My Father the Dog

Andrew Fitzsimons was born in Dublin, and is a poet, translator and academic. He has published three volumes of poetry, What the Sky Arranges (2013), A Fire in the Head (2014), and The Sunken Keep (2017), all from Isobar Press. His translation Basho: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Basho was published by the University of California Press in 2022, and received the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Work of Literary Translation (Honorable Mention) from the MLA in 2023. His study of Thomas Kinsella, The Sea of Disappointment, was published by UCD Press (2008), and he edited Thomas Kinsella: Prose Occasions 1951-2006 (Carcanet, 2009). He is a Professor of English at Gakushuin University, Tokyo.

'Fitzsimons brings technical brilliance to bear on haunted events. The narrative radiates imagery outwards into the arcane; at the same time the form encloses the energy of each haiku tight as an atom. We're left with a fierce kinetic energy unlike anything I can remember reading. Eerie and absorbing, My Father the Dog is a stunning poetic achievement.'Eoin McNamee'My Father the Dog is a brilliant, daring and original poem by a truly outstanding poet and translator.'David Peace