John Horder

Obituary for Naomi Lewis

Naomi Lewis, who has died aged 97, was such an outrageous perfectionist that only poets of authentic genius like William Blake and Stevie Smith met with her full approval. A helpful obituary giving the outlines of her life-story, "Elder stateswoman of letters", by Dan Carrier, was published in the Camden New Journal
of 23 July 2009.

She was mainly known, as far as she was known at all to Joe Public, as an obsessional reviewer of children's books for The Observer, and a collector of waifs and strays, including pigeons and cats, whom she nursed back into health in the bowels of Conway Hall in Red Lion Square, near her Quentin Crisp-like dust and paper-crammed flat, for most of her life.

The pigeons and the human waifs and strays were thinly represented at the memorial service at Conway Hall last Saturday, chaired by no-nonsense barrister Gillian Hammerton. Gillian stated Naomi wasn't the easiest person in the world to get on with. But how could she have been otherwise when she had taken Blake's aphorism, "Opposition is true friendship" (from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell) as the mantra she most loved?

Apart from Anne Harvey and my contributions to the afternoon, Naomi's literary passions were badly neglected. As a result of her channeling most of her creative energies into her reviewing work, she left us with far fewer published books than she might otherwise have done.

The two that most reflected her genius for me were her heart-felt re-writing of the stories of Hans Christian Andersen, published by Puffin. The Emperor's New Clothes is one of her most deeply felt epitaphs.

The other is the last stanza of 'Taxonomical Note', about a young collector of marbles, from an anthology unlike any other, without a dud in it, Messages (Fabers). It is by David Sutton, and includes many more outlandish poets who, like him, will be as new to you as they were to me:

I tell you, there's a poet in this country.
He is probably eight years old. His head is full
Of coloured glass and words. He is a maker,
Unread, untutored, immemorial.

As Naomi intuitively knew to the core of her being, that eight-year-old poet of genius is in every single one of of us, however neglected she/he may have been in the past.

John Horder © world copyright 2009