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 (age 76)
Nationality	British
Occupation(s)	Poet, translator, academic
Spouses	Jenny Diski, Olivia Laing

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

• 2017 Forward Prize, Best Single Poem, "The Plenty of Nothing".^[11]

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)
• Collected Poems 1975-2023 (Broken Sleep Books, 2024)

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)