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.

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

First published July 30, 2020

About the author

Sasha Dugdale is a poet and translator. She has published five collections of poetry with Carcanet (UK), the most recent, Deformations, is shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. She is a translator of Russian drama and poetry, including work by Elena Shvarts, Maria Stepanova and Marina Tsvetaeva, and former editor of the international magazine Modern Poetry in Translation.

Reviews

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

It's been a difficult one this is the second collection today in no small part about child sexual abuse. Sasha is an ultratalent she has such an idea of where she is per line per line. It's deafening in a way. There's no getting over the poem which opens 'sex with children upsets us /More than it used to'.

A collection in three sections - Welfare Handbook, concerning the sculptor and abuser. Headland. Pitysad, a re-trace of the Odyssey & its women.

I love The Fall of the Rebel Angels


But there's such an uplift to this collection too -
for you the mysteries will be rewritten

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of poems, divided into three main sections and bookend by two unattached poems.

Like a lot of the poetry I have read this isn't an easy read.

The first section, in particular, 'Welfare Handbook' I found hard to get my head around, until almost the end and then I re-read it all with a little more understanding. This isn't a complaint by the way. I don't think everything should be easy. There's a place in everyone's reading life for the simple and the difficult; the clear and the opaque. 'Welfare Handbook' is about Eric Gill, the sculptor and letter cutter who also sexually abused both of his daughters.

The second section 'Headland', I found easier to understand and loved the language. 'Pigment' I really liked. There was something about that poem that got really under the skin, even if I can't entirely explain why. It is the way a tune or a piece of abstract art can affect you emotionally but you can't always put your finger on what it is that is doing that to you. Perhaps an academic could tell you what is being done that touches you, but I sometimes feel about analyzing poetry like whoever it was that said analyzing comedy is like dissecting a frog: 'no one is interested, and the frog dies.'

The final section, 'Pitysad', was for me the strongest and best. A series of poems built around the stories of the Odyessy, but framed for a more modern setting - it could be Syria or the former Yugoslavia as much as ancient Greece. There's a real power to this section. Penelope's experience is uglier, the impact of war less heroic, and the maleness of things exposed. Homer's stories are of a particular time, but war is timeless. How one frames these stories matters. No one suggests not reading Homer, but neither should he - if there was an individual called Homer - be left to be the final word.

Overall I found this a fascinating collection. It isn't always easy, but it is worth reading.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I have a febrile energy for undoing endings”. Sasha Dugdale does not play around, not one bit — Deformations, her most recent poetry collection, published just last year, is a striking array of poems on facets of trauma and ideas of narrative construction. From poems which explore the well-known English letter cutter who sexually abused his daughters, to a wild simultaneous sequence reimagining the story of Odysseus and Penelope through dreamy fragments, this collection is continually sharp, breathtaking, haunting. “They are the eternal / feminine, to be walked over, and in and under, they are heaven, / they are rifle ranges, and rusting tanks”, Dugdale writes; elsewhere, “and where was that prize, that prize / he was promised all those years ago / when he was driven by the fates / into the arms of time”. To read these poems is to allow yourself to be held + cracked open at once, to be affected beyond expectation or reason; particularly in two of the final poems, ‘Pitysad’ and ‘sweating in my nightrobe...’, Dugdale achieves a level of mastery that is simply stunning, “clutching pomegranates”, “insignificant but I am not a myth I am an existence and I am so full of love”. At times swaggering, radiating strength and resolve (“First among femmes / Or slut without shame”), this is a collection of depth and grace unlike many others.

[Ben Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the editing and translating of Sasha Dugdale so I was keen to read more of her work. I had read and appreciated Red House, whilst not exactly loving it.

This feels in some ways both an easier and harder collection to get to grips with. There are three sections with the first one and last one being long poem sequences and the middle being just some strong self contained shorter poems.

There was much that was amazing here but also something in both of the longer sequences that went over my head, perhaps because I wasnt picking up on enough of the references. I can see myself revisiting them perhaps with a bit of internet sleuthing backing it up.

Might even rise to 5 stars but a bit off that from my first reading.

[Shuchi]

I haven't read anything quite like Dugdale. These poems feel like reading about real and perceived public and private secrets, that feel a bit safer being out in the open at different times. Her voice is gentle, has a redness of urgency to it, which is bolder in the latter half of the collection. Some of my favorites were Odysseus Welcomed From the Sea By Nausicaa, Pigment, The Last Day of Your Childhood, Intimacy.

[J.S. Watts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nuanced and thought provoking.

[Fin · Rating 5 out of 5]

utterly excellent. i stumbled across 'dark matter' online and just had to read the rest of the collection. easily one of my favorite recent poetry collections!

[Kristiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 4.5 for most of it but the excellence of the Pitysad sequence of poems about Odysseus and Penelope tipped into a full five stars for me.