On IT, I have two new poems from Bad
Idea (see here for a hubpost concerning the writing of these 64 versions of
Michael Drayton’s Idea). The bad idea is Brexit (as the
wonderful image by Atlanta Wiggs above underlines in the best tradition of International Times). Poem LV was written on 1st
August 2019 and concerns ‘Booster Bo, turbocharged with active verbs’ getting
elected as leader of the party. Poem LVI, written a week later, is in the voice
of one of the true Yeoman of Kent, who, after Brexit, will be tasked with both
the defence of the newly liberated realm, and custodianship of the Ancestral Dogging
Sites - which have sprung up in these poems as the locus of value for an
inwardly-regarding liberated British majority: in short, there will be
nothing much to do other than fuck each others’ brains out amid the swards and
permissive bridal paths after Brexit; ‘this is our true National Sport’. Go will no longer be able to police the groves.
Here they are! The poems, that is.
Hope you enjoy them. The
hubpost linked to above has links to further online examples from the sequence.
Two more sonnets from Bad
Idea appear on International Times. They
are LVII, which is about Bo (Boris Johnson) and his ‘vision’ of the world, and
LVIII, which features the various carves-up of the nation pending if Bo takes
us out of the EU. Idea appears in each poem, as its muse.
You may read the two poems HERE: http://internationaltimes.it/idea/
Another 5 poems from Bad Idea may be
found here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/04/five-more-poems-from-bad-idea-published.html
I am currently working on
the sequel to Bad Idea, Idea’s Mirror, and
these sonnets are being posted temporarily, one at a time, on this blog. If you look, you’ll find them.
This post explains. The larger sonnet project is entitled The
English Strain.
Thanks to Rupert Loydell,
who has a new online publication from facqueuesol books:
One-Sided Conversations
One-Sided Conversations
prose poems by Rupert M
Loydell
