I’m pleased to say that I have a poem in the new
Broken Sleep anthology, Masculinity, edited by Rick Dove, Aaron Kent and
Stuart McPherson, to whom, many thanks. It is one of the more egregious examples from the egregious ‘sequence’,
‘Empty Diaries’, ‘Gooner, Going, Gone: Empty Diary 2022’. I read it at my recent Peter Barlow’s
Cigarette reading (See here for the reaction to it: Pages:
Robert Sheppard and two others at Peter Barlow's Cigarette 24th October 2023
(set list)) Usually narrated from the point of view of a woman,
each of these now-annual 'Empty Diary' poems focusses on sexual politics (though sometimes just sex and
sometimes just politics, occasionally neither), I write about the sequence (1901-1990, which first appeared in a
1992 book of that title, and later as the ‘spine’ of Twentieth Century Blues)
here: Pages:
Robert Sheppard: The last two Empty Diary poems are published on Stride
: and I include links to earlier poems, and videos of the 2019 and 2020 poems which
precede this one. This poem is unusual in being narrated by a man. And what a man, a gooner no less.
This anthology (there are too many contributors to
list here, may be purchased at:
‘Masculinity:
an anthology of modern voices’, the publisher says, ‘is a book of poetry
which aims to showcase the diversity of what it means to be a man and what it
means to embrace its multitudes. These poems emphasise that masculinity is not
a monolithic concept, but a dynamic, evolving force that can be shaped by culture,
society, and personal experiences. Including poetry from Andrew McMillan, Ian
Duhig, Michael Pedersen, Andre Bagoo, Pádraig Ó Tuama and [many] more, [and it's good to see friends like Andrew, Daniele Pantano, David Ward, Gregory Woods and others there] this is
a powerful, visceral reminder that masculinity is so much more than the sum of
its parts, and a call to open up a dialogue about masculinity that is
inclusive, progressive, and affirming.’
I approve
of this, though I’m pretty sure my poem, which is about super-toxic incel
masculinity, which I (suppose I) satirise, is not at all 'affirming', and shouldn't be. My narrator rather literally plays
with the ‘sum of his parts’! (The 'Empty Diary' for 2023 is about a conspiracy theorist;
what shall I ‘do’ this year? No answers on a postcard please: something will
offer itself, I don’t doubt!)
I’ve been blogging for 19 years (today). In recent
years, on this anniversary, I have looked back at the posts that have enlivened me, have been looked
at a lot, and (even) have not been looked at all! I started this mode of
reviewing on the tenth anniversary, and all those posts (and the annual posts
in the last ten years of blogging) were presented as links, in last year’s 18th
year post. I think this year, I’ll simply point to that post as a guide to all
the others. Do have a look, but don’t get lost in the labyrinth.
Blogging is meant to be a posting of the instant, but
I’ve never thought of Pages as ephemeral, as Twitter or X are, for
example. As those posts will indicate I set this blog up in 2005 as an attempt
to continue my print magazine Pages as a ‘blogzine’, but gradually it
turned into a blog, but with the proviso that I see many of the posts as of
permanent import (I can’t say ‘importance’, for only others may judge that).
But the various posts on Iain Sinclair, for example, add up to something,
critically speaking. Or those that led up to my book The Meaning of Form. Some
posts are essays, some a spattering of links to other posts, and (during the
writing and temporary blogging of the poems of ‘The English Strain’) I learnt to
delete posts or to edit them after posting for a short time only. The writing of
those poems (but not of others, note) was very public (because the poems were
public, and demanded an immediate audience).
Nineteen is an odd number, in all
sorts of ways. Maybe the 20th year will be an occasion of looking
back at the WHOLE blog, so I am going to limit myself to this past year to
point out posts I would suggest readers re-visit or visit for the first time.
This blog (and some other blogspot blogs) seem not to
be favoured by my Norton security. I look at my own blog and it warns
me: ‘Dangerous Web Page Blocked!’ I just ignore it, because it doesn’t make
sense to me. I’ve not noted interference or strange changes – except via the
strange bot hits that catapult random posts into thousands of supposed ‘hits’;
I suspect they are Russian, because of the sheer number of hits that derived
from there (though Blogger no longer provides that sort of geographical information).
I’ve always suspected my mention of Pussy Riot started that off. But that’s a
different animal to the Norton warning. Clearly it doesn’t stop people looking
at the blog, and people with other security systems are not affected. One
friend said he received the warning on his phone but not on his laptop. If
anyone can explain this (in simple terms) do let me know!
I intend to pick out the best of last year’s posts,
but first I should say a few things about the last year. Last year’s post
mentions the radiotherapy and hormone treatment I’d been receiving, the one
intense and quick, the second distributive and slow. It’s gone pretty well, and
I’m as active as I used to be. The following posts will confirm readings, music
performances, and some travel. If you meet me you’ll note that I’m often
wearing the little Man of Men design that Prostate UK sports. (I think it is a
design masterpiece: I’ve even got the socks and beanie!) See here for their
work and their warnings and their wonders: Prostate
Cancer UK | Prostate Cancer UK. Men, here’s the Risk
Checker:Check
your risk in 30 seconds | Prostate Cancer UK.
