Dandelion Child

Frances was a regular performer at Dodo Modern Poets. She was also a wonderful friend - warm, witty and passionate. Her many interests are revealed in this fine collection: the natural world, childhood, music, poetry, family and friends, religious faith, the wider world. Her achingly moving late poems underline her ability to be bracingly honest.Readers will be drawn to her evocations of childhood in Mountain Mist, 'We thought clouds were soft shape-shifters' and of adolescence in Dandelion Child, 'a lull/before hot summers/the rush of freedom/music in the air/wild flowers in our hair/and then the longing/for red roses' Frances' lovely poetry deserves to be remembered for such humanity and optimism. - Patric Cunnane, poet and co-organiser of Dodo Modern Poets

Palewell Press chose well when they selected 'Dandelion Child' as the title of the late Frances White's Anthology. Dandelions are known for the brilliance of their yellow blossoms and for their tenacity, thriving stubbornly in all conditions. Very much the same may be said of Frances. In this collection we appreciate the full extent of Frances' brilliance and wanderings, whether walking through mountain mists in Wales, observing landscapes in their different seasons, wondering the ways of nature, celebrating her son's first wedding anniversary, travelling the Underground, expressing grief and sorrow, contemplating life and death in Teddington Churchyard, courageously embracing the cruelty of a disease robbing her of the ability to speak her poems. Throughout this collection, as in her Angel poems, we feel Frances's very special touch, and like the dandelion's puff ball of airborne seeds travelling miles and reseeding so it is with these poems. As she pens in Coincidence: "so we meet again." - Anne Warrington, Poetry Performance