Three more overdubs of the eighteenth century Sussex poems of Charlotte Smith, part of 'The English Strain' project, have been published at Anthropocene,
a new online platform run by Charlie Baylis. Thanks to him. The first, ‘To the
River Adur’, features a line or two from a letter from Lee Harwood. The second,
‘Written at a Church-yard in Middleton in Sussex’ is an overdub of her most
famous poem (of that title), and ‘The sea-view’, which is a fully gender-bending
Brexit-madness poem from later in the 14 part sequence:
Big Bo-Beep is having his kip, his flock nibblingthe soft turf where my emigrants once pantedtowards the French coast squeezed between sea and sky,now locked in detention centres, milking the NHS.
Read them HERE.
Of the six poems published in BlazeVOX 19, edited by Geoffrey Gatza, four of them are more versions
of Charlotte Smith, called Elegaic
Sonnets. You may get straight to the pages here:
Another from this part, another Charlotte Smith variation, may
be read in Smithereens 2, on page 15:
So that’s 8 of the sequence you can read online. I wrote a
little about them here:
These poems form part of a longer set called ‘The English
Strain’. Links to a number of the published poems from Non Disclosure Agreement (the last part of the proposed book of The English Strain) may be accessed
here:
More of those ones here: https://mollybloom17.weebly.com/robert-sheppard.html
Some older ‘English Strain’ poems may be found here:
I write about my sonnets generally here,
and here
and see here
and here for more on my Petrarch
obsession, which ‘The English Strain’ project into motion. The most recent
instalment of it, Hap: Understudies of
Thomas Wyatt’s Petrarch is now available from Knives Forks and Spoons here:
Book
One of ‘The English Strain’ project, The English Strain, is available
from Shearsman Books here:
https://www.shearsman.com/store/Sheppard-Robert-c28271934?offset=6
Book
Two, Bad Idea is available from Knives Forks and Spoons, HERE: https://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/product-page/bad-idea-by-robert-sheppard-102-pages
