Friday, September 08, 2017

Robert Sheppard|: Thoughts on Edge Hill Poetry and Poetics Research Group

The PPRG was formed with the hope that discussion of poetry and poetics would further the practice and  thinking behind innovative poetry. It became more than that with the interaction of the people within it. It became a society of friends of the art of writing poetry, which was gratifying. It unconsciously recruited some local writers to Edge Hill's PhD programme. It is difficult to remember a time before that when there was no sense of vital poetry scenes in Liverpool (or the North West) or a thriving research culture at Edge Hill. The PPRG played its part in developing all of this. When I arrived in Liverpool in 1996 there was literally nobody there: Geoff Ward and Sean Bonney had left the city; somebody mentioned a Cliff Yates in Skem. We corresponded. Its current state again combines postgraduates, staff and poets outside the university. It's a deliberate loose fit.