Martin Stannard has published many books of poetry, including a Selected Poems, "Writing Down the Days" (Stride Books, UK) and "Difficulties and Exultations" (Smith/Doorstop). He edited the magazine "Joe Soap’s Canoe" for many years, has published his collected reviews, "Conversations with Myself" (Stride), and has read his poetry at venues in the U.K. and America, including the Morden Tower in Newcastle, St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery in New York, and the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival.

"He has the ability to create complex conundrums with the most colloquial of vocabularies. His language is plain but his meaning isn't. He celebrates the spontaneous in a style that is highly crafted and artful."
(Scratch)

"Martin Stannard at his best is a wonderfully adventurous poet whose formal inventiveness rewards us over and over again with poems of imagination and heart."
(Paul Violi)

Read the extract below:

ADVENTURE OF THE KNIGHT

I have moonfed my horse tonight
ready for tomorrow and the rolling grasslands
Chloe, "happenstance" is a word
I’m going to have to look up
before I can comment
(but I don’t think "shapely"
is necessarily an insult)
Will you be wandering aimlessly again tonight
as aimless as the planets are?
Do it until the fog becomes too thick
then telephone me: my mobile’ll be on
because it’s always on now
my onion growing business seems to be
taking off (which has come as a bit of a surprise)
& in the morning (don’t worry: I really don‘t
care if you spend the night here or not)
the rolling grasslands will welcome or reject us
("Mais nous sommes le monde.")
Chloe, all I ask you to take from today
and carry into tomorrow
is "loyalty" (We can learn it from horses)