Claudia Rankine described the poems in Alsadir’s first book as 'lawless,' ‘provocative, and 'heart-breaking' as they converse from the inside out… come alive in the back and forth of a mind attempting to understand what it means to be in relation to. ’Fourth Person Singular continues to blow open the relationship between self and world in a working through of lyric shame, bending poetic form through fragment, lyric essay, aphorisms mined from the unconscious, and pop-up associations, to explore the complexities, congruities, disturbances - as well as the beauty - involved in self-representation in language. As unexpected as it is bold, Alsadir's ambitious tour de force demands we pay new attention to the current conversation about the nature of lyric – and human relationships – in the 21st century.
She talks to psychoanalyst and writer Josh Cohen about poetry, dreams, shame and related topics.
Praise for Fourth Person Singular:
‘To read Fourth Person Singular is to fall in love – that’s all I can say to capture the experience of being so scarily and exhilaratingly close to someone else’s thoughts on every vital page. Alsadir’s work is, as ever, full of astute observations and insights driven by a deep intellect, alive to the world and our fears, pressures, dreams and ideas. But there’s something greater here too: a unity of form and content, process and delivery which transfigures the conceptual and the lyric. I don't remember the last time I've read something which is at once so alive and so vigorously smart and ambitious; uniquely self-aware, caustically funny whilst constantly generous and compassionate. The rare joy of a writer finding the exact form for their voice and their mission. Essential reading.’
--Luke Kennard
'Fourth Person Singular is poetry that is neither verse nor exactly prose poetry, but aphorism, perception, quotation, annotation, a squeezing between the gaps in the windows and doorways of experience seeking for air. It is more than its pieces: it is a whole that is a form of understanding. It is that whole that is the complex and revelatory poem.'
--George Szirtes
Lacan: The Unconscious Reinvented
What about Me? The struggle for identity in a market-based society
Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst
The Construction of Memory 1: Alasdair Hopwood and Fiona Gabbert
Charms and Other Anxious Objects
Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness
Lacan: In Spite of Everything
Freud’s cancer and its influence on his theories
Out of Time: The Pleasures and Perils of Ageing
Mad, Bad and Sad
The Private Life: Why we Remain in the Dark
Psychoanalysis and Religion
The Psychodynamics of Social Networking
Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran
Shakespeare and Psychoanalysis
Football as Therapy
’Missing Out’ Author’s Talk: Adam Phillips with Lisa Appignanesi
Fashion and Psychoanalysis: Styling the Self
In Treatment: Fact and Fiction
All About Love - what can psychoanalysis tell us?
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