Palmers Green's famous poet Stevie Smith is to be portrayed on the stage by Zoe Wanamaker from tomorrow.

Born Florence Margaret Smith in Kingston upon Hull, she moved to the area aged three with her mother and sister, and Stevie lived in the same house on Avondale Road, later with her aunt, until her death 44 years ago on March 7, 1971.

The all-female household was the inspiration for her poem A House of Mercy.

The writer, who is most famous for penning Not Waving But Drowning, was a pupil at Palmers Green High School and then North London Collegiate School for Girls, and acquired her nickname as a young woman when a friend said she looked like jockey Steve Donaghue.

She began writing poetry in her 20s while working as a secretary with the magazine publisher George Newnes. She published nine volumes in total and was awarded the Cholmondeley Award for Poets in 1966 and won the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry in 1969.

She died two years later of a brain tumour aged 69, and Hugh Whitemore wrote a play about her life, Stevie, in 1977.

It is now being brought back to the stage at Hampstead Theatre.

March 6 to April 18. Details: hampsteadtheatre.com

A House of Mercy

It was a house of female habitation,
Two ladies fair inhabited the house,
And they were brave. For although Fear knocked loud
Upon the door, and said he must come in,
They did not let him in.

There were also two feeble babes, two girls,
That Mrs. S. had by her husband had,
He soon left them and went away to sea,
Nor sent them money, nor came home again
Except to borrow back
Her Naval Officer's Wife's Allowance from Mrs. S.
Who gave it him at once, she thought she should.

There was also the ladies' aunt
And babes' great aunt, a Mrs Martha Hearn Clode,
And she was elderly.
These ladies put their money all together
And so we lived.

I was the younger of the feeble babes
And when I was a child my mother died
And later Great Aunt Martha Hearn Clode died
And later still my sister went away.

Now I am old I tend my mother's sister
The noble aunt who so long tended us,
Faithful and True her name is. Tranquil.
Also Sardonic. And I tend the house.

It is a house of female habitation
A house expecting strength as it is strong
A house of aristocratic mould that looks apart
When tears fall; counts despair
Derisory. Yet it has kept us well. For all its faults.
If they are faults, of sternness and reserve,
It is a Being of warmth I think; at heart
A house of mercy