I am
pleased to say that guest editor David Spittle has selected some work of mine
for the special ‘Surrealist’ edition of the Bangladeshi magazine Shuddhashar. Or is it called FreeVoice - one word, like that?
Explore
this issue, number 37 in full: Surrealist
Poetry. Or follow
the links below.
It is a
long time since I’ve thought about surrealism, but then again it isn’t. By
that, I mean that, although I haven’t pronounced on the subject much, it’s
never gone away. (Not quite true either, see Poetics, Robert Sheppard (lincolnreview.org)In any case, it came back with a mighty thud, when I started to
write Elle.
Anyway,
the first four chapters of Elle may be read HERE: Elle: a
verse novel
The whole is due for publication by Broken Sleep in November 2025.
Other
contributors include a brief description of their allegiance/connection to
surrealism and I thought that my ‘introduction’ to my excerpt (it’s a long
excerpt) which I’d sent would suffice (it is a long introduction!). It’s
not there on the magazine. In fact, it is the intended ‘afterward’ of the verse-novel.
Here’s a shortened version of it:
‘Sharp gas lips under her flesh
suddenly white in the hallway
Watching
the early films of Jeff Keen, see Jeff
Keen aka Dr Gaz | Jeff Keen. I noted the repeated appearance of what I
thought of as ‘the pink auto’; I had read somewhere that this Pontiac
Parisienne belonged to a nightclub owner in Brighton in the UK. Keen continued
to use footage of this automobile throughout the 1960s, though I think he only
borrowed its gangsterish gleam for an afternoon’s shoot, to make the 11-minute
black and white silent 8 mm film Breakout (1962). (This isn’t it, but is a useful sample of Keen's approach:
)The
incongruity of seeing this mammoth American car on film squeezing past the
familiar Clock Tower in Brighton (my local South Coast city as I remember it
vaguely from the early 1960s) was most impressive, if uncanny. It was not until
I read Richard Davenport Hines’ An English Affair (2013), about the
nefarious goings-on of cabinet minister John Profumo, that I linked the car,
which was mentioned in passing, and the films of Jeff Keen, which I knew, with
a precursor scandal of the Profumo debacle, and its Brighton setting. It was a
sordid story concerning a Conservative MP and washing machine importer, John
Bloom, and Christine Holford, the wife of the nightclub and Pontiac owner. The
result was that, in 1963, a jealous and taunted Harvey Holford murdered
Christine Holford, spitefully shooting her in the genitals. The subsequent
trial and the minimal sentence Holford received – before an all-male jury –
leaves a bad taste in any aesthetic appetite that desires to utilise this
material.
But I did
want to utilise this material and I did want to make the link to the
extraordinary films made by Jeff Keen, who I met on a couple of occasions, even
visiting his Brighton flat with Lee Harwood; I remember a column – no other
word for it, it reached the high ceiling – of Marvel comics, which he used as
raw material in his later Blatz! movies. I felt that my raw
material would have to include Keen’s work, the car, its murderous owner, his
victim wife, as well as a favourite and iconic film of the era, Luis Buñuel’s Belle
de Jour (1967), presented here in visual summary, as it were:
Notably,
this surrealist masterpiece of the sixties is based upon realist pulp from
1928: Buñuel hated Joseph Kessel’s moralistic and misogynist novel of that
title, in which a woman is condemned for her secret sexual desires (as was
Christine Holford with her more public affairs and flirtations). The film is
not a parody or pastiche of its model; it’s perversely faithful to its twisted
but conventional morality. The novel was perfect material for post-surrealist
transformation. In 1969, an English translation by Geoffrey Wagner from 1962
was rushed into a second paperback edition with a picture of a simpering
Catherine Deneuve on the cover, a 75p charity shop purchase.
Uncertain
how I would approach and proceed with these materials, I decided to work on my
copy of the novel with an analogous disrespect to that shown by Buñuel: I
treated Belle de Jour using the technique I have always called ‘Tom
Phillipsing’, finding new linguistic content in this old novel, as Phillips had
with A Human Monument, as he transformed it into the bubble texts of The
Humument (ignoring for a moment the brilliant visual side of the work!).
There is something of gentle gathering, enclosing, about the method, which is
absent from the tearing violations of the superficially similar cut-up
technique. Both are versions of collage, or montage, of course. 'Here's the book, and here's the method,' as I say on this 5 second video!
