Clive Sansom was an English-born Tasmanian poet and playwright. He was also an environmentalist, who became the founding patron of the Tasmanian Wilderness Society.
Life and work
Sansom was born in East Finchley, London, and educated at Southgate County School, where he matriculated in 1926. He worked as a clerk/salesman for an ironworks company until 1934, and then studied speech and drama at the Regent Street Polytechnic and the London Speech Institute under Margaret Gullan. He went on to study phonetics under Daniel Jones at University College London, and joined the London Verse-Speaking Choir. He lectured in speech training at Borough Road Training College, Isleworth, and the Speech Fellowship in 1937–1939, and edited the Speech Fellowship Bulletin. He was also an instructor at the Drama School of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Sansom married the poet Ruth Large, a Tasmanian, in 1937, at the QuakerFriends Meeting House in Winchmore Hill. He subsequently joined the Quakers and was a conscientious objector during the Second World War. His best known collection of poems, The Witnesses, tells the life of Jesus of Nazareth from the perspective of those who knew him during his time on earth. It was joint winner of the Festival of Britain poetry prize in 1950 and has been performed all over the world. The couple settled in Tasmania in 1949, where they were both supervisors with the Tasmanian Education Department, in charge of its Speech Centre. Sansom was also a committed conservationist and the founding patron of the Tasmanian Wilderness Society. He called himself 'the oldest "greenie" in the business' and fought long and hard to preserve the original Lake Pedder, in Tasmania's south west. He was devastated when the then premier, Eric Reece, refused to accept millions of dollars from the Whitlam Labor government to hold a moratorium, which could have saved the original lake. As a poet, Sansom was best known for his performance poetry and his verses for children. He also wrote a number of plays. His Passion Play was a novel based around the Oberammergau Passion Play of 1950. Clive Sansom died following a stroke in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1981. A commemorative volume appeared in 1990.
As co-author
With Rodney Bennett: Adventures in Words. Speech training readers. Second series
With Rodney Bennett: Adventures in Words. Speech training for Canadian schools
With Richard Harding Graves: The Carpenter's Son. A carol for voices and organ, poem by Clive Sansom
With Walter Stiasny: Two Songs. 1. The Forest Wind. 2. Inscription for an old Tomb. Poems by Clive Sansom
With Ann Hamerton: Shepherds' Carol. Words by Clive Sansom
With Richard Harding Graves: The Farmyard. Ten songs with optional mime and movement. Words by Clive Sansom, etc.
With Arthur Edwin Veal: The Irish Fiddler. Words by Clive Sansom''. Oxford Choral Songs U 146
As editor etc.
With Marjorie Gullen: The Poet Speaks: an anthology for choral speaking
English Heart: an anthology of English lyric poetry
Plays in Verse with Spoken Choruses. Children's Theatre No. 7
Acting Rhymes.
Briar Rose and Other Plays with Choruses. Children's Theatre No. 10
By Word of Mouth. An anthology of prose for reading aloud
The World of Poetry. Poets and critics on the art and functions of poetry. Extracts selected and arranged by Clive Sansom
Helen Power: A Lute with Three Strings. Selected and introduced by Clive Sansom
Counting Rhymes.
External resources
Some poems by Clive Sansom:
The verse "Mary of Nazareth" from Sansom's collection The Witnesses:
"The Forbidden Room", from Return to Magic: Fairy-Tale Poems.
The catalogue of the Clive Sansom papers held at the University of Tasmania Library, with a short biography:
