The Review

Martin Stannard was the founding editor of joe soap's canoe (1978-1993). He was also poetry editor of the online art and poetry magazine Decals of Desire. In 2007-8 he was the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Nottingham Trent University but, that year aside, he taught English, Literature and Culture at a university in China from 2005 until 2018, when he returned to the UK to retire gracefully.

"Here is a major book by a major British poet who dances in the ballroom where the avant-garde meets the mainstream and, more importantly, males us all want to dance there too. In Martin Stannard's hands language is never tired, or threadbare, or past its sell-by date or begrudging or lightweight."

-- Ian McMillan, back cover blurb for Poems for the Young at Heart

"You can never, it used to be (rightly) said, open Tennyson on the wrong page. The same applies to Stannard . . . (He) is not only an intoxicatingly entertaining poet; here he proves himself one with the emotional assurance and the artistry to strike (after exquisitely delicate preparation) the seriously subjective note."

-- D.M. de Silva, at Poetry Salzburg Review on Poems for the Young at Heart