Rambling Sailor

Charlotte Mew (1869–1928) was a renowned English poet of the Modernist era. Born in Bloomsbury to an architect, Mew grew up in near poverty, and her early years were tainted by the death of three of her siblings. Although regarded by fellow writers as one of the greatest poets of in her day, and praised by the likes of Virginia Woolf and Thomas Hardy, Mew’s name fell into obscurity after her tragic suicide in 1928. Rumours swirled around Mew’s personal life and sexuality, and while it will likely never be known, as she obscured biographical detail, many now consider her as important a queer icon as Radclyffe Hall or Gertrude Stein.Julia Copus is a poet, biographer and children’s writer. Girlhood (Faber 2019) was winner of America’s Derek Walcott Prize for best poetry collection by a non-US citizen. Other awards include the Forward Prize for ‘Best Single Poem’, first prize in the UK’s National Poetry Competition and a Cholmondeley Award. Her most recent book, This Rare Spirit: A Life of Charlotte Mew, was described in the Sunday Times as ‘a triumph of precise scholarship and imaginative sympathy’. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was the 2023 Royal Literary Fund fellow at the V&A Museum in London.

'The only poet who can give me a lump in my throat.'