Red House

Overview

The ghosts and presences that flit about on the margins of people’s lives are evoked in Sasha Dugdale’s third collection of poetry. They are found at the edge of towns where superstores and allotments blur an older landscape, in Europe where emigrants leave their gods, their neighbors, and their memories, and across the chalk Downs of the poet’s native Sussex. Haunted by history and confronted by primal brutalities, these poems trace the ghosts’ shapes through folk song, lament, and lyric poetry while proclaiming the fierce, bright authenticity that is “all the proof we need that we’re alive.”

Reviews

"A beguiling and unusual debut, its best poems at once elusive, satisfying, and likely to go on being read." —Sean O’Brien, Times Literary Supplement, on Sasha Dugdale's previous collections

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

Author Biography

Sasha Dugdale initiated the Russian "New Writing" theater project with the Royal Court Theatre of London, for whom she has translated numerous Russian plays. She is the recipient of the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright, and a translation prize from the Stephen Spender Trust. She is the author of The Estate and Notebook.