Clive Sansom

Clive Sansom (21 June 1910 – 29 March 1981) 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 (1934–1949). 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 Quaker Friends 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. Clive Sansom had a beautifully modulated speaking voice and was an excellent reader of his own poetry. His series of poems about the life and ministry of Francis of Assisi, though not as well known as The Witnesses, were equally well researched and crafted.

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.