Going, Going…, the latest collection of poems by Leah Fritz,
was published by bluechrome. It is available in hardcover at £12.99.

 
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”. ’
 
Leah Fritz’s next book, Whatever Sends the Music into Time: New and Selected Poems,
will be published by Salmon Poetry in April, 2012.
 

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. Hearing Eye also published a special letterpress booklet, illustrated by Emily Johns, From Cookie to Witch is an Old Story (a poem), in 2004. About that publication Chris Beckett wrote in Poetry London, ‘Frankly, you shouldn’t even try to resist this book…’ Going, Going…, her fourth volume, was published by Bluechrome in 2007. Her translation, with Alina-Olimpia Miron, of the Romanian poems of Christiana Maria Perdescu in Deepening the Mystery, was published in Bucharest in 2009.
 
Also in 2009, Leah Fritz was commended by Carol Ann Duffy, adjudicator of the Poetry on the Lake competition, for her poem: Four Gentlemen Reminisce About Allen Ginsberg. Earlier she had won 2nd prize in the London Writers Competition, and was Highly Commended in the Exeter and Devon Poetry Competition.
 
Her articles and reviews have appeared in The Guardian, Literary Review, Acumen, PN Review, Poetry Review and other publications. She adjudicated the Petra Kenney Memorial Competition for three years, becoming an honorary patron, and also 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.

Frankly, you shouldn’t even try to resist this book; it’s an old story (or two) beautifully reinvented.

reviews of Going, Going… by William Bedford, Nancy Campbell, Emma Lee, Helena Nelson, and Dilys Wood

See events for where/when Leah’s scheduled to read.

Leah’s poems Anniversary and Just Another Year are available as poetry p f Poem Cards from shop online