Anne Stevenson

Stevenson died from heart failure on September 14, 2020, at the age of 87.

Stevenson also wrote the poem "The Miracle of Camp 60". It is a description of the Italian Chapel on the Orkney Island of Lamb Holm in 1992, from the perspective of a fictive Italian ex-POW. 'The miracle of Camp 60' is also used to refer directly to the Chapel in some cases.

Stevenson was the author of over a dozen volumes of poetry, of some books of essays and literary criticism, of a controversial biography of the American poet Sylvia Plath, Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath (1989), and two critical studies of Elizabeth Bishop. Stevenson used a hearing aid; several of her poems (including "Hearing with my Fingers" and "On Going Deaf") refer to her experience of deafness.

Stevenson married a childhood friend but her romantic ideals dissolved and the marriage was not a success. She noted that "it took me two unhappy marriages and three children to make me reconsider my assumptions." In the 1960s she lived and wrote in Cambridge, Glasgow, Dundee and Oxford. She was writer in residence at the University of Dundee and co-founded Other Poetry (magazine) with Evangeline Patterson. In 1979, with Michael Farley, she started The Poetry Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye and in 1982 she moved to Sunderland, then Durham, where she lived with her husband Peter Lucas. As of 2011 she had six grandchildren.

Stevenson was the first daughter of Louise Destler Stevenson and philosopher Charles Stevenson and was born in Cambridge, England, where Charles was studying philosophy. The family returned to America when she was six months old, moving to New Haven, Connecticut. She was raised in New England and was educated in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her father was a professor of philosophy. Her father was a devoted pianist and lover of poetry and her mother wrote fiction and was a talented storyteller. Stevenson learnt piano and cello and she assumed until she was 19 that she would be a professional musician. She studied music and languages, at the University of Michigan, where she began to lose her hearing; she prepared to be a writer instead. Obtaining her bachelor's degree in 1954 and graduating with honours, she returned to the UK where she lived the rest of her life.

Anne Stevenson (January 3, 1933 – September 14, 2020) was an American-British poet and writer and recipient of a Lannan Literary Award.