James Patterson

James Conor Patterson is a writer from Newry, Co. Down. His debut poetry collection 'bandit country' (Picador, 2022) was recently nominated for the TS Eliot Award and the John Pollard International Poetry Prize.

Book Of The Week: Poet Tim MacGabhann's ode to Rory Gallagher

In an era when the very craft of writing looks in danger of either appeasing the lowest common denominator or appealing to preset tastes determined by algorithms...

Book Of The Week • 02 Mar

Book Of The Week: Matthew Rice's remarkable poems about work

Set during a single twelve-hour night shift in a factory, plastic is a book-length poem exploring the life of the industrial worker turned poet.

Book Of The Week • 28 Feb

Why Seamus Heaney remains Ireland's greatest poet

It is little over 12 years since Ireland lost a man considered by many its greatest ever poet

Books • 10 Oct 25

Book Of The Week: New Arcana by Jessica Traynor

One of the most remarkable things about Jessica Traynor's New Arcana is how successfully it manages to evoke the expansive honesty at the heart of John Berryman's 1969 masterwork The Dream Songs.

Book Of The Week • 29 Sep 25

Book Of The Week: We Used to Dance Here by Dave Tynan

In his influential trilogy of science fiction novels published between 1984 and 1988, American author William Gibson imagined a future in which the exponential growth of cities along the east coast of the United States would eventually lead to a 'Sprawl'

Book Of The Week • 05 Sep 25

Book Of The Week: The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine

When John William De Forest coined the 'Great American Novel' in 1868, he anticipated a work which had the ability communicate the tableau of contemporary living through "the ordinary emotions and manners of American existence".

Book Of The Week • 20 Oct 25