At some
point during this slow process (one page Tom Phillipsed a day, 140 pages), I
watched Daniel Farson’s British ATV television programme Living for Kicks (1960)
which partly took as its theme the teenage clientele of the Whiskey a Go-Go
milk bar (such pre-Clockwork Orange innocence!) near The Clock Tower in
Brighton. Watch it here:
I already
knew that this establishment was part of the entertainment complex run by
Harvey Holford: upstairs lay the more exclusive Blue Gardenia and Calypso clubs
(where alcohol was served). Farson’s documentary (the old Soho soak feigns
shock at teenagers snogging and disdaining marriage) features an intelligent
and knowing interview with a proto-Beat poet called Royston Ellis, whose name
was familiar to me, but not from my knowledge of British underground
poetry of the 1960s, which I’d foolishly thought comprehensive. In fact, the
name was literally floating before me in Ye Cracke pub where, after lockdown, I
regularly met a group of Liverpool friends (the informal 1955 Committee). On
the mirror under which we often sat is an engraved commemoration of a joint
poetry-music gig by Royston Ellis and John Lennon in Liverpool in 1960.
One
afternoon I suddenly noticed the memorial to this performance, seen above. (It's disputed whether Ellis is the 'Paperback Writer' of the song, but he did write books on pre-Beatles music.) Something was
happening here, I felt, to speed this project along; I conceived of
superimposing the shadowy Brighton reality upon my distorted version of
Buñuel’s Ur-text. Both narratives involve a jealous murderer. I replaced
Kessel’s names, Buñuel’s dramatis personae, with the names of the
participants in the Brighton tragedy: acquaintances and lovers of the fatal
couple (Thatcher, Hatcher, Bloom, Cresteef), and employees and habitués of the
night clubs (Corvell and Bubbles and Squeak), with the addition of the artist
figures Jeff Keen and Royston Ellis, and a few necessary others. (Not all of
them appear in this first extract, of course.) ‘Elle’ was the Tom Phillipsed ‘Belle’
persona of Kessel’s anti-heroine, the titular haunting (but who is
‘she’?). I transposed place names from Paris to Brighton without irony. The text passed through many stages of transformation (‘states’ an
engraver might have called them), both mechanical – I made use of the ‘dictate’
and ‘read as’ functions on my laptop – and deliberative: my choices were quite
conscious, though guided by procedure. The process was my old friend, the stochastic.
Then I revised the text in an intuitive way, unrecognisable in this latest (and
perhaps not yet completed) form on Shuddhashar.
https://www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk/places/clubs/clubs-3)I sought to introduce the main actors into a drama not quite theirs,
and not quite mine, either. I wished to liberate them, albeit imaginatively,
from history. I like to think that Keen and Ellis become the positive creative
energies to transform this loathsome narrative towards different endings – or
none. Those transformations are not just a matter of form, but of a forming of
its matters, its matters of fact, and its matters of fiction.
The turn
to the ‘verse-novel’, however ironical, reflects yet another, late, act of
transformation, the sudden switch to ‘verse’, a term I seldom use…’
So back to today. Just as
Bunuel hated Kessel’s work I think I disapprove of the ‘verse-novel' – and,
like Bunuel using Kessel, that’s just why I’ve 'written' one. I was somewhat relieved, when I witnessed
Jen Calleja reading Vehicle: a verse novel to discover that it wasn’t,
in fact, a ‘verse-novel’. (I did enjoy, though, Bernadine Evaristo’s The
Emperor’s Babe, so maybe it’s the idea of the verse-novel that trips me up;
I don’t like the term ‘prose-poetry’ either, but I'm a big fan of Ian Seed!).
Here’s a full
list of the articles/poems/prose/images in this wonderful edition, with links to each:
Thanks to
David and thanks to all at Shuddhashar. Shuddhashar is an exiled
Bangladeshi publishing house with this magazine, and is currently based in
Norway. Shuddhashar received the 2016 Jeri Laber International Freedom to
Publish Award, given to publishers outside the United States who demonstrate
courage despite restrictions on freedom of expression. They are brave people
indeed, if you follow their publishing history, which is really a testament to their activism.
ONE Billy Mills is the first off the blocks, as so often,
on his excellent blog. I link to it on my blog roll (whoever thought of
that term?); see to the right of this post.
Beginning, and offering links (you may have noticed
how much I like links, a habit from the days of assembling Twentieth Century
Blues), he notes ‘Robert
Sheppard’s Doubly Spoken Fire is, in part at least, the third
and final part of his ‘fictional poetry project’, the first two parts of which
I reviewed here and here (In
hindsight, I was far too dismissive of this book at the time).’ I liked his
harsh treatment of those volumes, and I like his ‘in part at least’, which is
true: this may have run the ‘fictional poetry project’ into the ground (or it
may not, I’ll cheekily hint, perhaps falsely) but there are lots of other bits.
Billy is forced to be descriptive as well as evaluative. I’ll say no more about
it, but simply thank Billy (I know how much work is involved in reviewing,
which may be the reason I do less of it), and give you the link to it:
I’ll add some more reviews, if there are any. In the
meantime, here’s an X feed tweeting the sayings of a talking mongoose, highly relevant
to my ‘Rectophonic Monologue’! Billy found this too. I guess I’ll have to
follow: (4) Gef the Mongoose (@gefbot) / X
(twitter.com)
