I decided almost as soon as she died tow rite my mother’s life story. But for it to be a literary biography, while the day-to-day inquiry may be left to future historians of English poetry, I was helped by her own writings about her childhood and life, by hundreds of letters from husbands, friends and family and by her poems. But there were still gaps in the narrative which I had to fill, mostly her illness at the end of her life.
She and I do not think grammatically the same at all, and trying to place events and discuss them as she may have was an impossible task so i had to couch the entire story in my own way – or in modern parlance put my spin on her life.
I’m not sure she would approve but it is the best I could do.
#shannesands
#thewanderingpoet