Tuesday 4 February 1975
Dreamt of there being TWO me’s. As in ‘William Wilson’
by Poe. Also Lee Harwood admonished me.
a blogzine of investigative, exploratory, avant-garde, innovative poetry and poetics edited by Robert Sheppard
Tuesday 4 February 1975
Dreamt of there being TWO me’s. As in ‘William Wilson’
by Poe. Also Lee Harwood admonished me.
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.
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.
Enjoy your poetry, prose, prose-poetry, and pieces, whatever you call them!
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 31 January 1975
Got told off by Chris for not writing to him.
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 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:
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:
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 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 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.