Frances Horovitz (1938–1983)

Frances Horovitz, née Hooker, was born in Walthamstow, northeast London. As a small child, she moved with her family to Nottingham, where her father worked as the manager of a munitions factory in World War II. In 1947, they returned to London and Frances attended Walthamstow School for Girls. At the University of Bristol, she read English and Drama before entering the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). In 1964, she married her first husband, Michael Horovitz, also a poet, with whom she had a son Adam Horovitz, who also became a poet. She also worked as a creative writing teacher and read or performed on stage, radio and television. On BBC radio, she acquired a reputation as one of the finest poetry readers in the country. She published four collections of her own poems, including Water Over Stone (1980), Wall (1981) and Snow Light, Water Light (1983), as well as individual poems. Collected Poems (1985) was edited after her death by her second husband, poet and critic Roger Garfitt, with a new edition issued in 2011 including an audio CD of her reading her work. She died at age 45 in 1983 from cancer.