Tuesday, February 04, 2025

Dream Diary Tuesday 4 February 1975

Tuesday 4 February 1975 

Dreamt of there being TWO me’s. As in ‘William Wilson’ by Poe. Also Lee Harwood admonished me.

Saturday, February 01, 2025

And now more prose is published in International Times (and I reflect on that too).

It never rains but it pours. This morning, I posted about my new prose pieces on Litter, which led me into a consideration of the varieties of non-fiction and non-non-fiction prose I have produced, with lots of links to online examples. That post may be read here: Pages: Three pieces of prose in Litter. Are they prose poems or not? In short, I back away ambivalently from the term ‘prose poetry’. 

As if in answer, but actually in further complication, I’ve had another prose piece published in International Times. Again, I must thank poetry editor Rupert Loydell for including this piece. It is entitled ‘A Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie’. It's a piece written during the ceremony for the King’s Coronation last year (was it?). In a way it continues the tone of the last poem in British Standards; in another way it doesn’t. It is not based on sonnets, it is in prose, and it is a wild piece of satire, slightly more narrative than the pieces in Litter.  

It may be read here: A Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie | IT.

I’ve sat on the piece for some while because the (not my) King has been receiving cancer treatment, and I thought the gesture potentially dubious. I had the same problem with the sonnets of British Standards when Bo(ris Johnson) was in hospital with Covid. If either of them had succumbed to illness (in a fatal sort of way) my poetry (or prose) would be buggered. Both recovered – and literary product may be released into the world without fear. So, roll on Britanocles the Great and Good (lines borrowed from Davenant, as lines were borrowed from Marvell; guess which poem of his? Hint below!).



My previous contribution to International Times may be read here (not prose, a poem about Ukraine and Gaza), with links to all the other writings I have published there, for which I am grateful. Pages: 'Pretend-sleep' published in International Times. There’s a video there, too.    

Three pieces of prose in Litter. Are they prose poems or not?

I’m very pleased that three pieces have been published by Litter: see here: 

Robert Sheppard - Three Prose-Poems | Litter

They seem to work quite well together, though ‘The Wager’ was written after the other two, which belong to a cluster of prose pieces called ‘The Weekend of Miracles’, but ‘The Wager’ seems not out of place here. You’ll notice that the pieces are dubbed ‘Prose-Poems’, which both in my critical work (particularly with reference to the prose used by Roy Fisher and Lee Harwood) and in any delineation of my own work, is a term I’ve resisted. No, more than that: I don’t use it; I don’t see much use for it. I know the term is terribly popular at the moment, and there seems to be a lot of formal heart-searching, but I find this odd. I have simply thought of them as ‘poems’ or as ‘prose’ but never as the verbal hybrid. ‘The Ship’s Orchestra’ by Roy Fisher, or ‘The Old Bosham Birdwatch’ by Lee Harwood, or my own ‘Sudley’ (see below) seem to be ‘at home’ without the term, however unlocatable. I’m sure there is a phenomenological difference between reading a block of prose and a lineated poem, but I’m not sure what it is. In the late 1990s I wrote a kind of ‘lineated prose’ (as I called it), and both before that date (and after) I’ve written prose works like ‘The Cannibal Club’ and ‘Mesopotamia’ which are in prose (though they have an element of narrativity (and, at times, narrative) in them); but ‘Sudley’ (for example) doesn’t, and it’s sparing in these three new pieces, I think. Narrative is not the deciding factor, if one is needed, because my ‘verse-novel’ (out in November) can carry such things, and so does many a poem.

Nobody has commented much on my prose (I’m not talking about obvious non-fiction or fiction, of course), but I think there is something different from ‘poems’, by which I am knowingly, knottily, contradicting myself.

Healthily inconclusive as these remarks are, it just remains for me to thank Alan Baker for publishing this trio in Litter, and to point to online examples of, and references to, my past prose practices!    

[Note: see this post form tomorrow, as it were, in response to yet another and, again different, kind of prose being published, in International Times this time: Pages: And now more prose is published in International Times (and I reflect on that too) .]

My book of prose Unfinish, published by Veer is still available, and I describe it here (in academic terms):

Pages: My REF statement describing my Veer volume UNFINISH

I advertise it here, and indicate how it may be purchased:

Pages: Robert Sheppard New Book Out: Unfinish - prose from Veer Books

Some examples from the book itself appeared in Otoliths here:

https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2015/01/robert-sheppard.html

And here’s the last state of my prose ‘Sudley’ which may one day be restored to its place in Unfinish:

Pages: Robert Sheppard: Sudley (remode of Sudley House)

An example of the 1990s lineated prose may be read here, ‘The Sacred Tanks of Dagenham’ from Twentieth Century Blues:

Pages: Robert Sheppard: The Sacred Tanks of Dagenham (re: History or Sleep, Selected Poems

An early example (printed here without italics) from the 1980s is the first two parts of ‘Schrage Musik’ from The Flashlight Sonata:

Pages: Schrage Musik (1986) - for my father.

 

Words Out of Time is narrative, but still not prose poetry: Buy Words Out of Time here.

And there is a supplement to its last part, ‘Work’, here:
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2018/09/work-from-words-out-of-time-2017.html

Enjoy your poetry, prose, prose-poetry, and pieces, whatever you call them!

Dream Diary Saturday 1 February 1975

Saturday 1 February 1975 

Dopedream

Felt I was at home. Still do. Dream – reading paper. Picture of 20 year old beauty student (she was good looking) with a shot in her hand posing at a London football ground with Battersea Power Station in background. (Perhaps Tower of London too.) She was entry for putting the shot. ‘Millwall aren’t going to be too pleased!’ it commented.

