Joan Ure

A poem by Joan Ure was suggested by members of the public as one of the runners-up for the Scottish Parliament's Canongate Wall Project to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Holyrood Parliament:

Joan Ure, Ena Lamont Stewart, and Ada F Kay were among the founder members of the Scottish Society of Playwrights, which was set up after a meeting called in September 1973 by Hector MacMillan, Ena Lamont Stewart and John Hall.

Death by suicide was one of her themes, summed up in the poem, In Memoriam 1971, published in Scottish International.

Another poem, "In Memoriam" 1971, deals with another of her themes, death, by suicide, primarily incited by that of her sister, Joan's.

The University of Parma, Italy, also uses two plays by Joan Ure in their English Literature programme: Come una ragazzina (1968) and Riprendi la tua costola ! (1974) are available in the Italian translation by Panozzo Editore who describe her works as "confronting the themes of the condition and emancipation of women .... with the irony which characterises the whole work of Joan Ure".

Joan Ure wrote short stories and poems as well as short plays, but she made her mark with her work for the theatre. She never wrote a full-length play. Among her work to achieve a professional production, I See Myself as This Young Girl, an exploration of a mother-daughter relationship, was directed by Michael Meacham at the close theatre Club, Glasgow, in 1967. It demonstrated her lyrical gifts.

Her poem Signal at Red, written 1964, is addressed to her correspondent, John Cairns, and alludes to Ian Hamilton Finlay, with whom she had put on plays at the Falcon Theatre in 1962, hers being Punctuated Rhythms. He is also the disappointing lover referred to in her short story, Midsummer's Eve, published in Words 6 in 1978. She claims he was almost the death of her, though she doesn't specify how & there's nothing in the correspondence, 1963–1971, to suggest she ever proposed leaving her husband for him.

Joan Ure was the pen name of Elizabeth Thoms Clark (22 June 1918 – 1978), a Scottish poet and playwright. She was born Elizabeth Thoms Carswell on 22 June 1918 in Wallsend, Tyneside, of Scottish parents who moved to Glasgow. She had a daughter, Frances, by Jack Clark, a businessman. Her sister Joan provided the first half of her pen name.