Alison Fell – Poet Biography and Links

Alison Fell – Poet of August 6 1945

Information from the British Council of Literature:

 

“Alison Fell was born in Dumfries, Scotland in 1944. She was educated at Dumfries Academy and Edinburgh Art College. She began writing for Scotland Magazine in 1962, and moved to London in 1970, where she co-founded the Woman’s Street Theatre Group, later known as ‘Monstrous Regiment’. She held the School of English and American Studies Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia in 1998.

She has published poetry and fiction for both adults and children, and has written for a number of publications, including Spare Rib magazine. She was joint winner of the Boardman Tasker Memorial Prize for her novel Mer de Glace (1991), and holds a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship for 2002-3 based at University College London.
She also co-wrote Mapping the Edge, a site-specific theatre piece, with Amanda Dalton and Bernardine Evaristo, first staged at the Sheffield Crucible in September 2001 and subsequently adapted for BBC Radio 3.

Her last novel, The Mistress of Lilliput (1999), is a re-working of Gulliver’s Travels in which Gulliver is followed on his journeys by his wife. Her most recent novel, Tricks of the Light (2003), is a powerful portrayal of love in middle age.”

Key Themes:

In her poetry, Alison Fell returns to many of the same themes. Some of these can be seen within August 6, 1945.

• Descriptions of light and landscape
• Sensual/sexual imagery

How are these themes seen in ‘August 6  1945’ and what effect do they have? Are they important? Do they add anything else to our understanding of the poem and the poet’s ideas within it?

Links for Further Reading:

• Wikipedia Entry on Alison Fell
• British Council of Literature – read biographical entry here
• Other poems about nuclear war here