Deformations

By Sasha Dugdale

Shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Poetry Prize 2021

Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2020

An Observer Book of the Year 2020

Deformations includes two large-scale works related in their preoccupation with biographical and mythical narrative. 'Welfare Handbook' explores the life and art of Eric Gill, the well-known English letter cutter, sculptor and cultural figure, who is known to have sexually abused his daughters. The poem draws on material from Gill's letters, diaries, notes and essays as part of a lyrical exploration of the conjunction between aesthetics, subjectivity and violence. 'Pitysad' is a series of simultaneously occurring fragments composed around themes and characters from Homer's Odyssey. It considers how trauma is disguised and deformed through myth and art. Acting as a bridge between these two works is a series of individual poems on the creation and destruction of cultural and mythical conventions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Nov 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781784108991

Sasha Dugdale

 Sasha Dugdale is a poet, writer and translator. She has published five collections of poems with Carcanet Press, most recently  Deformations  in 2020. She won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2016 and in 2017 she was awarded a Cholmondeley Prize for Poetry. She is former editor of  Modern Poetry in Translation  and is poet-in-residence at St John’s College, Cambridge (2018-2021). 

Book preview

SASHA DUGDALE

Deformations

for the insignificant

contents

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Girl and Hare

welfare handbook

‘A female peacock…’

‘Wondering about a sign…’

‘Think of a utopian city…’

‘At the same time…’

‘Why add to the shimmering…’

an experiment

‘skivvies are always open…’

‘sex with…’

‘angelus at 6…’

Me as Bride of Christ at St George’s

Sexual Antinomianism

‘mental breakdown is often…’

Direct Carving

‘White poplars…’

‘Lawks…’

One x for Mary and xx for May

An Interview with the Keeper

‘Eyes averted…’

Translations

‘Why do perpetual motion machines…’

headland

Headland

Pigment

Rosaries in the Sand

Eternal Feminine

Dark Matter

Golden Age

The Last Day of Your Childhood

The Transported

Temple Song

Intimacy

Odysseus Welcomed From the Sea by Nausicaa

pitysad

Dream of Odysseus

‘Penelope, lying awake…’

‘Our shadows are as long…’

Dream of a Little West

behind enemy lines

The Shadow Prince

Salt and Lies

‘In the green marble…’

R&R

‘A lad barebacked…’

Stripclub

The Stranger

Memorial

War Crimes

Last Resort

Penelope’s Dream

Shadow People

‘pitysad man…’

Pitysad

‘sweating in my nightrobe…’

The Fall of the Rebel Angels

Notes & Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Sasha Dugdale

Copyright

it can feel wrong

  that it never is doves

    themselves impassively

      writing of doves…

— from alphabet by Inger Christensen, translated by Susanna Nied

girl and hare

There was once a girl and she had a hare

as a pet. It was so long and brown and soft.

It stretched its body next to hers on the sunlounger

where she lay in her oversized sunglasses,

little and freckled. The hare had the tautness of game

its hindquarters were round and solid

but she could nest its paws in her hand

ring them with her fingers as a poacher might

but tenderly.

When the sun was bright she could see through

the hare’s hindlegs,

its thin skin, thrown hurriedly over bone and tendon,

the light pulsed red and sombre as if the hare

itself contained

a small convex sun like a red blood cell.

Hare had a narrow breast like hers, rosed with fur,

and little childish shoulders

but forearms like a strong man’s,

the sinews and fibres twanging

soundlessly

as it shifted.

Now it lay still, although hares never sleep, its lip moving

gently and its amber eyes

waxing and waning.

It lowered its lids, for a moment it looked sly, knowing.

Hare is apparently drowsing. The girl removes her glasses,

places them on hare’s face

and closes her eyes.

This is hare’s moment: as long as her, and as old.

welfare handbook

A female peacock would be a monstrosity

what shape would it assume? How hard it is

to envisage a building that goes up and up.

When I write about this, shall I bang my fist

on the pound of paper to puncture it

or shall I gradually entrap my subject

with words written in mucus and the outgoings,

in discharge, in dirty things like cleaning cloths,

retreating onto the sands of flirtation

where masculinity is exhausted

prickled by marram and saltbush

dragging the long shaft of his cross.

Wondering about a sign here, shall I pick

a cross with four decorative dots to signify

face to