Elizabeth Bartlett

Elizabeth Bartlett (April 24, 1924 – June 18, 2008) was a British poet. Her work was largely inspired by the realities of working-class British life, including her experiences with mental illness and work for the National Health Service.

Life Elizabeth Bartlett was born into a working-class family in Deal, Kent on April 24, 1924. Her father was a grocer’s assistant, while her mother was a maid who took in laundry to make ends meet. Bartlett won a grammar school scholarship but due to her family’s financial circumstances, she left school at the age of 15 to work in a factory. In 1943, at the age of 19, her poem “Half Holiday” was published in Poetry London. The same year, she married writer Denis Perkins. She became stepmother to his two sons, Benedick and Adrian. They later had a son together, Alexander. Bartlett lived in Burgess Hill, West Sussex for most of her adult life.

Bartlett pursued adult education and was involved with the Workers’ Educational Association as a student and tutor. She worked as a medical secretary for the National Health Service for 16 years, which inspired many of her poems about ill and vulnerable people. She herself experienced periods of clinical depression and received psychiatric treatment for five years. Over the next three decades, she continued writing poetry but only published sparingly in journals. She said that she preferred writing without an audience of readers, publishers, and editors.

Bartlett’s final book of poems, Mrs. Perkins and Oedipus, was published on her 80th birthday.

Recordings of Bartlett reading some of her poems are available on The Poetry Archive.

Works A Lifetime of Dying (1979) Strange Territory (1983) The Czar is Dead (1986) Look No Face (1991) Two Women Dancing: New and Selected Poems (1995) Mrs. Perkins and Oedipus (2004)

Awards 1996 Cholmondeley Award