bandit country

<p><b>SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 T.S. ELIOT PRIZE <br><br>SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 JOHN POLLARD FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL POETRY PRIZE</b><br><br><i>bandit country</i>, the much-anticipated debut collection from James Conor Patterson, is a rollicking, hyper-literate and at times deeply troubling account of a young man&rsquo;s navigation of the semi-lawless borderlands between the north of Ireland and the Republic &ndash; the &lsquo;bandit country&rsquo; of the Troubles &ndash; and the criss-crossed sea border to England and beyond. Patterson shows us how the militarised boundary line of old has morphed into an invisible and semi-wild frontier, where the ghosts of a thirty-year war continue to haunt the &lsquo;ceasefire generation&rsquo;.<br><br>Patterson writes in a hybrid dialect of Newry street and Scots and Irish-inflected English &ndash; and in a virtuosic variety of forms: these poems cr