Sue Lenier

{{Short description|English writer}} {{EngvarB|date=August 2014}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}} {{Infobox writer  | name = Sue Lenier | image = | imagesize = | caption = | birth_date = {{Birth date and age|df=yes|1957|10|9}} | birth_place = Birmingham, England | occupation = poet and playwright | birth_name = Susan Jennifer Lenier | nationality = | period = | genre = | subject = | movement = | notableworks = | influences = | influenced = | awards = | website = {{URL|www.suelenier.com}} }} '''Susan Jennifer Lenier''' (born 9 October 1957) is an English writer. She published two books of poetry and a number of plays.

==Biography== Sue Lenier was born in Birmingham, schooled in Tyneside, and attended Clare College, Cambridge. After graduating from Cambridge in 1980, she spend a year writing and performing in Germany and the UK before taking a Harkness Fellowship in the US, where she studied acting and drama at the University of California, Berkeley.<ref name="wp"/>

Her first published collection of poems, ''Swansongs'', was published in 1982.<ref>{{cite book | last = Lenier | first = Sue | title = Swansongs | publisher = The Oleander Press | year = 1982 | location = Cambridge and New York | isbn = 0-906672-03-1}}</ref> It received a favourable review in a British tabloid, the ''Daily Mirror'',<ref>{{cite news | page = 9 | publisher = Daily Mirror | date = 17 May 1982 }}</ref> and led to sometimes extravagant comparisons to William Shakespeare and Charles Baudelaire.<ref name="prolific">{{cite news | last = Bruckner | first = D.J.R. | title = A Poet So Prolific She Seems Possessed | page = A8 | work = New York Times | date = 29 August 1982 | url = http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0610FA3C5C0C7A8EDDA10894DA484D81 | accessdate = 3 March 2009}}</ref> She was hailed by some as a great new poet: Reed Whittemore, a former poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, praised her as "a musician-poet, wholly in love with rhythm and sound"; the late Malcolm Bowie of Queen Mary, University of London, called her "an important writer."<ref name="wp"/> This positive praise was not universal: Christopher Reid, writing for ''The Sunday Times'', said that she was "a striving, clumsy, humorless imitator of antiquated modes, with nothing original to say, but an earnest desire to make impressive gestures."<ref name="wp">{{cite news | last = McCarthy | first = Colman | title = Poetry Rushes Forth; Sue Lenier and Her Rare Gift For Creating Flowing, Spontaneous Verse | page = G1 | newspaper = Washington Post | date = 5 December 1982 }}</ref> ''Swansongs'' was published while Lenier was studying in the United States, and the book and her author made enough of an impression to warrant articles by some of the best journalists of prestigious newspapers: D.J.R. Bruckner in the ''New York Times'' and Colman McCarthy in the ''Washington Post''.

She published a second volume of poems, ''Rain Following'', also with Oleander Press. While the popular press in America and England showed great interest in Sue Lenier and her work, literary critics and academics took no notice of her work, and only one of her poems, "Finale," from her first volume, has been anthologised.<ref>{{cite book | last1 = Hollis | first1 = Jill | first2 = Jim | last2 = Hollis | title = Love's Witness: Five Centuries of Love Poetry by Women | publisher = Carroll & Graf | year = 1993 | page = 109 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=dq8k4KMTer0C | isbn = 978-0-7867-0030-1}}</ref>

Since then, her poetic career appears to have ended; the only known works by her have been for the stage. Reportedly, she wrote ''Doctor's Orders'', ''Eden Song'', and ''Knight Fall'', the last two first being performed at the Edinburgh Festival.<ref>{{cite web | title = Sue Lenier | publisher = Doollee.com: The Playwright's Database | url = http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsL/lenier-sue.html | accessdate = 27 February 2009}}</ref> In 1995, the ''New Statesman & Society'' published three of her poems, "Stardom," "Breakdown," and "Hospital Visit"; the magazine also reported a radio play, ''A Fool And His Heart'', was broadcast on Radio Three's ''Drama Now''.<ref>{{cite journal | last = Lenier | first = Sue | title = Stardom, Breakdown, Hospital Visit | journal = New Statesman & Society | volume = 8 | issue = 343 | date = 3 October 1995 | issn = 0954-2361 }}</ref> According to a British website, a screenplay by Will Davies about the writing of her first book whilst a student at Cambridge has been optioned by Universal Studios.<ref>{{cite web | title = Members | publisher = Netcurtains.org | url = https://www.netcurtains.org/dreamlandwriters.htm | accessdate = 3 March 2009}}</ref>

