'Between' published as part of 'The Worked Object' for Roy Fisher on Blackbox Manifold

Covid intervened in a lot of things, and one was a celebration of Roy Fisher to inaugurate the Roy Fisher Archive at Sheffield University. There is a healthy newsletter you may read and a website, here: https://royfisherarchive.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/ .

 

One of the offshoots of that launch was to be an anthology of poems for Roy Fisher, or in his memory. Of course, since my PhD days I have been a student of Roy Fisher in many ways, and I’ve written criticism on his work (here’s a snippet: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2018/06/robert-sheppard-actual-poetics-roy.html) and I’ve previously composed poems for his birthdays, etc. all of which may be found in my published books. (Here’s one reprinted in his memory on the occasion of his death: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2017/03/robert-sheppard-tenatives-poem-for-roy.html)

I had a fresh poem ready for this proposed anthology, because I found myself writing a poem (unusually for me) on the way to work, and (even more unusual for me!) I carried on writing the poem, at work. I’d seen a mention of his death in a Tweet on then Twitter (halcyon days before the fascistic re-branding as X), which I couldn’t re-locate. Then on the bus … well, the poem can really speak for itself as it may be read here, and heard on the video I made today:

‘Between’ : https://blackboxmanifold.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/issue-32/robertsheppardbm32

This appears, not in a booklet, but as part of a special feature of tributes, ‘The Worked Object’, in the wonderful magazine Blackbox Manifold in which I have appeared many times: https://blackboxmanifold.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/home.

 Current issue here: https://blackboxmanifold.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/issue-32-current-issue .

 I suggest reading Peter Robinson’s introduction first, followed by a trawl through the poems, Fleur Adcock to Cliff Yates. Blackbox Manifold - PeterRobinsonPrefaceBM32 (sheffield.ac.uk) .

 It’s interesting how many people, as I do, address Roy in their poems (a feature of elegy, I wonder?) whereas others take elements of his style, and sometimes landscapes familiar to him (and jazz, of course), and play and juggle with those.

Thanks to Peter for editing this and finding a home for these tributes and elegies. As he notes in the introduction, many poets gave up waiting for the Covid interruption to be over, and published the poems they’d written in advance of yesterday’s appearance. I feel less guilty than I did to realise I wasn’t the only offender in this category. My poem previously appeared in Tears in the Fence (a magazine, like Blackbox Manifold, that has been a great supporter of my work, and thus its continuation). I blogged about its first appearance here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2018/09/robert-sheppard-between-poem-for-roy.html

Looking for a photograph of Roy to flesh out my post, I discovered that my 1982 interview with Fisher (‘Turning the Prism’) which first appeared in Gargoyle magazine (before it was published as a booklet by Toads Damp Press) is archived online here: Interview with Roy Fisher – Gargoyle Magazine . Conducting that interview (I did another with Robert Creeley in the same month) was an education. Good to see it again, and Richard Peabody, the editor, still going strong.