Formal Promiscuities

Join us for readings from Sasha Dugdale, James Conor Patterson and Nidhi Zak / Aria Eipe, whose recent collections deform and reform the lyric.

These three poets write in ferocious virtuosities of form that extend from abecedarian to ballad, cento to concrete poetry; using modes of voice that, for example, recast narratives from the ancient Greek to “Newry street and Scots and Irish-inflected English”. 

Sasha Dugdale is a poet and translator whose fifth and most recent collection, Deformations (Carcanet, 2020) was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Derek Walcott Prize. Her translations from Russian include In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova, which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021.

James Conor Patterson is a poet, essayist and photographer from the north of Ireland. His debut poetry collection bandit country (Picador) received an Eric Gregory Award in 2019 and was nominated for both the 2022 T.S. Eliot Prize and the 2023 John Pollard Poetry Prize.

Nidhi Zak / Aria Eipe is a poet, pacifist and fabulist. Auguries of a Minor God, her first collection, was published by Faber & Faber in 2021. A finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize, John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize and the Butler Literary Award, it was chosen as a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, National Poetry Day Recommendation, Shakespeare & Co. Year of Reading Selection, and a Book of the Year by both The Irish Times and The Irish Independent. She is the 2023 Rooney Writer Fellow in residence at Trinity College Dublin; and guest editor of Poetry Ireland Review, forthcoming in Winter 2023.  

Natasha Cuddington was born in Saskatchewan. Her translations, essays and reviews have appeared variously. In 2017, she was announced as the recipient of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary. An assistant editor of Cyphers, her début poetry collection, Each of us (our chronic alphabets) was published by Arlen House in 2018. Together with Ruth Carr, she co-edited the anthology Her Other Language: Northern Irish Women Writers Address Domestic Violence and Abuse (Arlen House: 2020).