Filmed in our candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, watch Olivier award-winning actress Juliet Stevenson CBE read one of the most original poets of the 20th century, Stevie Smith.

Released to mark the 50th anniversary of Smith’s death, Juliet Stevenson (The Doctor, Almeida & West End) brings the British poet to life in a new film that draws on her letters and prose, and includes Smith’s own illustrations.

‘Death, loneliness, God, and the Devil’ – is how Stevie Smith described the ‘main business’ of her life and poetry, and she faced them with the same unsparing, often hilarious honesty. Admired by Seamus Heaney, mistaken for Virginia Woolf and asked out for lunch by Sylvia Plath, her often-underestimated poems were as strange and timeless in the 1930s as they are today.

Poems performed include: ‘Not Waving but Drowning’, ‘The Frog Prince’, ‘Away, Melancholy’, ‘Emily writes such a good letter’, ‘God the Eater’ and many more.

Experience our Playhouse through the lens of poetry.

About Dead Poets Live
Devised and supported by the T. S. Eliot Foundation, Dead Poets Live draws together the most exciting performers and the most inspiring venues to bring our greatest poets to new audiences.