Near the Border
New & Selected Poems
'If, as has been said, Sant is “an important, innovative poet” with a “penetrating eye for the hidden geometries of meaning” it is because, whatever his subject, the vision it draws out of him is there to be his and the subject, like the insight, has come as naturally to him as leaves are to trees.' – Elizabeth Knottenbelt, Agenda
'Andrew Sant writes intellectually compelling and formally taut poems … made possible when an exceptional facility with language collides with everyday subjects.' – Brian Henry, Poetry Nation Review
'Sant’s accomplished, cosmopolitan style gains from repeated exposure. “Pleasure” has been a word much trivialised of late when talking about poetry, but Sant’s poems provide that all-too-rare commodity.' – Nicholas Birns, Verse
'In what is now a significant body of work we should see Andrew Sant, in this new book, in its approachable eloquence and its formal and musical intelligence as, in his phrase, a new “passport into immersion”. – Adam Phillips, The Guardian
Andrew Sant was born in London in 1950. He emigrated in 1962 with his parents to Melbourne where he completed his formal education. He has lived in London at various times, particularly during the last decade. During this period he has been a Writing Fellow at the Universities of Leicester, Chichester, London (Goldsmiths College) and Kent. In 2001 he was writer in residence in Beijing, China at the University of Peking. In 1979 after moving to Hobart he co-founded the Tasmanian-based literary quarterly Island and served as joint editor for a decade. He has worked as a teacher of literacy to prisoners and the unemployed, of English to non-English speakers and of humanities subjects to students in mainstream institutions. He has also been a copywriter and a manager of a hostel for juvenile offenders. He is a former member of the Literature Board of the Australia Council. His essays have appeared in the annual Best Australian Essays anthologies, and two collections How to Proceed and The Hallelujah Shadow were published in 2016 and 2020 respectively. His poems have been widely anthologised. In 2003 he was awarded the Centenary Medal.
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