This Was Your Mother
Dreich Press (2024)
'Sam Szanto has created a glorious celebration of love, life and loss'
'Gliding skilfully between past and present sne invokes powerful imagery and lyrical, evocative language.'
Annie Cowell
'I recommend reading and re-reading this collection.'
Candice Kelsey
'Here are poems to love'
Catherine Graham (UK)
To purchase a copy from Sam, email sam.szanto@gmail.com - also available from Dreich Press
A review by Peter Mladinic was published in Tears in the Fence Literary Journal.
Full review here: https://tearsinthefence.com/2024/04/06/this-was-your-mother-by-sam-szanto-dreich/
Splashing Pink
Published by Hedgehog Press (2023)
Splashing Pink has been chosen as a Poetry Book Society Winter 2023 Pamphlet Choice
“Splashing Pink is a conversation between two mothers from two different generations. It is a series of poems in which the nature of motherhood is explored; from the early days following birth to the experience of watching your child becoming a parent themselves. It delves into questions about what it means to be a mother, what they will do for their children and how even mother nature strives to create harmony, ease pain and ‘splash pink’ on lives.”
“This is a book that sets out its stall from the first. It opens with a poem containing the tender truths and emotions involved with new parenting, a poem of darks and lights, the sun and the moon. Annie Cowell and Sam Szanto maintain a beautiful, heartfelt conversation, filled with sensitive, startling imagery.
They do not flinch from experiences of fear and worry – indeed they tackle these subjects with strength and tenderness. Subjects such as newborn health, parenthood through different generations, fatigue, growing pains, safety, the empty nest, family traditions, and even the shock of violence are handled with gentleness, a lightness of touch – moments of connectivity allow us to recognise ourselves and our experiences as parents.
You leave this book with a great sense that these two poets have held these poems, as they held their children, skin to skin.”
Jane Burn
“In Splashing Pink Annie Cowell and Sam Szanto observe parents from three generations. Their poems explore the exquisite first encounter with a new-born, the tension when children start to find their own way, the wrench of a teenager leaving home. They rekindle childhood Sunday lunches with parents, and hold back as they watch a son’s experience of parenthood. The poems brim with images and metaphors, moths, blackbirds, berries, rosebuds, and objects such as Duplo blocks and thick wool coats. These poems burst with emotion, internalised, controlled, yet poems with which any parent or carer can connect.”
Kate Rose
“Annie Cowell and Sam Szanto have created a tender and insightful conversation-in-poems about the fears, anxieties, and beauty of motherhood. From night lights and night terrors, to first days at school and the ‘unromantic stuff of our kingdom’, this pamphlet invites readers to listen in on two poets trading life stories, perspectives, and common ground in a series of vulnerable and powerfully connected poems.”
John Challis
