Philip Terry

Philip Terry was born in Belfast, and is a translator, and a writer of fiction and poetry. He has translated the work of Georges Perec, Stéphane Mallarmé and Raymond Queneau, and is the author of the novel tapestry, shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. His poetry volumes include Oulipoems, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Dante’s Inferno, Quennets, and Dictator, a version of the Epic of Gilgamesh in Globish. He is the editor of The Penguin Book of Oulipo (Penguin Modern Classics, 2020), and the translator of Jean-Luc Champerret's Lascaux Notebooks (Carcanet, 2022), the first ever anthology of Ice Age poetry in English.

On Dante's Inferno:

"A Dante like no other." (London Review Bookshop)

"Hell as it is, and as it shall be." (Tom Raworth)

"The lineation speeds along at a nice articulated pace, the Dantesque pitch is right and propulsive, the cast of villains is energising, the balance between language and lingo, the allusive and the obscene just right... Berrigan the perfect shambling guide." (Seamus Heaney)

"It is brilliant... the pattern and rhythm very forceful and the lingo just stunning." (Marina Warner)

Author photo Alexander Kell