The three narrative poems collected here use classical blank verse and contemporary cinematic narrative techniques to tell their stories. "White Russian" is a lyrical description of a young Russian woman's life in London. "A Child Of God" is a comic study of a New Age guru and his small band of devotees. "A European Master" is a debate about contemporary aesthetic values between a French actress and an East European film director.
Andrew Staniland has dedicated his life to the art of writing poetry in the Romantic tradition of English poetry. He is a contemporary Romantic poet, whose poems are classical in style and whose source of inspiration is contemporary spiritual practice.
Andrew was born in Sheffield in 1959. He studied Politics at the University of Durham. Since graduating in 1980, he has worked part time, devoting most of his time to writing, to his imagination, to meditation and inner exploration. He matured as a poet in his mid-forties, writing two collections, two story poems and two prose- poem novels, as well as editing three books of the best of his work from the previous twenty years. He has since completed a new collection, "The Perennial Poetry (2011)".
Andrew has self-published a number of books, in commercial and private editions. His poems have been published in various magazines and anthologies. He has had a play performed on the London Fringe. And he has written and directed a short film which was screened at various festivals.
Andrew lives in London.
