ITEMS
Items is a sequence of 16 poems published in a limited edition by The Red Ceilings Press in 2018. Their website is here but it won’t tell you much more other than the fact that it's SOLD OUT¸ which sounds impressive until you realize there were only 40 copies printed in the first place... It can now be read online here.
Writing about the little book (and it is little, in A6 format), Mike Ferguson said:
“The poem ITEM 9 says something to me about Stannard as a poet being imaginative as a writer, both in terms of the unusual in evocation and as a declarative – not manifesto – about how to see the world and write about it, with this stanza,
I wish water could be persuaded to burn
The corners of the room are dark
Only one of us is awake or half-awake
and with this one,
Caress the keys of the typewriter as if
They're the sensitive parts of someone you admire
Have an active imagination or no imagination at all
(Mr. Ferguson was probably right.)