Poetry Can is sad to report the passing of Pat V T West who lost her long battle with cancer in June 2008.
Pat was a poet and member of The Riff Raff poets, a poetry publisher and the originator and organiser of the Poetry & Words Tent at Glastonbury Festival from 1992 to 2007.
Annie McGann, poet, creative writing tutor at Bath Spa University, and a friend of Pat has written a personal obituary which can be read below.

A Meditation (we did this meditation at her funeral, it was one that Pat particularly liked to do during her illness)

I am Holy.

All is clear.

You are loved.

It is perfect.

 
   

Pat VT West died on Saturday 14^th June. She finally succumbed to the cancer that had been trying to get her for the last few years.

Pat ran the Poetry&Words tent at the Glastonbury Festival and gave me one of my big breaks in performing my work: I turned up in the tent one day with my poems; she'd been let down by an established poet who hadn't turned up and she put me on instead. It was my first big gig and I was on just before Attila the Stockbroker so I had to hold my own with his audience and I did and Pat gave me a gig at the festival for three years running after that. Because she was battling away with her illness I volunteered to be her poetry slave during those years and helped her select the poets for those festivals and collated their details and wrote the copy for the program. She was a nightmare to work with, actually, demanding and unreasonable. She had the manner of a Lewis Carroll Duchess, sharp tongued and ruthless, mischievous, artful and intimidating. She was also kind, supportive, a dragon slayer, a mopper of tears, maker of tea and cake, revolutionary, sexy, funny, talented, vivacious, beautiful and wise.

 
A staunch old school feminist, lover of the planet and highly spiritual, she shared her incredible female energy with a gang of dear friends, like the equally formidable Monica Sjoo http://www.monicasjoo.org They were courageous and brave, single mums with a twinkle in their toes and their eyes. Pat also organised poetry events for women from the Bangladeshi community in Bristol and I spent many happy hours at Pat's events which always had the Glastonbury spirit about them; anarchic, eccentric, organised chaos and absolutely delightful and heart warming. This is where I really got to know Pat and her friends who, sadly, we keep losing to that great festival in the sky.

I am Holy.

All is clear.

You are loved.

It is perfect.

On the day of the funeral I sat late into the night with Pat's sons Rohan and William and listened to them talk about themselves and their mother. The funeral was well attended and among the friends assembled were Micheal Eavis and Billy Bragg. Says something about both Pat and Micheal Eavis (he is the man behind the Glastonbury Festival) that he took the time, in what must be the busiest week of his year, to come to the funeral and the do afterwards. As we filed out of the crematorium to view the flowers Nina Simone was singing Here Comes the Sun and I said to Micheal, I hope the sun comes for you at the weekend. He seemed confident that the weather would hold for the festival. He always was an eternal optimist. Once more, this year, Pat’s poets will be up to their knees in the hallowed mud of Worthy Farm.

  

I am Holy.

All is clear.
You are loved.

It is perfect.

As Pat’s coffin slowly sank from view, into the depths of the crematorium the organist played 'Beautiful Dreamer'. She was a beautiful dreamer. It was the piece that Pat played most often while she was learning to play the piano in recent years. It was also played at her own mother's funeral.

The wake was held at The Riverstation, one of Pat's favourite restaurants. It was a wonderfully sunny day. My friends and I were the first to arrive. We purchased a bottle of Prosecco and sat on the lower deck. Soon came the other mourners and we sat about swapping stories about Pat. I was really looking forward to spending the day with Pat’s old women’s liberation and peace activist friends. They are a special breed. My friend Mal met some women she had occupied an office block with in the seventies and I got them to tell me the stories that Pat told me about her various exploits. One of my favourites is the time she and another women stormed the stage at the Bath Literary Festival where the likes of John Burgess were discussing his book ‘Ways of Seeing’.

Pat and her friend emerged through the curtains behind the all male discussion panel. She was wearing a cloak, but not for long. She dropped the cloak to the floor and stood there completely naked, calling out ‘I am art’ while her friend decorated her with body paint. The men incorporated Pat’s intervention into the discussion until Pat was escorted off the premises by security. She infuriated some of the other women’s libbers with her subversive ways. I delight in these stories. She was a true maverick. 

            

I am Holy.

All is clear.
You are loved.
It is perfect.

Later on, I had a long chat to Pat’s long time, jazz musician, lover and I shed a tear at this point. I have not experienced this yet but the death of a lover, ex or otherwise, must be hard to take as you know that person in a tender and intimate way that other people just can’t know. He told me a story about how he and Pat had an argument in bed one night and how he’d gone to the bathroom and then found she’d locked the bedroom door and wouldn’t let him back in. Stark bollock naked and three floors up, he climbed out of the bathroom window and tried to get back in the bedroom that way but found that he was stuck, almost spread-eagled on the narrow ledge. Clinging to the wall he tried to get Pat’s attention but she had fallen asleep (I bet she wasn’t asleep really) but eventually she hauled him back in through the bedroom window. 
      
                                                      

I am Holy.
All is clear.

You are loved.
It is perfect.

There was an open mic at the wake, in true Pat style, and the poets in attendance duly played tribute to Pat. These poets included old friends who worked with Pat in the seventies in a group called ‘Hydrogen Juke Box’ and Pat’s long time partners in poetry Jeff Cloves and Dennis Gould, otherwise known as the ‘RiffRaff Poets’. RiffRaff first performed together in St. Ives in 1970. For thirty seven years they performed their poems and songs at marches and demos, at bomber and submarine bases, nuclear weapons facilities and the like. Pat was a regular attendee of peace camps, including Greenham Common, Festivals and gatherings of people who shared her vision of how we might live peacefully and co-operatively. 

Pat not only wrote and performed poetry, she also published other women’s poetry, launching Rive Gauche Publishing in 1997 with She: Rive Gauche. Her last book, What she also did was … , which she co-edited with Jill Hague, is an anthology of poetry about the relationship between mothers and daughters. Pat has passed Rive Gauche into the care of Rachel Bentham, who plans to publish a collection of Pat’s work. Pat handed the Poetry&Words tent over to one of the keenest poets we ever had in the team at Glasto, Helen Gregory, and I'm sure that Helen's organisational skills and enthusiasm will ensure that Pat's legacy lives on in the form of the Poetry&Words tent as it moves down from the Green Fields to Theatre and Circus.
The stage will be dedicated to Pat this year.
We'll not see her like again.

Pictures of Pat’s funeral: http://gallery.mac.com/willnorie#100015