Report in paper: Professor Bigsby will be teaching in Germany for a while and will be paid x francs and y marks. But as nobody knows what the exchange rate will be, nobody writing knows what he’ll be paid! Ha ha.


An introduction to the diary may be read here: Pages: Dream Diary 1975 Introduction to the project

Friday, January 31, 2025

Dream Diary Friday 31 January 1975

Friday 31 January 1975 

Got told off by Chris for not writing to him.

Thursday, January 30, 2025

Launch of Paul Robert Mullen's It's All Come Down to This, support and Q and A by me (set list)


The reading advertised above in Southport was to launch Paul's book. I wrote the introduction and I chaired a Q and A about the volume, and also read a short 10 minute set, along with others (including Alan Parry, the book's publisher, who read a long poem on masculinity, and Mary Earnshaw, a local poet, reading her 'conversations' with Leonard Cohen).  

I write about my Introduction (and therefore about the book!) here Pages: it's all come down to this by Paul Robert Mullen is out, with an introduction by me. and here: Pages: On a passage of Lutz Seiler and a lift from Billy Mills

Paul's book may be purchased here: it's all come down to this: a retrospective [selected poems & writings 1999-2024] - Paul Robert Mullen - The Broken Spine.


The venue, Royales, is a little gem in Southport and the vibe felt positive. Paul read well and our Q and A seemed to be coherent. We discussed how he felt about having such a big book out of 25 years' work. I particularly wanted to ask him about something I noticed, and commented upon in my introduction, about the clarity and imagistic acuity of his work and its contrary pull to withdrawal, leaving gaps for the reader, etc., and I quoted this enigmatic passage about poets from his 'Preface': 'Often wrapped up in webs of our own doing, we seek to unravel ourselves with explanations that, often, we're not prepared to deliver with any sort of direct and immediately decipherable intention.' I'm not sure we plumbed the depths of this one, but the importance of travel for his writing, the importance of music (and his knowing the difference between a poem and a song-lyric) followed. I noted that the prose pieces in the book move from being vignettes to short stories, and asked (offhand) whether he is writing a novel. He is! I was surprised to hear. A crazily-processed pic of our talk:




I read a short set, featuring the final poems in British Standards. 




As I read I indicated that I had serial problems stopping writing the book (the force of the political madness I was writing about) which is why the poem 'To Laughter' is followed by a section called 'After Laughter' which features the poems 'Afterword', 'After Image', 'Aftershock', and finally finally finally 'After Sheppard After Shelley: England in 2022', which got the book done!


 Here's a video (not from last night!) of me reading 'After Image'. 


The various stages of the 'ending' of the book may be read about; it's quite a journey, and pretty funny as I try to divest my work of Bo(ris Johnson) in a number of posts on this blog. Unlike some of my work, the whole book was revealed as I progressed on these 'Pages'. Here's a few of the 'endings': for to end yet again!

The first is here: I said goodbye to Bo(ris), here, with a poem:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2022/08/final-extra-last-poem-of-english-strain.html

The second here:

Pages: Goodbye to Bo through the Medium of Jake Thackray’s masterpiece (not a book review) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

And then, here, finally, finally finally, here here here: Pages: Robert Sheppard: A final final poem for British Standards! But, of course, it wasn't the final final. I think this is:

Pages: The Horrible Thought that Bo mioght be back: only The Bard could save me now! Though I do leave open a fourth book of sonnets if Bo ever returns to frontline politics. Good help us, we've enough with convicted felon Trump at the moment.

I had to leave to catch the train (and bus) to get home and thus missed the music. I think Paul played. He also has an album on the way. Talented lad, that Paul. A good friend, and for the record, a former MA student in Creative Writing at Edge Hill where I taught him. He was part of a cohort where nearly everybody was a Dylan fan and a whole load of us went to see The Man at the (then) Echo Arena. Paul recommends the new film.  

Oh, and here's a report on the first Broken Spine reading, in March 2020, days before the lockdown. That seemed a different world, and here's a glimpse of it: Pages: Robert Sheppard: The Broken Spine reading, Southport (set list).


Dream Diary Thursday 30 January 1975

Thursday 30 January 1975 

Dreamt that bloke next door (Lennon, N40 [student block, Norwich]) smiled and I talked to him. I was selling things.

[Years later he’s the model for the political neighbour in my short story ‘Love Life’. See 'The Only Life' by Robert Sheppard (41 pages) | Knives Forks and Spo]

Monday, January 27, 2025

Dream Diary Monday 27 January 1975

 Monday 27 January 1975

David, Me, and an unidentified girl walking down by a rough seashore. He disappears. She too. David has subtly left me to my masturbation. There is a tower there. Water sprays in. Suddenly a strange wave appears, bursting on the top [of the tower. There’s a diagram]. It falls through the tower to the ground as fire. I think David is inside. 

David on phone with his mother, trying to phone his father. When he gets through he talks but I ring the phone off. I apologise; he accepts my excuse of an accident. They then forget the phone number because his dad changes his job so often.

An exterior scene of Southwick Square launderette. 


Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Dream Diary Wedneday 22 January 1975

 Wednesday 22 January 1975

 Mother is to be hanged. (Hawthorne.)

            Driving around in car with Dad. She is in an estate of ruined houses, worn smooth like Yves Tanguy objects. An estate of dead houses with deadsky above.