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| Leonie Mansell - 1937-2021
It is with great sadness that we record the death of Leonie Mansell:
her road to recovery from a prolonged illness suddenly took a wrong turning.
For all those who knew her, she is not difficult to remember - rather, impossible to forget.
For you, and for others who may not have had the spectacular honour of meeting her, we are putting together one or two videos of her performances; links will appear here as soon as we can organise it. |
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Beginnings |
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LEONIE
began writing in childhood but only became a performance
poet when she was old enough to know better. She
appeared for some years (both solo and with another poet,
Pippa King, under the name of Noovobrassik) at pubs and
clubs, mostly in London, at arts venues and women’s
festivals and performed with five other poets on the Edinburgh
Fringe.
Whilst living in London she also worked as a part-time
tutor of Creative Writing for the WEA and local adult
education classes. Her work has been published in
anthologies and magazines for over thirty years:
a collection of her poems, The Tattooed Lady from Leamington
Spa, was published in 2006 and a CD under the same title
was released in 2007. Copies of both have found
their way to the USA and Australia. |
She
is often described as either a humorous or a feminist poet.
She doesn’t like labels, and doesn’t consider that
she fits into any one poetic pigeonhole. Indeed, many
of her poems are deeply serious: however, she discovered
years ago that the best way to tackle a serious subject is via
humour or satire. She tends to look at people and events
from a tangent and to see the ridiculous side of everything
– including herself!
A genuine Cockney by birth (albeit with traces of a Staffordshire
accent), Leonie is now a resident of Horsham, West Sussex, and
a member of the local Fanfayre Poets. She is red-haired,
tattooed and bad-tempered and makes wonderful chicken soup.
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