Ian Kenneth Patterson (born 31 August 1948) is a British

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

, translator and academic. He is a Life Fellow of

Queens' College, Cambridge Queens' College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Queens' is one of the oldest colleges of the university, founded in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou. The college spans the River Cam, colloquially referred to as the "light s ...

, having retired in 2018 from his post as Senior Lecturer in

English Literature English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...

, Director of Studies in English and Fellow Librarian.

Education and career

Ian Patterson was educated at

Pembroke College, Cambridge Pembroke College (officially "The Master, Fellows and Scholars of the College or Hall of Valence-Mary") is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college is the third-oldest college of the university and has over 700 ...

, 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 King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city ...

. In 1999 he moved to Queens', where he was to teach English as a fellow of the college for the next 20 years.

Work

In 2017 Ian Patterson won the

Forward Prize The Forward Prizes for Poetry are major British awards for poetry, presented annually at a public ceremony in London. They were founded in 1992 by William Sieghart with the aim of celebrating excellence in poetry and increasing its audience. The ...

for best single poem for "The Plenty of Nothing", an

elegy An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...

to his wife,

Jenny Diski Jenny Diski FRSL (née Simmonds; 8 July 1947 – 28 April 2016) was an English writer. She had a troubled childhood, but was taken in and mentored by the novelist Doris Lessing; she lived in Lessing's house for four years. Diski was educated a ...

. Patterson has written a non-fiction book about the bombing of

Guernica Guernica (, ), official name (reflecting the Basque language) Gernika (), is a town in the province of Biscay, in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, Spain. The town of Guernica is one part (along with neighbouring Lumo) of the mu ...

and the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...

. He is also a translator: works include the final volume of ''

In Search of Lost Time ''In Search of Lost Time'' (french: À la recherche du temps perdu), first translated into English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'', and sometimes referred to in French as ''La Recherche'' (''The Search''), is a novel in seven volumes by French ...

'' by

Marcel Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...

and works by

Charles Fourier François Marie Charles Fourier (;; 7 April 1772 – 10 October 1837) was a French philosopher, an influential early socialist thinker and one of the founders of utopian socialism. Some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in ...

and

Alain Touraine Alain Touraine (; born 3 August 1925) is a French sociology, sociologist. He is research director at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where he founded the ''Centre d'étude des mouvements sociaux''. Touraine was an important ...

. He is a regular contributor to the ''

London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review of ...

'', writing on subjects as diverse as

Jilly Cooper Jilly Cooper, CBE (born 21 February 1937), is an English author. She began her career as a journalist and wrote numerous works of non-fiction before writing several romance novels, the first of which appeared in 1975. She is most famous for wr ...

libraries A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

and

Ann Quin Ann Quin (17 March 1936 – 27 August 1973) was a British writer noted for her experimental style. The author of ''Berg'' (1964), ''Three'' (1966), ''Passages'' (1969) and ''Tripticks'' (1972), she died by drowning in 1973 at the age of 37. Life ...

Personal life

Patterson was married to the writer

until her death in 2016. He appears as The Poet in her writing. In 2017, he married the writer

Olivia Laing Olivia Laing (born 14 April 1977) is a British writer, novelist and cultural critic. She is the author of four works of non-fiction, ''To the River'', ''The Trip to Echo Spring,'' '' The Lonely City'', and ''Everybody'', as well as an essay colle ...

. He is the editor of ''Nemo's Almanac'', according to ''The Guardian'' "the world's hardest book quiz". Previous editors include

Alan Hollinghurst Alan James Hollinghurst (born 26 May 1954) is an English novelist, poet, short story writer and translator. He won the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award, the 1994 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 2004 Booker Prize. Early life and education H ...

Awards and honours

*2017

, Best Single Poem, "The Plenty of Nothing"

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

External links

*https://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/ian-patterson *https://www.queens.cam.ac.uk/dr-ian-patterson *https://www.archiveofthenow.org/authors/?i=68 {{DEFAULTSORT:Patterson, Ian 21st-century British male writers 1948 births Living people 21st-century British poets British male poets 20th-century British poets 20th-century British male writers French–English translators British translators 21st-century British non-fiction writers Alumni of Pembroke College, Cambridge Fellows of Queens' College, Cambridge