Not Drowning But Drawing: The Defiant Vision Of Stevie Smith

This article aims to provide an analysis of how English poet and novelist Stevie Smith’s poetry and simple sketches oscillate between despair and creative survival, intricately navigating the theme of death, as most notably seen in poems such as “Not Waving but Drowning,” “The River Deben”, “Oblivion,” “Black March,” “Come, Death (2)” and “Tender Only to the One.” This work also argues that Smith’s treatment of death as a gentle friend rather than a feared, ominous entity and even reframing it as a figure of god reveals a gradual transition from a misunderstood force, obscured by alienation and miscommunication to a desirable oblivion, liberated from suffering and constraints of life. Finally, a dimension of reverent, solemn acceptance and eager anticipation offer eternal and genuine relief from the unbearable burdens and turbulences of life. In that sense, Smith’s configurations of death and evocative drawings accompanying some of her poems mirror a sense of existential solitude while simultaneously resisting despair through creative expression.