Shenanigans is the highly-anticipated second collection by award-winning poet Patrick Lodge. From the Irish sionnachuighim, meaning “I play the fox,” ‘shenanigans’ can be found throughout this cleverly crafted collection – in wry remark and delicate wordplay, in the interweaving of distinct landscapes and voices. At once familiar and strange, Lodge’s poems are rich in detail and narrative – astute observations that transport the reader to a whole new world with each turn of the page.


'In rich, muscular language, Patrick Lodge transports us from the familiar world of Roger the Dodger and a spa pool aqua aerobics class to distant shores: Italy, Vietnam, Cambodia, Anglesey, Australia. In these observant, evocative poems he sketches whole worlds in his confident free verse.'
— Carole Bromley

‘From the local baths to the Berlin Wall, to Greece, Africa and Saigon, in this collection Patrick Lodge rounds up the precise, scattered moments that make us all human.'
— Oz Hardwick

'Patrick Lodge writes beautifully about the edges of humanity, the borders, the places where humans become animals … a fascinating journey.'
— Brendan McCormack

'Here is bedrock precision; words chosen with thought, not for effect; because they are ‘right’ words... The poet’s craft is everywhere admirable, and the content is equally so.'
— Wendy Klein, The High Window

Paperback temporarily out of stock.

Patrick Lodge is a keen traveller. This is not, though, a book of travel poems; in his first collection, the Yorkshire- based poet uses the dislocation produced by travel to reflect his own displacements of growing up, family life and adult relationships – his own search for a “home” that might be lived in comfortably and at ease.

His prizewinning poems – which have been published in magazines and anthologies in England, Wales, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and the USA – are enjoyable for their relish of language and their generous sense of what poetry can accommodate and achieve. The great subject of this collection is memory; in service of this, the author displays a masterful ability to step backwards and forwards across the world, and through history. As we journey from Australia to Ireland to Italy, from the late 19th century to the 1950s and into the present, Patrick and the reader are brought back time and again to the only question that matters – how am I different from when I started off?

This is a book of two halves, and many journeys. The first part sends us throughout the world and across history, finding the poetry in James Joyce's short-lived cinema, Dana Scully's oarless rowboat, the Cerasi Chapel, a Hindu temple, the Cardiff Mod scene and a Bowie-singing log delivery man – all painted with Lodge's trademark understated humour, striking imagery and careful observation.

The second part is a lengthy sequence responding to Captain James Cook’s first voyage aboard the Endeavour. Not a work of biography, or a history, this is an effort to capture the imaginative power of Cook’s journey into the unknown through a squint view of his companions, the cultures he encountered and the events which unfolded. As a whole, Remarkable Occurrences is a deeply impressive literary achievement which will leave a lasting impression on all those who encounter it.


“Lodge at his best – finely observed moments, images to die for, and an assured tone throughout. A work for our times.” Will Kemp

“A tour de force … part threnody, part celebration, it is a remarkable achievement.” Hannah Stone

“A unique combination of the cerebral and the lyrical, which will reward the reader again and again.” Wendy Klein

“A master of the closely observed and understated … poems to be savoured.” Mick Corrigan