God the Father has skipped town . . . Richard Sanger begins his first collection with verve, irony and an absence. The world that follows, however, is full of mortal pangs and delights, ranging from sonnets to dramatic monologues, from a Spanish love affair to Referendum pillow talk.

Richard Sanger's poems have appeared in numerous publications in Canada, Britain and the U.S, including Descant, Fiddlehead, The London Review of Books, Queen's Quarterly, SouthWest Review, and The Times Literary Supplement; his first collection, Shadow Cabinet, appeared in 1996. His plays, Not Spain and Two Words for Snow among them, have been nominated for the Governor General's Award and the Chalmer's Prize.Torontonians were eager to share their favourite haunts and discoveries.

Richard Sanger's profile page

"Richard Sanger writes with extraordinary power and intelligence of the poignant ironies of displacement . . . Shadow Cabinet heralds the arrival of a major new talent." —Amitav Ghosh

"Spectacular... Sophisticated metrical sense, teasing wit and limitless linguistic resources...The real thing: an original poet of rare talent." —Carmine Starnio, The Montreal Gazette

"An impressively assured debut, almost every poem a beautiful balance of image and narrative." —Fraser Sutherland, The Globe and Mail

"Submerg[es] the reader in oceans of memory and emotion without drowning them... An impressive body of work." —Ana Gordon, Pauper.com

"Remarkable mastery...A poet of unusual talent and poetic maturity." —Beatriz Zeller, Books in Canada

"Very accomplished...[Sanger] writes in a voice that is all his own, and its groundtone is a cleverly, progressively sophisticated one which is never merely adroit." —Terry Whalen, Journal of Canadian Poetry

"Shadow Cabinet is one of the most exciting, sophisticated and achieved of recent books of poetry in Canada, one that all readers and writers of poetry should enjoy and study. For Sanger, with luck and persistence, will be one of our most important poets, one whose work will find an international audience (it is already in American journals), instead of being lost in mediocrity, the pillow fights, of so much Canadian poetry." —Dan Reve, The Danforth Review