Ian Patterson (poet)

Ian Kenneth Patterson (born 31 August 1948) is a British poet, translator and academic. He is a Life Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, having retired in 2018 from his post as Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Director of Studies in English and Fellow Librarian.[1]

Ian Patterson
Born (1948-08-31) 31 August 1948
NationalityBritish
Occupation(s)Poet, translator, academic
Spouses
Websitewww.olivialaing.co.uk

Education and career

Ian Patterson was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a BA degree in English in 1969. He returned to academia in the 1990s to write a PhD, and in 1995 was awarded a Junior Research Fellowship at King's College, Cambridge. In 1999 he moved to Queens', where he was to teach English as a fellow of the college for the next 20 years.[2]

Work

In 2017 Ian Patterson won the Forward Prize for best single poem for "The Plenty of Nothing", an elegy to his wife, Jenny Diski.[3]

Patterson has written a non-fiction book about the bombing of Guernica and the Spanish Civil War.[4] He is also a translator: works include the final volume of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust[5] and works by Charles Fourier and Alain Touraine. He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books, writing on subjects as diverse as Jilly Cooper,[6] libraries and Ann Quin.[7]

Personal life

Patterson was married to the writer Jenny Diski until her death in 2016. He appears as The Poet in her writing.[8] In 2017, he married the writer Olivia Laing.[9] He is the editor of Nemo's Almanac, according to The Guardian "the world's hardest book quiz". Previous editors include Alan Hollinghurst.[10]

Awards and honours

Bibliography

Non-fiction
  • Nemo's Almanac (Profile Books, 2017)
  • Guernica and Total War (Profile Books, 2007)
  • edited, with Laura Ashe, War and Literature (Boydell & Brewer, 2014)

Poetry
  • Thing of Reason (Black Suede Boot Press, 1974)
  • Endless Demands (Holophrase, 1983)
  • No Dice (Poetical Histories, 1988)
  • Roughly Speaking (Cambridge, 1990)
  • Tense Fodder (Equipage, 1993)
  • Much More Pronounced (Equipage, 1999)
  • Time to Get Here: Selected Poems 1969–2002 (Salt, 2003)
  • The Glass Bell (Barque Press, 2009)
  • Time Dust (Equipage, 2015)
  • Still Life (Oystercatcher, 2015)
  • Bound To Be (Equipage, 2017)
  • Shell Vestige Disputed (Broken Sleep Books, 2023)

Translation
  • Alain Touraine et al., The Workers' Movement (Cambridge University Press, 1987)
  • Charles Fourier, The Theory of the Four Movements (Cambridge University Press, 1996)
  • Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 6: Finding Time Again (Penguin, 2003)

References
  1. Dr Ian Patterson, Queens' College, Cambridge
  2. Dr Ian Patterson, Cambridge University Faculty of English. Accessed 2 July 2020.
  3. Flood, Alison, "Husband's Elegy for Jenny Diski wins Forward Prize Best Single Poem", The Guardian, 21 September 2017
  4. Bragg, Melvyn, "Picasso's Guernica", In Our Time, 2 November 2017
  5. Wood, Michael, "The Thing", London Review of Books, 6 January 2015
  6. Vincent, Alice, "Jilly Cooper compared to Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope by Cambridge academic", The Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2017
  7. Ian Patterson, London Review of Books
  8. Flood, Alison, "Author Jenny Diski , diagnosed with inoperable cancer, dies aged 68", The Guardian, 28 April 2016.
  9. Laing, Olivia, "The acclaimed author of The Lonely City on loneliness, marrying the poet Ian Patterson and the challenges of intimacy", The Sunday Times, 24 June 2018.
  10. Patterson, Ian (9 November 2017). "The world's hardest books quiz: 'no Googling allowed!'" – via www.theguardian.com.
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