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Steven Waling

“Those books burned like bloody fuck”

Martin Stannard is a poet and critic
Martin Stannard is team leader
Martin Stannard is of huge interest to anyone

Martin Stannard is co-executive editor of the Complete Work
Martin Stannard is conviction and self-doubt
Martin Stannard is publishing poetry for forty years

Martin Stannard is to be congratulated for producing what
Martin Stannard is plying his trade for ages now
Martin Stannard is the idea of the ideal friendship

Martin Stannard is experience of delivering
Martin Stannard is a poetry bonanza, richly
Martin Stannard is founding editor and publisher

Martin Stannard is the appealing qualities of his early
Martin Stannard is ‘snippets of pleasure’
Martin Stannard is available now

Martin Stannard is in the ballroom where the avant garde meets the mainstream
Martin Stannard is offence in some quarters
Martin Stannard is the third and final studio album

Martin Stannard is an essay
Martin Stannard is a thirteen hour time difference
Martin Stannard is two reputations

Martin Stannard is now
Martin Stannard is the man who has everything
Martin Stannard is a tandem sky dive

Martin Stannard is ‘an act of concealment’
Martin Stannard is a Cinderella story of how
Martin Stannard is removed under Data Protection Law

Martin Stannard is one of the finest novels of our century
Martin Stannard is not available for sale
Martin Stannard is enamoured of typwriters

Martin Stannard is about 238855 miles away
Martin Stannard is emotional in a rare mix
Martin Stannard is presiding over the proceedings



Copyright © Steven Waling

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Introduction by Ian McMillan

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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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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Alan Baker

I came to Martin Stannard's poetry relatively late, when, at a book fair, I picked up a pamphlet entitled "Easter" (published 1994). The easy, familiar tone and the quick wit drew me in to what was at first just a pleasant read. Then, imperceptibly, the poetry took me to to a zone of wonder and disorientation that was exhilirating. Fast forward twenty-six years and, by 2020, I had the honour of being Martin's publisher, when the third title of his that I published, "Reading Moby Dick and Other Matters", was released. It's a beautiful object (I can say that as the book design was all Martin's). And the title poem, "Reading Moby Dick" has all the features I'd been struck by in "Easter" but with an added sophistication that the intervening years of poetic practice had brought to it. It opens with a knowing dodgy joke - "Call me optimistic..." which sets the tone of irreverence and tongue-in-cheek meandering...
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