Andrew Sant

Andrew Sant (born 1950) is an English born Australian poet and essayist.^[1]

In 1962 Sant moved from London, where he was born, with his family to Melbourne where he finished his formal education. He has since lived in London for periods, most recently between 2002-2005 while he was Writing Fellow at the University of Leicester, in 2007-2008 at the University of Chichester, 2010-2011 at Goldsmiths College, University of London and 2015-2016 while at the University of Kent. In 2001 he was resident at the University of Peking in Beijing, China. In the early nineties he was resident in the Australia Council-administered B R Whiting studio in Rome.

He co-founded in 1979 the literary magazine, Island, based in Tasmania where by that time he had moved. He served as an editor for ten years. Other occupations have included teaching at both secondary and tertiary levels, teaching literacy to the unemployed and to prisoners, managing a hostel for juvenile offenders, copywriting and, as part owner of a small Tasmanian company, cider making. One of his best-known poems 'Homage to the Canal People' was written after Sant worked in 1976 on a narrowboat, travelling along the English canals,though it is not typical of his work which is often chancy,urbane and witty. His work lately focusses on the natural sciences, particularly geology.

His most recent poetry collections include Tremors: New & Selected Poems (2004), Speed & Other Liberties (2008), Fuel (2009) and The Bicycle Thief & Other Poems (2013). His poems have appeared individually in The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry, Poetry London, The Australian, The Age, and Antipodes, among many other publications, and in major anthologies of Australian poetry. Sant has been described as a "distinctive and distinguished poet" in Australian Book Review. He is also the author of a number of published essays which subsequently have been anthologised in Best Australian Essays 2010 and Best Australian Essays 2011 and, more recently, collected in How to Proceed of which The Times Literary Supplement said, "There is a wonderfully digressive quality ... His syntax follows suit: sentences balloon across lines, the subject weaving in and out of focus as his mind travels around it.There are moments of sparkling poetic clarity." Sant has been invited to read his work in numerous countries including Canada, Germany, Italy, Sweden, New Zealand and, often, the UK. He now lives in Melbourne.

Works

Poetry

• Lives (Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1980)
• The Caught Sky (Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1982)
• The Flower Industry (Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1985)
• Brushing the Dark (William Heinemann, Melbourne, 1989)
• Album of Domestic Exiles (Black Pepper publishing, Melbourne, 1996)
• Russian Ink (Black Pepper publishing, Melbourne, 2002)
• The Islanders (Shoestring Press, Nottingham UK, 2001)
• The Unmapped Page - Selected Poems (Arc, UK, 2004)
• Tremors: New & Selected Poems (Black Pepper publishing, Melbourne, 2004)
• Speed & Other Liberties (Salt Publishing, Cambridge, UK, 2008)
• The Lives and Times of the Islanders (Shoestring Press, Nottingham UK, 2008)
• Fuel (Black Pepper, Melbourne, 2009)
• The Bicycle Thief (Picaro Press, Warner's Bay, NSW, 2009) chapbook
• The Bicycle Thief & Other Poems (Black Pepper publishing, Melbourne, 2013)

Essays

• How to Proceed(Shoestring Press, Notts, UK, 2015)(Puncher & Wattmann, Sydney, 2016)

Anthologies

. First Rights - a Decade of Island Magazine (Greenhouse Publications, Melbourne, 1989)

. Toads (Allen and Unwin, Melbourne, 1992)

References

External links

• 30 poems chosen by the author for the Australian Poetry Library
• 4 poems
• Black Pepper Andrew Sant biography