Murial Spark Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Ideas poured from the pen of Murial Spark
We read Miss Jean Brodie with delight.
(That Scottish teacher was the queen of snark)

The author lived a life of light and dark
Experience gave her fiction extra bite
Half Jew, half Scots, raised in a tartan ark

She'd worked with spymasters, war-time was stark
She'd lived in Africa, a time of blight
(Marriage can be a dolphin or a shark)

Kensington, Florence, where she left her mark
Was in her novels. Success flew her kite
Memento mori, no walk in the park.

Her thoughts soared fast, an Edinburgh lark
Work was the thing that set her world alight,
The Comforter, she simply lived to write.
The monarch of the sharp, Ms Murial Spark.