Everything Talks: paperback

A first collection of poetry by Auckland poet Sam Sampson. Sampson has an ear for the lilting phrase, and his poems have a gentle ebb and flow, which is often echoed visually by the way the poems are laid out upon the page. Though experimental in form, Sampson’s poems are also grounded in his environment, often the West Coast of Auckland where he grew up. Karekare, the Manukau Harbour and the Waitakere Ranges all feature, but in poems that reach from ancient Egypt to 15th-century France to 19th-century Tahiti to the United States in 1963, while touching on biography, archaeology, astronomy, Sampson proves that he can handle global ideas and universal concerns.