"Peter Lucas and I live in Durham but spend a great of time in North Wales, where we have a cottage in the mountains, and in Vermont, USA, with my sister - who is a children's writer married to a poet"
About this Quote
Domestic geography turns into a quiet manifesto here: Anne Stevenson sketches a life mapped less by nationality than by chosen refuges and creative kinship. Durham is the base note, practical and unromantic, then the sentence opens outward to North Wales and Vermont - places that signal retreat, weather, altitude, and a certain deliberate remove. A cottage "in the mountains" isn’t just real estate; it’s an aesthetic position. The poet places herself where noise thins out.
The phrasing is almost studiously casual ("spend a great of time"), as if to underplay the privilege of transatlantic belonging. That restraint reads like intent. Stevenson isn’t performing glamour; she’s normalizing a life built around intervals, residencies, and returns - the way many writers actually live when the work, the relationships, and the need for solitude pull against the idea of one stable home.
The subtext is also about lineage and community. She names Peter Lucas first, anchoring the domestic partnership, then pivots to her sister, whose identity is defined through art and attachment: a children's writer married to a poet. It’s a small, telling cluster: literature not as a solitary calling but as a family ecosystem, with genres and sensibilities coexisting under the same roof. Children’s writing and poetry sit side by side, suggesting Stevenson’s awareness of different audiences, different kinds of speech, and different kinds of care.
Contextually, it’s the late-20th-century Anglophone poet’s life in miniature: UK roots, Celtic landscape as imaginative charge, America as familial extension. The sentence is a passport stamp collection disguised as small talk.
The phrasing is almost studiously casual ("spend a great of time"), as if to underplay the privilege of transatlantic belonging. That restraint reads like intent. Stevenson isn’t performing glamour; she’s normalizing a life built around intervals, residencies, and returns - the way many writers actually live when the work, the relationships, and the need for solitude pull against the idea of one stable home.
The subtext is also about lineage and community. She names Peter Lucas first, anchoring the domestic partnership, then pivots to her sister, whose identity is defined through art and attachment: a children's writer married to a poet. It’s a small, telling cluster: literature not as a solitary calling but as a family ecosystem, with genres and sensibilities coexisting under the same roof. Children’s writing and poetry sit side by side, suggesting Stevenson’s awareness of different audiences, different kinds of speech, and different kinds of care.
Contextually, it’s the late-20th-century Anglophone poet’s life in miniature: UK roots, Celtic landscape as imaginative charge, America as familial extension. The sentence is a passport stamp collection disguised as small talk.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sister |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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