Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Music Examples
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- I Introduction
- II Some Autobiography
- III An American Apprenticeship
- IV Writings About Music
- V Literary Connections
- VI Peter Dickinson on his own Music
- VII Interviews and a Memoir
- VIII Travels
- Appendix 1 Peter Dickinson: Chronological List of Works
- Appendix 2 Peter and Meriel Dickinson: Discography
- Index
3 - Ruth Pitter: A Centenary Tribute
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Music Examples
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- I Introduction
- II Some Autobiography
- III An American Apprenticeship
- IV Writings About Music
- V Literary Connections
- VI Peter Dickinson on his own Music
- VII Interviews and a Memoir
- VIII Travels
- Appendix 1 Peter Dickinson: Chronological List of Works
- Appendix 2 Peter and Meriel Dickinson: Discography
- Index
Summary
I interviewed Ruth Pitter for BBC Radio 3 at her home in Long Crendon on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday. The broadcast, produced by Piers Plowright, came out on 8 November 1987. At her death this interview was repeated on 1 May 1992 with my introduction, which is adapted here.
In 1984 my mother, Muriel Dickinson, went to live at 74 Chilton Road, Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire, and it was not long before she discovered that the poet Ruth Pitter (1897–1992) lived directly across the road at The Hawthorns, number 71. She was warned that Pitter might not be too friendly if she telephoned, but she nevertheless did, and they became firm friends until my mother had to move house in 1991. At the time I had done some BBC Radio 3 programmes with Drama as well as many for Music; when I told Piers Plowright that I had met Ruth Pitter he immediately asked me to interview her and make a programme. I went to her house on 15 May 1986 and recorded our talk. It was broadcast as a monologue under the title of Opening: Ruth Pitter at Ninety on BBC Radio 3 on 8 November 1987. The next landmark was a launch party at Pitter's house on 12 August 1990 to mark the publication of her Collected Poems, with a foreword by Elizabeth Jennings. The original interview was repeated on BBC Radio 3, with an introduction from me, on 1 May 1992, after Pitter's death. The Collected Poems came out in paperback in 1996.
▪ Tribute
Ruth Pitter was so widely known in 1972 that her name was mentioned in connection with the vacancy for Poet Laureate created by the death of C. Day Lewis – in fact John Betjeman was appointed. The writer of Pitter's obituary in The Times claimed that she had enjoyed ‘perhaps the highest reputation of any living English woman poet of her century’. At her centenary in 1997 she was not as completely hidden from view as a decade earlier but we still owe her and her work some further investigation, as is amply demonstrated by the resourceful critical biography by the American scholar Don W. King. How can a poet who was a major figure for two or three generations become so forgotten?
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- Information
- Peter Dickinson: Words and Music , pp. 196 - 202Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2016