Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2022
bandit country,the much-anticipated debut collection from James Conor Patterson,is a rollicking,hyper-literate and at times deeply troubling account of a young man's navigation of the semi-lawless borderlands between the north of Ireland and the Republic - the'bandit country'of the Troubles - and the criss-crossed sea border to England and beyond. Patterson shows us how the militarised boundary line of old has morphed into an invisible and semi-wild frontier,where the ghosts of a thirty-year war continue to haunt the'ceasefire generation'.
Patterson writes in a hybrid dialect of Newry street and Scots and Irish-inflected English - and in a virtuosic variety of forms: these poems crackle with vernacular wit and the rhythms of everyday speech,absorbing the influence of the poet's Belfast mentor,Ciaran Carson,and the radical poetics of Tom Leonard. Already a rising star and Eric Gregory award-winner,James Conor Patterson is an extraordinary talent at the forefront of a new wave of poets exploring the linguistic inheritance of region and community.
Publisher: Pan MacmillanISBN: 9781529092776Number of pages: 96Weight: 154 gDimensions: 197 x 155 x 9 mm
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