==Poetic craft== The most often noted thing about Lenier's poetic craft was that she composed poetry in an impromptu manner and didn't seem to revise any of her work; ''Swansong'' was sent to the publisher as a first-draft copy,<ref name="wp"/> and in the ''New York Times'' she was quoted, "'I just write the poems straight out. At first I tried to correct a few and I didn't like the corrections, so I don't do it any more."<ref name="prolific"/> Indeed, for her quick compositions made on the fly she was nicknamed "the possessed poet"—though it was acknowledged that such poetic production easily leads to "superficial glibness."<ref>{{cite book | last = Gardner | first = Howard | author-link = Howard Gardner | title = Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences | publisher = Basic Books | year = 1993 | page = [https://archive.org/details/framesofmindtheo00gard/page/83 83] | url = https://archive.org/details/framesofmindtheo00gard | url-access = registration | isbn = 978-0-465-02510-7}}</ref> In the same vein, the ''Los Angeles Times'' referred to her writing as "the fastest scrawl in the west."<ref>{{cite news | last = McCarthy | first = Colman | title = Fastest Scrawl in the West | pages = Q7 | work = Los Angeles Times | date = 3 April 1983 | url = https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/667396122.html?dids=667396122:667396122&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&date=Apr+03%2C+1983&author=COLMAN+McCARTHY&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=FASTEST+SCRAWL+IN+THE+WEST&pqatl=google | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20121019153507/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/667396122.html?dids=667396122:667396122&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&date=Apr+03,+1983&author=COLMAN+McCARTHY&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=FASTEST+SCRAWL+IN+THE+WEST&pqatl=google | url-status = dead | archive-date = 19 October 2012 | accessdate = 3 March 2009}}</ref> This method of composition looked down upon with some disdain by literary critics such as John T. Shawcross in his ''Intentionality and the New Traditionalism'', discussing the "truism of the need for planning and revision": "I am aware of such 'spontaneous' writing as that of Sue Lenier, who boasts of never altering a line after it has been put down, and of some critical assessments that have been quoted to increase sales. I rest my case on the reader's evaluation of her work."<ref>{{cite book | last = Shawcross | first = John T. | title = Intentionality and the New Traditionalism: Some Liminal Means to Literary Revisionism | publisher = Penn State Press | year = 1991 | page = 211 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=uy2TXfc-iNEC | isbn = 978-0-271-00758-8}}</ref> The immediate and effusive praise of her first book of poems, and especially John Newton's championship of her poetry, was criticised in a book by David Holbrook, ''John Newton, Blasphemy and Poetic Taste.''<ref>"A demolition of John Newton's championship of the poet Sue Lenier. Newton claimed she was 'the only poet of our century of the order of Tennyson and comparable with Shakespeare.' This claim attracted a great deal of notice at the time (1980). Reminiscent of claims made for Laura Riding and Elizabeth Daryush." {{cite book |last = Holbrook |first = David |title = John Newton, Blasphemy and Poetic Taste |publisher = The Brynmill Press |year = 1984 |location = Retford |url = http://www.anyamountofbooks.com/g-h.html |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090227120145/http://www.anyamountofbooks.com/g-h.html |archive-date = 27 February 2009 |df = dmy-all }}</ref>

==Bibliography==

===Poetry=== *{{cite book | last = Lenier | first = Sue | title = Swansongs | publisher = The Oleander Press | year = 1982 | location = Cambridge and New York | isbn = 0-906672-03-1}} *{{cite book | last = Lenier | first = Sue | title = Rain Following | publisher = The Oleander Press | year = 1984 | location = Cambridge and New York | isbn = 978-0-906672-19-8}}

===Drama=== *''Doctor's Orders'' *''Eden Song'' *''Knight Fall''

===Radio play=== ''A Fool And His Heart'' (Radio Three, ''Drama Now'')

==References== {{Reflist|2}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lenier, Susan}} Category:1957 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge Category:English dramatists and playwrights Category:Writers from Birmingham, West Midlands Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:English women dramatists and playwrights Category:English women poets