Point of Sale

Peter Sansom was the Marks and Spencer Poet in Residence during 1999. Point of Sale includes his poetic 'diary' of that year, alongside other poems which cover the spectrum of family experience from young babies learning to speak ('Oh, Fuck') to the death of a parent ('Your dad died convinced you were his dad'). The personal and the public, his family and the demands made on him by the literature industry, combine in poems of wit and subtlety. He moves from free verse into rhyme and out again with ease, his vision of the world, its absurdity and evanescent tragedy, is always clear in focus. As Carol Ann Duffy wrote in the Guardian, Sansom 'has a mature assurance which results in poems that are always entertaining and frequently something more'.