Dr Ian Seed is a Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader on the BA Creative Writing course. His book of prose poems, New York Hotel, (the final volume of a trilogy published by Shearsman Books) was chosen by poet and academic Mark Ford as his Book of the Year. Writing in the TLS, Mark said: “I greatly enjoyed the latest collection of Ian Seed’s beautifully crafted prose poems, New York Hotel (Shearsman); Seed’s micro-narratives and oblique parables are at once droll and haunting, as unpredictable as quicksand, and as elegant as the work of those masters of the prose poem, Max Jacob and Pierre Reverdy (both of whom Seed has translated).”
Dr Seed said: “It was early on a Monday morning when my colleagues Professor Alan Wall and Dr Ashley Chantler gave me the news that New York Hotel had been selected as a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year. I thought at first it was a joke until Alan took me to his car, picked up the TLS from the front seat, opened it, and showed me. That was an incredible way to start the week, and I still can’t quite believe it now.
“I owe infinite thanks to my editor and publisher, Tony Frazer of Shearsman Books. I would also like to thank Mark Ford of the TLS for his perceptive mini-review, and to express my appreciation to my colleagues in the English Department for their support.”
Dr Ian Seed has lived and worked in different countries, including Italy, France and Poland. He is a poet, critic, fiction writer, editor and translator. His poetry, prose poetry, fiction, reviews and translations have appeared in such journals as Blackbox Manifold, Free Verse, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, The North, PN Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Poetry Wales, Shearsman, Stride and Tears in the Fence. It has also been featured in a number of anthologies, including The Best Small Fictions 2017 (Braddock Avenue Books), The Forward Book of Poetry 2017 (Faber & Faber), and The Best British Poetry 2014 (Salt).
Dr Seed was also longlisted (top 10) for an international book prize last year – the Best Translated Book Award for Poetry 2017 (BTBA) - for The Thief of Talant, the first translation into English of the French poet Pierre Reverdy’s Le Voleur de Talan.
New York Hotel, by Dr Ian Seed and published by Shearsman Books, can be bought directly from the publishers, or from many of the well-known bookselling websites.
