
Pattern-book
Eireann Lorsung(Author)
Carcanet Poetry (Publisher)
Published on 29. May 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
108 pages
978-1-80017-485-6 (ISBN)
Description
Jon McGregor writes: 'In these wonderful, breath-stopping and heart-enlarging poems, Eireann Lorsung asks only that we pay close attention - to the text, to the world, to the way the world becomes note by note the text - while she pays close attention alongside us. These are poems conducted at ground level, at walking pace, attentive to the changing of the light, of the seasons, of the certainties we thought we were growing up with. Here are poems about the American Midwest, the English midlands, the low country of Flanders; about flax, fieldfares, rivers, fathers and brothers, lovers, fabrics, sewing, sowing, grammar, bicycles, umbrellas, rain and snow, fading light, damp houses, tea, gardens, glass jars, distance, language, breath, touch, and the strangeness of metaphor. These are poems to attend to, return to, and share with the community of readers who either already adore Eireann Lorsung's work or are about to discover it.'
Threaded through with filaments of others' poems - from Gerard Manley Hopkins to Emily Dickinson to Gwendolyn Brooks - Pattern-book's sonnets, couplets, quatrains and invented forms draw on family life, art history, grief, time and the natural world. Woven of recurring images, Lorsung's delight in form brings pattern to vivid life.
Threaded through with filaments of others' poems - from Gerard Manley Hopkins to Emily Dickinson to Gwendolyn Brooks - Pattern-book's sonnets, couplets, quatrains and invented forms draw on family life, art history, grief, time and the natural world. Woven of recurring images, Lorsung's delight in form brings pattern to vivid life.
Reviews / Votes
'In her vibrant and stirring UK debut, Lorsung offers a mesmerising portrait of the silent patterns that paint our world. From the sprinkle of snow across a sidewalk to the scatter of crumbs on a tablecloth, each metaphor in this collection unfolds like a mural, deliciously rich in colour, texture and tone.'Jade Cuttle, The Observer 'Her technical pattern-book is far from rigidly formal: the shaping of poems is a larger enterprise, though disciplined, and the patterning of her own world, present and past, expresses itself in a multiplicity of images that connect across geographical space and time, childhood, family, landscape.'
Carol Rumens, The Guardian
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Carcanet Press Ltd
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 134 mm
Thickness: 8 mm
Weight
91 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-80017-485-6 (9781800174856)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Person
Eireann Lorsung was born and grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She works and teaches in a field of images, objects, movement and texts. Her collections include Music for Landing Planes By, Her book, and The Century (Milkweed Editions). She moved to Ireland in 2022 to teach writing at University College Dublin.
Photo credit Ann Bartges, 2024
Photo credit Ann Bartges, 2024