This book-length essay on the oeuvre of a distinguished and influential poet, Fiona Sampson, is comprised of a series of interconnecting and dovetailing essays reading across and through a brilliant body of work to date. Dealing in turn with an extremely influential editorial career on the UK and internationalist scenes, much work at the interface of creative writing, poetry and social and health care, much internationally compelling, prize-winning poetry, criticism, creative nonfiction, literary theory and biography, the book aims to tie together and illuminate in different ways the variegated writing career to date, showing how the poetic métier at hand carries across many different modes and genres. Eschewing in the main a biographical approach, this is a book-length commentary that aims to tell and show the unitive story of a compelling literary career (still in vital motion), but more pressingly, that of a truly poignant literary sensibility. Under the lens of this study, Sampson’s oeuvre evinces high intelligence along with empathy, a long-borne and studied engagement with form and an approach to literary work that is deeply personable and engaging, and a democratic spirit that at the same time refuses to abandon the highest standards of excellence. Sampson is read across this work as an exemplary literary presence, after the so-called death of expertise.

Omar Sabbagh, Associate Professor of English at the American University in Dubai (AUD), is a widely published poet, writer and critic. He has published scholarly work on Ford Madox Ford, GK Chesterton, Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller, Lytton Strachey, T.S. Eliot, George Eliot, among others; and much of this work is collated in his: To My Mind Or Kinbotes: Essays on Literature (Whisk(e)y Tit, 2021). His Morning Lit: Portals After Alia is forthcoming with Cinnamon Press in early 2022. His Lebanese verse novel: The Cedar Never Dies has been contracted with Northside Press for 2022.

About the Author; Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Hearthsides and Hospices; 2. From The Looking-Glass to the Lamp; 3. Prose Animations; 4. For the Love of Music; Conclusion; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.