Patience Strong (1907–1990)

Patience Strong was the pen name of Winifred Emma Cushing, born in London, England. She started writing poetry at a very early age. In 1935, when she was in her mid-20s, she sent some of her verses to The Daily Mirror. The features editor asked her to return the following day with 18 new poems and to choose a pseudonym. She took the name Patience Strong from a book of the same name by Adeline T. Whitney. Her poems were published in a daily column called The Quiet Corner and continued throughout World War II. In 1946, her column was transferred to the Sunday Pictorial, later renamed The Sunday Mirror, and continued for several decades. She also contributed poems to the popular weekly magazine Woman's Own for 35 years and to the quarterly magazine This England. She published many collected volumes of her poetry, plus religious thought, song lyrics, and an autobiography, With a Poem in My Pocket (1981).