Vicarious Trauma
Ian Parker Dodd
ISBN 9781916919617
 
‘Ian Parker Dodd was born two months before Dunkirk into a world that had long confused violence with virtue . . . Vicarious Trauma is an extraordinary hybrid work – part lyric memoir, part poem sequence, part reckoning with inherited trauma. It is also, quietly, a book about kindness: how hard it is to learn, how easy to lose, and why it might need to be practised like a martial art.’
(Adam Cairns, chair of Ledbury Poetry.)

‘After I finished reading Vicarious Trauma: Lessons on the Way of the Sword I felt as though I’d been sitting next to Ian Parker-Dodd while he told me his life story, the strength and warmth of his voice coming through every page. This memoir is an exceptionally humane and moving reflection on masculinity, the cultural and personal context of how boys become men and the possibilities for change . . . The inventively fragmentary structure allows the reader to become completely engaged by his stories, written in descriptive prose, poetry and factual recall, all infused with an acute and perceptive reflection which is unflinching about himself and the society we inhabit . . . .
‘This memoir is full of a hard-earned wisdom. We are lucky that Ian Parker-Dodd is such a marvellously engaging writer that he is able to give us the opportunity to benefit from his experiences. The kind, yet exacting teacher that he has clearly always been, invites us to think about life in all its glorious complexity. Everyone should read it.’
(Alicia Stubbersfieild, retired senior lecturer in creative writing)