ISDAL by Susannah Dickey
Shortlisted for the 2023 Forward Prize for Best First Collection
The much-anticipated debut poetry collection from acclaimed novelist Susannah Dickey, on the subject of our cultural obsession with true crime.
ISDAL is a timely interrogation of the true crime genre. In the first of its three parts, we follow the flirty co-presenters of a podcast about the mystery of 'Isdal Woman', whose burnt remains were discovered in Norway in 1970 and who has never been identified.
At the centre of the book is an inquiry into our perennial obsession with female victims, sexiness, and death: ‘The death in question has already occurred’, the poet observes, ‘has occurred to someone sufficiently abstract as to allow us to romp gainfully, guilelessly, guiltlessly through a simulacrum of death’s corridors’.
The free verse poems in the final section both explore and – perhaps inevitably – enact the ethical ambiguities of the genre. Witty, excoriating, formally ingenious, ISDAL marks the arrival of a thrilling talent in contemporary poetry.
About the Author
Susannah Dickey is a poet and novelist from Derry and the author of four pamphlets, I had some very slight concerns; genuine human values; bloodthirsty for marriage; and Oh!. Her poems have been published in The Poetry Review, The TLS, Poetry London, and Poetry Ireland Review, amongst others. She is an Eric Gregory Award winner, a prize granted for a collection by poets under the age of thirty. Susannah is the author of two novels, Tennis Lessons and Common Decency. ISDAL is her debut poetry collection.
Praise for ISDAL
'a poet of tremendous imaginative range, artistic vision, and accomplishment'
- Kayo Chingonyi, author of A Blood Condition
Susannah Dickey’s bloodthirsty for marriage made me think of Alice Notley in its urgency and playfulness. But Dickey is more surreal, more vivid; there are more dead gerbils. These are poems that scorch the earth with their originality and then write out of the ashes.
- Will Harris
A rare talent, and certainly one to watch.
- The Sunday Times
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Date Published: 14 Sep 2023
Paperback, 128 pgs.
ISBN: 9781035015054
