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Ruth Stern with David Bowie and, right, jazz singer Gail Ann Dorsey
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Poet, campaigner, feminist and Bowie fan
RUTH Stern, poet, campaigner and leading figure in Camden’s early feminist movement, has died aged 72.
Ruth, who lived at Byron Mews, Fleet Road, Hampstead, helped set up the Feminist Education Centre, which met regularly at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm in the 1970s.
She was well known for her often-humorous poetry, which tended to deal with women’s position in society.
The daughter of socialist public speaker Tony Turner, who drew crowds to his soapbox from Whitestone Pond to Hyde Park, she was born in South London in 1934.
She had three older brothers, Tony, Barry and Rodney. A younger brother, Pepe, was born in 1938.
At the outbreak of war a five-year-old Ruth was evacuated to Yeovil in Somerset.
She returned to London in her late teens to live with her brothers. In 1956 she married David Stern and four sons, Michael, Daniel, Geoffrey and Pete, were born between 1957 and 1961.
Pete said: “She loved jazz, particularly early Miles Davis, and we played many of her favourites at the funeral at Golders Green Crematorium.
“Mum was a kind, loving, generous woman who deeply cared about people and was the most unselfish person you could ever wish to know.”
She once gave a home to jazz singer Gail Ann Dorsey. A few years later when Gail was supporting rock star David Bowie, Ruth was invited to be photographed with her hero.
Her husband David said: “It was a great moment for Ruth, who was a fan of Bowie. She will be greatly missed. She died too young.”
In 1994, to celebrate her 60th birthday, she published a small book of her poems, 60 Up Yours. It included the popular poem Sharing:
Let’s give a dinner party
Darling
That’s what he said
One evening as I was putting
The babies to bed
Oh god! I thought
Those dinners are
So bloody depressing
Don’t worry
Darling
I’ll give a hand
You know
I always make the
Salad dressing
PETER GRUNER
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