Publisher Description

In "Red House", her third collection, Sasha Dugdale evokes the ghosts and presences that flit about on the margins of our lives. She finds them at the edge of towns where superstores and allotments blur an older landscape, in Europe where emigrants leave their gods, their neighbours, their memories 'jettisoned like old clothes'; and across the chalk Downs of her native Sussex. She traces the shapes that they leave through folk song, lament and lyric poetry. Haunted by history, confronted by primal brutalities, the poems in "Red House" proclaim the fierce, bright authenticity that is 'all the proof we need that we're alive'.

Notes

These lyric poems are infused with the atmosphere of Russia.

Author Biography

Sasha Dugdale was born in Sussex. Between 1995 and 2000 she lived and worked in Russia. In 1999 she initiated the Russian theatre New Writing project with the Royal Court theatre, London, for whom she translated numerous Russian plays. Her translation of Plasticine by Vassily Sigarev won the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright in 2002, and in 2004 she won a Stephen Spender translation prize for versions of poems by Elena Shvarts.

Review

"Sasha Dugdale is a poet of great subtlety and rare formal resource." Paul Batchelor, "North"

Long Description

In "Red House", her third collection, Sasha Dugdale evokes the ghosts and presences that flit about on the margins of our lives. She finds them at the edge of towns where superstores and allotments blur an older landscape, in Europe where emigrants leave their gods, their neighbours, their memories 'jettisoned like old clothes'; and across the chalk Downs of her native Sussex. She traces the shapes that they leave through folk song, lament and lyric poetry. Haunted by history, confronted by primal brutalities, the poems in "Red House" proclaim the fierce, bright authenticity that is 'all the proof we need that we're alive'.

Review Quote

"Sasha Dugdale is a poet of great subtlety and rare formal resource."

Details