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
Sometime in the very early 1980’s I was doing a reading for Martin Stannard somewhere in Ipswich and I was staying over at Martin’s house. On the way back from the gig his car broke down spectacularly, gasping and wheezing, then clanking and sighing, then moaning and complaining, then dying. The night was clear and Martin and I stood outside the car waiting for the RAC and gazing at the stars and I realised, not for the first time and not for the last, that I was living in a Martin Stannard poem and that it was an exciting place to live. When I first read Martin’s poems and started subscribing to his wonderful magazine Joe Soap’s Canoe I was excited that he took his influences from absolutely everywhere. At the time a number of us were writing in the shadow of Ted Hughes and The Mersey Poets and our lenses were crowded with our visceral reactions to Thatcherism’s vicious flowering but Martin seemed to look wider than the rest of us; he took in John Ashbery and surrealism, a kind of cra...
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