Dear Martin
I think it all started with 'That Morning in That Kitchen' in Tears in the Fence. Doubtless there had been others, but this was the one. That I was standing in my kitchen at the time no doubt helped. From there to The Gracing of Days, Denying England and a Hundred of Happiness. And the rest. 'Those books/ on those shelves, did you read them?' I did. And they gave me (give me) joy. That thing you said to Kenneth Koch about his poems making you want to be alive. That's it! When I read your poems I am glad to be alive. If you were Norwegian (or American) you'd be a household name. In my house, from the bookshelves to the kitchen to the garden shed you already are.
Thank you and long may you continue,
Anthony Wilson
There's nothing like getting it wrong . MARTIN STANNARD AT SEVENTY I first encountered Martin through his poems in 1987, when Wide Skirt Press published The Flat of the Land . The title poem, which also opened the collection, was a revelation. The style owed a lot to the New York Poets, who I had recently discovered, but also felt fresh, funny and self deprecating in a very English way. Two years later, John Harvey's Slow Dancer press published a new and selected called The Gracing of Days , then Wide Skirt press published Denying England . I loved both collections: the voice, Martin's laconic yet romantic view of the world, the string of humour tightly laced throughout. I dragged a bunch of my A level students to a Slow Dancer reading in the basement of Nottingham's Old Vic pub. Martin was appearing alongside a young whippersnapper called Simon Armitage, who John had also published a pamphlet by. I primed the students for the reading with a sheet of poems by b
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