Poetry Upstairs at the Melville reading 25th June 2024 (set list)

(Set list) I opened by saying something like this: 'About two weeks ago I was putting this set together - and I thought to read from the first two books out of three of (mainly) transpositions of traditional sonnets - Wyatt to Drayton, Charlotte Smith to Mary Robinson. They take for theme the caperings of a character called Bo, and deal with the hubris of brexit colliding with the mismangement of Covid. I've copies for sale. [I was referring to the 'English Strain' project, specifically to the two books currently in print: see  Pages: Poetic Evidence for the COVID Inquiry from British Standards (temporary post, with videos) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com) ; this is, with its videos, an alternative 'reading'.] BUT I realised that a) most people by this date would be exhausted with UK politics, and b) I don't want the poems to be thought electioneering.

SO I'm only going to read just one sonnet, not a transposition at all, but an elegy for Lee Harwood, who I know was a favourite poet of Ric's, and read in this series, several times, I think.'

I read 'The Evening Star', from The English Strain (see Pages: My THE ENGLISH STRAIN is published today by Shearsman (robertsheppard.blogspot.com).

I then read two long poems that I deliberately wrote (partly) to get sonnets out of my system. Composed in very different means at the same time, they are probably both 'about' cognition and recognition. 

The first was 'The Area', which has appeared in The Long Poem Magazine (which I write about here, 'Pages: My poem THE AREA is published in The Long Poem Magazine number 30 (background and links) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com) ).

The second was 'As a Rule', as yet unpublished. 

I sampled a short poem from Doubly Stolen Fire, my most recent self-penned book. This was 'The Lowry Lounge'. A surprisingly large number of the attentive audience (I asked them!) had read Under the Volcano. (See Pages: Doubly Stolen Fire (a new book of hybrid texts) is now OUT (robertsheppard.blogspot.com). The book was published locally, and the publisher, Lyndon Davies, was present. 

(Video of 'The Lowry Lounge')

I finished with a new(ish) poem called 'Radio Therapy', half a poem about radiotherapy and half a poem about Jimi Hendrix' 'Voodoo Child' (as it is now spelt), heard on the radio during radiotherapy (hence the title). 

It was a wonderful atmosphere, it was good to see old friends, and read to unknown people. It's a great series, too, if you are local. (Phone number above.)

My fellow readers were:

Abigail Parry spent seven years as a toymaker before completing her doctoral thesis on wordplay. Her poems have been set to music, translated into Spanish and Japanese, broadcast on BBC and RTÉ Radio, and widely published in journals and anthologies. Her first collection, Jinx, published by Bloodaxe Books in 2018. Her second collection, I Think We're Alone Now, is published by Bloodaxe Books in 2023. She is currently a lecturer in creative writing at Cardiff University. And: Gareth Writer-Davies is from Brecon, Wales. Publications include: Bodies, Cry Baby (2017) Indigo Dreams, The Lover's Pinch (2018) The End (2019) Wysg (2022) Arenig Press.

My edition of the Selected Poems of Mary Robinson is out now!

The Selected Poems of Mary Robinson is now out from Shearsman – edited by me!

Publisher’s details HERE: Mary Robinson - Selected Poems (shearsman.com) 

The publisher's sample of the book may be read here: mary-robinson-selected-poems-sampler.pdf (cdn-website.com)

 

Mary Robinson was born in 1758 in Bristol, and was a poet, novelist, dramatist, journalist and actor. Tutored by both Garrick and Sheridan, she had a short but dazzling career on the London stage, where she was spotted by the young Prince Regent and became his mistress. The resultant scandal was hot gossip and salacious news, brought to a new reading public by the institution of the daily paper, for which, ironically, Robinson would later write.

 

Although she had always written, her main literary career dates from a serious accident in 1783, which left her permanently disabled. In the 1790s, she produced most of her best work, with an ever-accelerating productivity, in verse and fiction, until her death in 1800 (she wrote 70 poems in that last year). Once associated with fashionable Della Cruscan poetry, in the final years of her life she was in contact with S.T. Coleridge and William Godwin, representatives of vanguards in both politics and literature. After her death, her work suffered from an almost-complete obscurity, aided and abetted by Victorian revulsion at her scandalous past. This position has now changed, and there has been considerable interest in her life, her writing, and the connection between the two, in recent years. (My fuller life may be read here: Pages: Selecting for a Selected: The Poems of Mary Robinson 2: The Life of Mary Robinson (robertsheppard.blogspot.com).)

The range of Robinson’s poetic work is astonishing: from impassioned lyrics to ‘Lyrical Tales’, from sonnets to odes, from political poetry, reacting both for and against the French Revolution, to representations of various outsider figures (slaves, madmen and political exiles), from jocular parodies of contemporary ‘Grub Street’ writers to satires on the callousness of the rich, fashionable and famous. Whether speaking or writing in her own voice (serially bidding farewell to her cropped haired lover from Liverpool, Tarleton) or in the voice of others (dramatising the distress of Marie Antoinette, for instance) she was a poetic innovator, as capable as handling Popean couplets as the freshest blank verse.

 

I’ve tried to select the best of Mary Robinson’s poetry for a general audience, while attempting to demonstrate the range of her work. I include the complete text of Sappho and Phaon (1796), which was the first sonnet sequence to be published in English since the Renaissance, and which I first encountered writing ‘Tabitha and Thunderer’ for the British Standards part of my ‘English Strain’ project, which will also be published by Shearman. I write about it here: Pages: My 'Tabitha and Thunderer' is published in Blackbox Manifold (robertsheppard.blogspot.com). I relate her late work, particularly the forceful political blank verse epic ‘The Progress of Liberty’, to the emergence of the first generation of Romantics, upon whom she was a notable influence.

Here I read one of the sonnets that I 'used' for 'Tabitha and Thunderer', from Sappho and Phaon, poem eight. 

The working and thinking notes for my ‘life’ and my ‘introduction’ (and some of my choices for selection and de-selection) begin in a strand of posts from the hubpost here: Pages: Selecting for a Selected: The Poems of Mary Robinson 1 (robertsheppard.blogspot.com). It might be thought a little odd that I would edit such a volume, but, after having written ‘Tabitha and Thunderer’, subtitled ‘an intervention in the work of Mary Robinson’, I found myself, at Tony Frazer’s urging, embarking on this editorial project. Having just completed the editing with Kelvin Corcoran of the New Collected Poems of Lee Harwood, I might have needed a rest – but fools rush in! I’m glad I’ve done it, as a poet selecting another poet, partly as a critic, but not a critic of Romantic poetry (although after researching for, and writing, British Standards I did a lot of reading on the Romantics, focusing on their sonnets, which included Robinson, left out Blake and Byron, but was a real education, as it happens). I write about British Standards as it progressed here:  Pages: Robert Sheppard: 14 Standards from British Strandards is complete as one sonnet appears at the virtual WOW Festival 2020 (hub post).

British Standards will be out soon(ish). But back to Mary Robinson: Mary Robinson - Selected Poems (shearsman.com). She's not going to smile until you buy this book!