Andrew Sant

Andrew Sant reviews 'The Incoming Tide' by Petra White

October 2007, no. 295 • 01 October 2007

The opening poem in Petra White’s first collection is a modest, tantalising, somewhat mysterious poem called ‘Planting’. A metaphor, you might think, for the inspiration and growth of a poem – much as Seamus Heaney’s famous ‘Digging’, also the first poem in a début collection, established a link via the rhythm of digging, between the act of writing and the act of cultivating land, i ... (read more)

Andrew Sant reviews 'The Human Project: New & Selected Poems' by Martin Langford

February 2010, no. 318 • 01 February 2010

If despair and desolation can be said to have had a high point in poetry in English during the modern era, it is in T.S. Eliot’s poetry, particularly ‘The Hollow Men’. While reading Martin Langford’s remarkable The Human Project: New & Selected Poems, I was reminded of other poets whose reputations depend upon the discomforting poems they have written. The until recently neglected Amer ... (read more)

'New Poetry Meets the General Reader' by Andrew Sant

April 2010, no 320 • 01 April 2010

I was in the house of a friend’s parents recently and noticed, stuck to the fridge door, a poem clipped from a newspaper, among the sundry magnets and notices. Companion to book reviews, its subtleties had taken their fancy as being more than ephemera. Good, I thought, these are poetry readers – an engineer and an art teacher – who can confidently duck and weave among poems that come their w ... (read more)

Andrew Sant reviews 'Stories from Suburban Road: An autobiographical collection' by T.A.G. Hungerford

May 1984, no. 60 • 01 May 1984

T.A.G. Hungerford’s new book Stories from Suburban Road is sub-titled ‘an autobiographical collection’ and comes complete with an appendix of photographs in the style of a family album with captions such as ‘Mick and me, 1922’, ‘Me, aged 16, and Phyllis Kingsbury, Scarborough, 1931’, and ‘Mum and Mrs Francis Victoria Wood, Como Beach, 1930’. Also, throughout the collection each s ... (read more)

'Stranded Cactus', a new poem by Andrew Sant

November 2014, no. 366 • 01 November 2014

This cactus looks as if, on a reef,it could be neighbour to sponge, equally at easeunder the sea – or strange as some tentacled hydraon the window ledge, freeof quickening leaves. ... (read more)