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David Lehman

7 / 28/ 22
 
According to the know-it-
all but very nice poet
who runs the United Bard
Company, Martin Stannard
sets the standard
of outward excellence
and inward sense.
The man’s a card,
an ace, and for a reward,
I say we must
commend him on 27 August,
with seventy cheers,
one for each of his years.



Copyright © David Lehman, 2022

 

 

 



 






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David Belbin

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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