Ian Patterson (poet)

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Ian Patterson
Born (1948-08-31) 31 August 1948 (age 76)
NationalityBritish
Occupation(s)Poet, translator, academic
Spouses

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]

Contents

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

Poetry

Translation

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.
  11. ↑ "Congratulations to the Forward Prize winners". The Poetry Society . 22 September 2017. Archived from the original on 21 December 2023. Retrieved 21 December 2023.
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