Tom Sastry was born in 1974. He is a second generation Original. His mother is Originally English and his father Originally Indian. He grew up in Buckinghamshire and has lived in Bristol since 1999. He thinks that not belonging is more interesting than belonging. He has spent most of his life in bedrooms, classrooms and offices. He enjoys having to deny that he is an anarchist. Complicity is his first pamphlet. There is a pleasing variation of tone and form amongst Sastry’s poems, many of which benefit from their own ‘secret grammar’ and range from regular stanzaic shapes to ragged line endings, demonstrating the poet’s ability to match form and content. The poems are by turns vulnerable, angry and full of wonder; they are at their strongest when writer is being bold with language and image, using a developing diction all of his own which lends strong colour to his material. Unafraid to address large political and social concerns as well as smaller personal ones, this is an emotionally complex debut with a great deal of charm and freshness about it.
