Gay & Lesbian

The self-styled ‘Online Literary Encyclopaedia’ lists Valentine Ackland as ‘Poet. Active 1926-1968 in England, Britain, Europe.’ Not that encyclopaedic, then.

A brilliant, brittle figure who reinvented herself to escape an abusive childhood and a disastrous early marriage to a homosexual, Ackland was a charismatic, cross-dressing communist who wrote startling poetry while living an uncompromising life with the celebrated author Sylvia Townsend Warner. I asked Frances Bingham, editor of a new edition of Ackland’s poems ‘Journey from Winter’, why Ackland is virtually unknown. Feature continues

‘I’m sure she doesn’t have the reputation she deserves,’ says Bingham, ‘because she was a woman, writing at a time of extreme sexism, a lesbian who was open about her sexuality, and a communist.’ Was her 40-year ‘marriage’ to Townsend Warner a help or hindrance to Ackland’s own work? ‘Sylvia helped Valentine’s writing enormously, both by providing her with this great topic of their love affair and believing in her, but Sylvia’s reputation did outweigh hers. People tend to want to see Valentine as the “husband” figure because she was butch, but then Sylvia is perceived as the “husband” because she was more successful. The fact is that they were a complementary couple, and, as Marxists, had an ambivalent attitude to commercial success anyway.’

Frances Bingham

Does Bingham believe that Ackland’s unapologetic lifestyle (wearing men’s clothes and writing a poem entitled ‘Lesbian’ for example) has some bearing on her (lack of) popularity? ‘Her cross-dressing was more notorious than her poetry. Sylvia said she “had never seen a handsomer young man”. Valentine wrote that she felt “freed into reality” by wearing trousers and thus usurping male power and privileges, including that of loving women. Her poetry was similarly open about her role as lover. “Lesbian” is an early work claiming her own sexuality. Later she takes this as a given, and writes poems such as: “If she came and love’s storm should arise/What then/With the gale outside and within a fiercer wind blowing?/If she came with the storm in her eyes/ There’s no knowing.” ’

I tell Bingham that, in my mind, Valentine belongs with Vita and Virginia in a quintessentially English set of sharp-witted literary ladies that are out of style at the moment. Does she agree? ‘A very English figure, yes, in terms of being an adventurer, what Sylvia called an “urbane pirate”, suavely polite but wildly behaved, Bohemian and unconventional but bound by a strong sense of integrity and duty to her work. Intellectuals, however entertaining, have never been very fashionable in England, have they?’

The ‘intelligence’ services were, however, interested in both women weren’t they? ‘MI5 was alerted by Valentine’s communist activities, but was much more interested in her sexuality, once the service had worked out that she wasn’t a man, and that Sylvia wasn’t two separate people called Townsend and Warner… Enquiries centred around “whether either of these two appears in any way abnormal”, which would automatically lead on to “subversive activities”.’

This might sound amusing, but MI5’s intervention during the war meant that, despite her previous experience in the Spanish civil war, Ackland, a brilliant driver and crack shot, spent most of her time typing knitting patterns in Dorchester.

As well as leading a tumultuous life, Ackland also notched up more than 2,000 poems. I ask Bingham how she whittled them down to a single edition. ‘With some difficulty. But I have managed to include poems which represent all aspects of Valentine’s life. The selection maps the landscape of her mind, and puts some of her best work in the context of her life and times.’

Seventy-four years ago Ackland wrote to Townsend Warner: ‘Poems… have always to wait their time. I can imagine someone like me getting them out of the London Library and reading them… in 75 years time’. Still, her epitaph ‘I shall not altogether die’ rings poignantly false at the moment. Is Bingham hoping to change this? ‘Valentine is part of our missing literary heritage. So many women writers were silenced in one way or another, but hers is a voice we need to hear.’

‘Journey from Winter: Selected Poems: Selected Poems of Valentine Ackland’ is published by Carcanet Press at £18.95. Frances Bingham will be reading at Polari on Apr 8.