ann Duffy, adjudicator of the Poetry on the Lake competition, for her poem: Four Gentlemen Reminisce About Allen Ginsberg. Her translation, with Alina-Olimpia Miron, of the Romanian poems of Christiana Maria Perdescu in Deepening the Mystery, was published in Bucharest in the same year. Her articles and reviews have appeared in The Guardian, Literary Review, Acumen, PN Review, and other publications. She was an adjudicator of the Petra Kenney Memorial Competition for three years and then Honorary Patron, and she has also judged the Torriano Poetry Competition. Her archives are in the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History at Duke University in the USA. Patricia Oxley, the editor of Acumen, has written: ‘Leah Fritz’s poetry constantly reminds its readers of the important problems of life – poverty, hatred, war – yes, these of course – but also love, respect, how ordinary, everyday things can be invested with a life-enhancing sensibility if viewed aright. Her diction is plain, her style taut, yet there is space within her poems for the reader to move around and explore deeper aspects than perhaps a first reading reveals, for hints of wit and irony enliven with a quiet rhetoric which leaves a feeling in the heart rather than an image in the reason. Leah Fritz's poetry always seems to celebrate life.’ Of her 1999 collection, The Way to Go, Christopher Middleton commented: ‘Never "cute," but reaching, in mundanity’s midst, toward acute measures of real experience – not for a single absolute but for the many possible truths – Leah Fritz’s poetry is always enjoyable for its intelligence, wit, satirical sting and freshness of wording.’ In 2004, the title poem of her first poetry collection was published separately by Hearing Eye in a handsome letterpress format with woodcuts by Emily Johns. Reviewing From Cookie to Witch is an Old Story (a poem), Herbert Lomas wrote in Ambit: ‘...It's beautifully economical for the momentous theme of motherhood and is told humorously, concretely, sophisticatedly and tellingly.’ And Chris Beckett, in Poetry London: ‘Frankly, you shouldn't even try to resist this book; it's an old story (or two) beautifully reinvented.’ See events for where / when Leah's scheduled to read. Leah's poems Anniversary and Just Another Year are available as separate cards or with gift vouchers.
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