Joan Ure

Joan Ure was the pen name of Elizabeth Thoms Clark (22 June 1918 – 1978), a Scottish poet and playwright. She was born Elizabeth (Betty) Thoms Carswell on 22 June 1918 in Wallsend, Tyneside, of Scottish parents who moved to Glasgow. She had a daughter, Frances, by Jack Clark, a businessman. Her sister Joan provided the first half of her pen-name.

Joan chose the pen-name Ure, because it sounded more Scottish to her. Having been born in England made her self-consciously Scots, and she adopted an ironic refrain throughout her public writing: "Scottish, more or less" and "as Scots as I am". In correspondence she wrote "I could say I am an Englishman, and spite 'em all."

Joan Ure wrote short stories and poems as well as short plays, but she made her mark with her work for the theatre. She never wrote a full-length play. Among her work to achieve a professional production, I See Myself as This Young Girl, an exploration of a mother-daughter relationship, was directed by Michael Meacham at the close theatre Club, Glasgow, in 1967. It demonstrated her lyrical gifts.

She wrote her first play, Cendrillon, in French, for the 4th year school class to perform.

Death by suicide was one of her themes, summed up in the poem, In Memoriam 1971, published in Scottish International.

Her poem Signal at Red, written 1964, is addressed to her correspondent, John Cairns, and alludes to Ian Hamilton Finlay, with whom she had put on plays at the Falcon Theatre in 1962, hers being Punctuated Rhythms. He is also the disappointing lover referred to in her short story, Midsummer's Eve, published in Words 6 in 1978. She claims he was almost the death of her, though she doesn't specify how & there's nothing in the correspondence, 1963–1971, to suggest she ever proposed leaving her husband for him.

Another poem, "In Memoriam" 1971, deals with another of her themes, death, by suicide, primarily incited by that of her sister, Joan's.

One of her best plays is the revue Nothing May Come of It which incorporates song and dance. She characterises people she knew including her correspondent as the lead actress in Nothing May Come of It as well as Puck in Seven Characters out of the Dream.

Her correspondence with John Cairns provides a framework for understanding her life and work and is shortly to be published by Ki Publishing as CORRESPONDENCE.

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