In Praise of Men and Other People

Ann Sansom is a poet, playwright and tutor. She has published six collections of poetry, including two with Bloodaxe Books, Romance (1994) and In Praise of Men and other people (2003). She has had work published in several Forward/Faber anthologies, Russian Vogue and a range of other publications and has written and directed plays for stage and radio. She is currently working with The British Film Institute on a series of commissioned film-related poems and is writing a screenplay for a further series of short films. Ann is a regular tutor for WEA, Poetry Society and Arvon Foundation and has taught at Oxford, Leeds and Sheffield Hallam universities. She regularly works in schools and tutors at school writing residentials, teaching children of all ages and abilities, and has run a weekly writers' workshop at Doncaster YWCA for twenty years. She is also a director of The Poetry Business, which publishes 'The North' magazine and Smith/Doorstop books. She lives in Sheffield.

Ann Sansom’s naturally accomplished and instinctively organised poems come as a breath of fresh air in an age when technical contrivance often passes for literary credibility. There is a maturity to her work, a sureness of hand normally associated with only the most established poets, but there is a freshness too, and a bareknuckle confidence that seems to sing of the author’s realisation of poetry as a first language and a mother tongue.