Shortlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Poetry Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, 2020
“Lay Studies is formidably but not inaccessibly brainy, and it’s as much a crash course in Thomist and neoplatonic philosophy as it is an interrogation of goodness, truth and religious faith – concepts that have lost intellectual currency in our neoliberal era but which Steven Toussaint treats with urgency and conviction. Eliot, Zukofsky, Olson and above all Pound – the Pound of the Pisan Cantos – are just some of the evident influences in this densely allusive, theologically questioning collection.”
- Judges’ citation
“It is not the indoctrination into the sacred life that the collection is about, but the return to everyday existence— these are, quite literally, lay studies, attempts to immerse oneself in a life that has come to seem distant, in a mode of living that might almost have been forgotten.”
- Camille Jacobson, On the Seawall (read full review)
“Steven Toussaint’s poetry not only documents the liturgies of contemporary life, but aims to push language to a liturgical pitch as well, sweeping the reader up in muted exaltation of the poems.”
- Michael Angel Martín, The Rumpus (read full review)
“Ripe with auditory pleasure, coming alive through rhythm and cadence, this anthology rewards reading aloud…An often-incredible blend of metaphysics and poetics, meditation, and prosody.”
- Emma Gattey, The Oxonian Review (read full review)
“Hill is present, to be sure. But so is the music of David Jones, and the temporal layering of Ezra Pound, and a sensibility and style all Toussaint’s own.”
-Anthony Domestico, Commonweal (read full review)
“Most unexpected collection of the year. Demands much of the reader, but rewarding in its philosophical questioning.”
-Nicholas Reid, The New Zealand Listener
“The Bellfounder is a contemplative exploration of space and attraction, while at the same time it bridges the spiritual with the environmental.”
- Johnny Hernandez, Small Press Distribution
“…an exquisite read”
- Paula Green, NZ Poetry Shelf
“This is good poetry to hear read aloud, but that’s not the limit of what’s going on in it: volcanic murmurs are audible beneath the grass of his sojourn on Devonport’s Mt. Victoria. Fateful, perhaps, for all of us.”
- Jack Ross, Poetry New Zealand Review