Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Video of Atlantic Drift launch in Berkeley earlier this year

"Atlantic Drift: A discussion of the interrelationships between innovative poets in the US and the UK," with James Byrne, Bhanu Kapil, Zoë Skoulding, and Forrest Gander. UC Berkeley, September 2018, introduced by Lyn Hejinian.

This was also the US launch of  Atlantic Drift (see here for details and links to other launches and related Atlantic Drift news, and for cover image below) Read an account of the launch, here. 


Sunday, November 18, 2018

Robert Sheppard: New 'Charlotte Smith' version published in Smithereens 2





I have a poem in Smithereens 2 which may be accessed or downloaded at the addresses above. It is one of my versions of the Sussex poet Charlotte Smith, a part of the ongoing ‘English Strain’. Good to publish it outside the UK!

 Ye vales and woods! fair scenes of happier hours

Uplands and Downlands, those scenes of Cowboys
and Indians enacted behind fishbox barricades
in Father’s waistcoat and Mother’s high heels,
and gulls’ feathers, and beads, you bore and saw them all…

Whilst I was writing these poems I commented on the process here. The most recently published part of The Englis Strain is Hap, which may be read about (and purchased) here.

Thursday, November 15, 2018

Robert Sheppard and Thomas Ingmire: Collaboration ('Synovial Joints') part of current exhibition





Note (17th December 2018): The exhibition is still running of course, but the beautiful catalogue has just arrived and I realised with pleasure that the cover (as on the poster above) is part of my contribution to the event: I sent Thomas my poem 'Synovial Things' (named after 'Synovial Joints', the Steve Coleman album, and sometimes that seems to be the title of the poem, not sure finally!) and it may be read here. It is one of my 'Overdubs of Milton' which I talk about here. Five of them find their way into 'The English Strain'. The others don't, but there's nothing wrong with them on their own. Milton's sonnets don't make a sequence, really, and my tracking of them doesn't either. So U plan to publish them as 'leftoverdubs'!

You can also see our previous collaboration: both poem ('Afghanistan') and image/text here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unVA3-6P2E8


Watch Thomas talk in 2016 about his collaborations with David Annwn, his principal poetry collaborator. The catalogue includes the latest works with David, and others (with Allen Fisher, Alan Halsey and Geraldine Monk, among those previously known to me. The others I have yet to read.).