Edward Storey

Born in 1930 at Whittlesey, which was then part of the Isle of Ely, Edward Storey is a true Fenman. Several generations of his family have lived and worked in the Fens, and he has always found inspiration for his writing in the Fen country and its people. He has sought to capture some of the beauty and desolation of the region by recording its changing appearance throughout the seasons in both poetry and prose. Before becoming a full time writer in the late 1960s, he worked in adult education for the Peterborough City Education Authority. His first volume of poetry ("North Bank Night") was published in 1969. In "Fen Boy First" (1994) he gives an account of his childhood in Whittlesey, and in "Fen Country Christmas" (1995) he collects a number of stories, legends and fenland superstitions. In one of his earlier works "Portrait of the Fen Country" (1971) he reflects upon his childhood understanding of the world as it was shaped by his fenland experience:

"What a strange and bewildering place that classroom was where they tried to teach me that the world was round. I just couldn't believe it, for each day I saw the sun rise in the morning and set at night over a world that was as flat as a chess-board....I felt that if I could have walked to the edge of the fields outside our town I would have been able to look down into a vast, deep blue space where daily the new-made clouds were born."

And an earlier poem reflects upon the Fenland landscape itself:

All we can offer is the same lovely monotony,
Unsociable fields, plain song telegraph wires,
And the inevitable flurry of gulls
In the black wake of a tractor.

Noone expects the sun to harrow these acres
Or to blow fanfares at the completion of harvest.
We work as the earth demands, like grass
Moved by the wind's direction.

Bibliography

* "Call it a Summer Country"
* "Portrait of the Fen Country"
* "Four Seasons in Three Countries"
* "North Bank Night" (Poetry)
* "A Man in Winter" (Poetry)
* "Fen Boy First"
* "A Fen Country Christmas"
* "Fen, Fire and Flood: Scenes from Fenland History"
* "Letters from the Fens"
* "Last Train to Ely"
* "In Fen Country Heaven"
* "A Right to Song: The Life of John Clare"
* "A Solitary Landscape"

Footnotes

Edward Storey has recently moved to Wales.