
Sam Sampson was born in Auckland, New Zealand, and grew up in South Titirangi, next to Little Muddy Creek. His poetry has appeared in various journals, among them Jacket, Poetry Review, The Iowa Review and Stand Magazine. He has collaborated on a number of publications and exhibitions with NZ artist Peter Madden, and in 2007, 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. It won the Jessie McKay NZSA Best First Book of Poetry at the 2009 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
From Broken Architecture:
the dog sprang up to fetch,
arm struck out to overthrow a commanding gesture
startling rapidity of strange incidents
knit this notion, be aware of promises
instinctively distrust butyric words
the stealthily indignation galvanised opinion
For more information about Sam’s poems, interviews, and exhibitions, visit his website.
Andrew Grace is the author of three collections of poems: A Belonging Field (Salt, 2002), Shadeland (Ohio State University Press, 2008), and Sancta (Ahsahta, 2012). He lives in Cincinnati with his wife Tory and daughter Lily.
From Salt Away:
Grief is the never ender in the raucous pond reeds. Ursa Minor sets out its silver lice in the cypress. Take one season and turn through it like these fruit bats, following sent-back abyss-ticks, here, and further out, here…I wanted this to be an epigraph. I wanted rain for forty days. I wanted a trigger. I have a lake with a crown of bats. I have intransience. Salt away.
Read more of Andrew’s poems here and here.