Sam Sampson

Sam Sampson's first book of poems, Everything Talks, was published in 2008 by Auckland University Press and Shearsman Books (UK). In 2009, it won the Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award for Poetry. In March 2012, he participated in a collaborative exhibition with collage artist Peter Madden at the Ivan Anthony Gallery, and in April 2012, published a collaborative bookwork ...exclusivity dwells in habitat with photographer Harvey Benge. In 2013, new poems will appear in Cordite Poetry Review and Shearsman magazine.

Sampson comments: ‘I recently came across a selection of Keats’s work (Poems Published in 1820) and was struck by the surface, or patterning of phrase and thought. A sense of how absolutely modern Keats could be, especially in the later unfinished epic poem “Hyperion” (1819).

‘I decided to remix “Hyperion”, and in the process extend the poem into my own stylistic territory by echoing Keats’s lines and including fragments from the poem’s annotations.

‘“All the Everlasting Cataracts” felt odd at first to construct (like participating in an archeological dig, juxtaposing antique diction, reversing links and lines) and unlike Keats (who had complained that “Hyperion” had been written under the influence of Milton) I was trying to retain as many Keatsian inversions and repetitions.’

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