PARTNERS UA Fanthorpe and Rosie Bailey will be affirming their long-term relationship with a Civil Partnership early next month.

The lesbian couple, who live in Wotton-under-Edge, first met when they were both teaching at Cheltenham Ladies College in the 1960s.

Dr Rosmarie Bailey said: "It took us about seven years to decide it was a good idea to be together - we got on with each other just as fellow human beings for a long time."

Ursula Fanthorpe, who dislikes her given name and prefers to be called UA, added: "It's certainly been a long affair, more than 41 years."

UA Fanthorpe is very well-known and successful as a poet - she was awarded a CBE for her work in 2001 and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2003; and was a leading contender for the post of Poet Laureate in 1999.

Since her relatively late start writing poetry, after leaving teaching, she has had nine full-length collections published.

In 2004, Rosie (as RV Bailey) also produced a book of poems, Marking Time. As UA proudly says: "There's not much Rosie can't do - she draws and paints, as well as playing honky tonk piano."

The pair also become partners on poetry reading tours, in this country and abroad. UA said: "My poems often involve two voices, possibly because my father was a barrister. I'm very interested in the way people speak but can't 'do' voices: Rosie does these wonderfully." The couple has produced a cassette tape of readings called Double Act.

Rosie Bailey was born and brought up in Northumberland. After teaching in Cheltenham, she worked as a lecturer in Bristol. She and UA lived in Wales before moving to Wotton.

Their house once belonged to the Adey family, and it's possible that Oscar Wilde stayed there.

UA said: "What we weren't told when we moved was how friendly the people are here, but we soon found out."

Many of UA's poems include local places - one, Wotton Walks, was written when she was a Cotswold Warden.

And another is a Valentine's Day love poem for the town, addressed by its ordnance survey map reference.

Their civil ceremony, in Stroud, will be a family occasion, and will recognise their relationship legally.

Rosie said: "It's a shame the registration is completely non-religious, as we are both committed Christians, but it is important that minority groups are all recognised as equal humans."

UA's poem Atlas (from Safe As Houses) will be used in many of the civil partnership ceremonies nationwide:

There is a kind of love called maintenance, Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;

Which checks the insurance, and doesn't forget The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way The money goes; which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains, And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate Structures of living; which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love, Which knows what time and weather are doing To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring; Laughs at my dry rotten jokes; remembers My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps My suspect edifice upright in air, As Atlas did the sky.

* U A Fanthorpe and Dr Rosie Bailey are performing Double Act at The Cotswold Playhouse, Parliament Street, Stroud tomorrow (2.30pm).