A HUNDRED OF HAPPINESS AND OTHER POEMS
A Hundred of Happiness and Other Poems was published by Smith/Doorstop in 1995. It should have won prizes but it didn’t, although it was given a very pretty rosette by a girl from Mansfield.
This is what some people said about it:
“The domestic and the spiritual, the political and the fantastic cohabit in Stannard’s world, held together by the contradictions and ambivalences in his approach. It’s the tension between those contradictions that make his work so exciting, but his real triumph is in fashioning these struggles and contradictions into such serious entertainment.” – Mark Robinson, Scratch
“There is an urgency about the poems that won't let the reader drift away from the text, and it's compelling. It would be hard to be bored by a Stannard poem. You might be irritated, especially if you're the kind of poetry reader who looks for platitudes and certainties and confirmation of what you already know, but that would seem to me a sign that the poems are working as Stannard intended........ [they make for] reading which is always provocative, often exciting.” - Jim Burns, The Wide Skirt
“His language is plain but his meaning isn't; he is intelligently silly and there are dark undercurrents to his tomfoolery. He celebrates the spontaneous in a style that is in fact highly crafted and artful........ the most succinct way to describe Stannard's work is as serious play......” - Emma Neale, Scratch
“He manages to create poetry out of the mundanities of everyday life, elevating even the most commonplace experience to one of strange significance and occasionally beauty...... He is, after all, one of the few poets around who can combine blunt realism with fantasy and actually come out with something worth reading.” - Jane Holland, Blade
“What lifts Stannard above so many others..... is the unforced energy of his writing: it's not driven, exactly, but nor is it entirely contrived. He can pull off O'Hara's trick of allowing resonant detail to arise from near-random accumulations of thought and.... allows us access to the workings of his mind in all its hit-and-miss glory.” - Wayne Burrows, Sheffield Thursday
“There is a sense of space in his work, of light and air, as the lines go freewheeling. He calls to notice things that are relevant to all of us, though continually glancing away as well....Often what he has to say is in the way of a puzzle, often it borders on the profound -- but it always challenges you as to exactly how profound. It's baffling, in a good way. This is poetry with the head fully engaged.” - Keith Dersley, Tears in the Fence
For more information or to purchase A Hundred of Happiness, please go to Smith/Doorstop.