Expats of The Old School

One of Stevie Smith's wonderful poems is called Bandol (Var).

Although it's about retired expats in France, there was a time when you could find similar characters in Corfu. Maybe you've met a few? Click on poem to enlarge.

From The Collected Poems of Stevie Smith, Penguin Books, 1975 (highly recommended). Originally published in A Good Time Was Had By All (1937).

Another poem, on a related theme, is George Seferis's In the Kyrenia District, about expats on Cyprus.

"You're becoming sad, Margaret. But it's so beautiful:
the sun, the sea, an everlasting summer...
this world isn't ours, it's Homer's..."

(from George Seferis, Complete Poems, tr. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)



Stevie Smith introduces her poem, Not Waving But Drowning.

Glenda Jackson as Stevie