I may be smelly and I may be old, Rough in my pebbles, reedy in my pools, But where my fish float by I bless their swimming, And I like the people to bathe in me especially women.

She related that her preoccupation with death began when Stevie Smith was seven at a time when Stevie Smith was very distressed at being sent away from her mother. She also wrote nine volumes of poetry. In particular Stevie Smith asks how the necessity of fighting Fascism can be achieved without descending into the nationalism and dehumanisation that fascism represents.

Florence Margaret Smith known as Stevie Smith (20 September 1902 – 7 March 1971) was an English poet and novelist.