Sam Sampson

Sam Sampson was born in Auckland, and grew up in South Titirangi, next to Little Muddy Creek. His poetry has been published in chapbooks and journals, including: Jacket, Poetry Review, The Iowa Review and Stand Magazine. He has collaborated on a number of publications and exhibitions with artist Peter Madden. In 2007 he was the Curnow Reader at the Going West Books and Writers Festival.

Everything Talks, his first collection of poems, was published by Auckland University Press (NZ), and Shearsman Books (UK) in June 2008.

Sampson comments: ‘ Header Tank (OED): a tank of water etc. maintaining pressure in a plumbing system. In 2006, I heard an ominous dripping sound in the ceiling, and after inspection, found water leaking from the header tank. From this initial sonic cue, and through a series of riffs on water systems and catchment networks, the poem is a notation of these fractures and fragments. In the wider context of events surrounding the poem (media reportage of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East) the poem registers:  “headlines report the presence of war”, then asks, how to read, or respond to such “case histories”. How can a poem “ . . . the ledge between”, be both inside and outside of time? What is it to censor a sentence . . . a thought, a language? What is it to be perfectly capable of silence?’

Poem: Header Tank

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