Jan Oskar Hansen

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Jan Oskar Hansen's poems come from a life-time of travel as a sailor. Originally from Norway, Jan found the English language more fluid to carry his narratives and paint his images. The poems are both strongly narrative and intensely imagist, the reader can 'see' the events unfold in imagination and almost feel their settings. La Strada, ...and it was her summer and Murmur from the East also carry a deeper significance, sometimes political, sometimes relational as in the poems alluding to 'love'. Always though, touched with humour and a sense of tough realism. It seems too that Jan sometimes mocks himself for being caught in awkward circumstances. It is the world seen through the eyes of a man who has seen the world in the way that seamen like Joseph Conrad experienced, indeed Hansen could be regarded as a modern Conrad for he too has lifted the cover from our human darkness.

Dennis Greig