Just A Saying - Tapa dura

This collection of poems draws on many themes that should be familiar to the readers of Catherine Cookson's novels: love, work, class and the beauty of nature. She also shares more personal thoughts, reflections on her own writing, marriage to her beloved Tom and life in the north of England. From the earliest poem included here, written in 1925 when Catherine Cookson was 19-years-old, to poems written just before her death in 1998, this anthology spans the gamut of her life and work. The poems are characterized by her down-to-earth common sense and the hard-won philosophy she developed for herself. In "Brushed Nylon" she tackles the subject of a failed relationship while "The Daily Round" takes a look at working life. In more personal moments poems such as "Slow Me Down" talk of her feelings about growing old and "The Joy of the Country" recalls a holiday in Wales. "Just a Saying" is her final work to be published and shows Catherine Cookson at her most intimate and inspirational.

Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, the illegitimate daughter of a poverty-stricken woman, Kate, whom she believed to be her older sister. She began work in service but eventually moved south to Hastings, where she met and married Tom Cookson, a local grammar-school master. Although she was originally acclaimed as a regional writer - her novel The Round Tower won the Winifred Holtby Award for the best regional novel of 1968 - her readership quickly spread throughout the world, and her many best-selling novels established her as one of the most popular of contemporary women novelists. After receiving an OBE in 1985, Catherine Cookson was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She was appointed an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1997. For many years she lived near Newcastle upon Tyne. She died shortly before her ninety-second birthday, in June 1998.