Sasha Dugdale and Olivia McCannon
Through performance and conversation, writers and Old Members Sasha Dugdale and Olivia McCannon will explore their latest books of poetry. The Lives of Z and The Strongbox look backwards and forwards across millennia of human existence, imagining what was or is, what could or will be there.
Both books work with existing materials, exploring the role of myth and cultural inheritance in shaping contemporary human stories of the past or future, whose impact on the present may be felt but not seen.
Both writers are also literary translators and they will discuss how the craft of translation guides their creative work.
Sasha Dugdale is a poet and translator. Her sixth book of poetry, The Strongbox, was published by Carcanet in 2024 and won the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award and was shortlisted for the London Hellenic Prize. The Irish Times said about it: ‘the elegance of Dugdale’s writing is a finely tuned counterpoint to the darkness of the stories being told in highly visual, propulsive imagery, which blurs time across millenniums.’ Deformations (2020) was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot and Derek Walcott Prizes. Her long poem ‘Joy’ was awarded a Forward Prize in 2016. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Olivia McCannon’s first poetry collection, Exactly My Own Length (Carcanet), won the Fenton Aldeburgh Prize and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize. Her latest poetry books are Beauty and Beast (Design for Today 2023) with artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins, and The Lives of Z (Pavilion Poetry 2025). Poetry Review: ‘…it’s easy to imagine The Lives of Z joining Inger Christensen’s alphabet (1981) as an essential text of ecopoetry for years to come.’ Works from The Afterlives of Z, a series of mixed media ‘decompositions’ with visual and sound art, have so far appeared in galleries and events in London, Liverpool, Galway and Bienne, Switzerland.
