Julian Stannard

Reviews

‘Few poets alive today can discuss telemarketing, commuting and the current state of academia – among other subjects – with Stannard’s levity and panache. Heat Wave finds him at the peak of his enviable powers. He is eminently re-readable and instantly addictive.’ —André Naffis-Sahely

‘Julian Stannard is a poet who understands the power of satire deployed as political art. Gleefully European in scope and allusion, these surreal and crisply ludic poems are irrepressible protest songs of our time.’ —Karen McCarthy-Woolf

‘When I read Julian Stannard’s joyous, generous, astute poems, I bubble up with an overwhelming desire to share them, even with complete strangers. I love this collection.’ – Lara Pawson

‘Julian Stannard is a one-off. His poems are magnificent riffs on the canon and the cartoon, the whole kit and caboodle of popular culture (only Stannard could rhyme ‘Google’ with ‘Gogol’). He has always walked a perilous tightrope between the frivolous and the fearful, and in this new book, the spectre of death is never far beneath the smooth surface of urban flaneury. The book kicks off in lockdown and concludes with a sequence of poems which act as an extended plea for safety in an unsafe world. An essential book for our surreal times.’ – Tamar Yoseloff

Like Frank O’Hara, Stannard can shift from breathless joy to heartbreak without warning … one of the most unabashedly entertaining bodies of work in contemporary British poetry.– Declan Ryan

“This is a brilliant collection, endlessly rich, strange and funny, blessed with a unique voice that is both instantly unmistakable, and yet capable of boundless elasticity. Locked down on Brexit Island, Heat Wave is the most perfectly unreliable companion anyone could wish for.” – Alan Bilton – Ambit Magazine