Shandying About the Place

Digressions   The Laurence Sterne Trust

Ian Duhig: Digressions

Lose your way at Shandy Hall in Coxwold this weekend, in an intriguing event with award-winning Leeds poet Ian Duhig.

Ian Duhig will be reading from his collection Digressions, which is inspired by Laurence Sterne’s 18th century shaggy-dog tale, The Life and Times of Tristram Shandy, one of the great comic novels of all time – and by Sterne’s home, Shandy Hall.

Digressions has already been nominated for a Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2014, an award which recognises innovation in poetry.

Duhig began working on the collection in collaboration with printmaker Philippa Troutman in 2013 to commemorate the tercentenary of Sterne’s birth. The aim of the project was to ‘Shandy about in’ the space and to form a creative response to the concept of getting lost.

‘Our idea,’ says Duhig, ‘was to celebrate both the legacy of Sterne’s novel and his home, with a rambling, creative engagement cunningly designed to resemble Tristram Shandy’s apparently random construction, but with genuinely directionless excursions. I felt particularly well qualified to undertake this task as I can get lost on a sofa.’

Ian Duhig lives in Leeds, from where he has written six books of poetry, won the Forward Best Poem Prize, the National Poetry Competition twice and been three times shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Don’t miss this intriguing event with an acclaimed poet.

Saturday 25 October, 3pm, Shandy Hall, Coxwold, North Yorkshire www.laurencesternetrust.org.uk

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