it's all come down to this by Paul Robert Mullen is out, with an introduction by me.

it’s all come down to this: a retrospective (1999–2024) [the publisher tells us] is the defining collection from Paul Robert Mullen, brought to life by The Broken Spine with the expert editorial touch of Alan Parry. This anthology gathers over two decades of Mullen’s poetry, offering a deeply personal yet universal meditation on identity, memory, and the passage of time.

 

I provided an introduction to this volume.

Mullen’s sparse, emotionally charged style has been celebrated for its honesty and craft, with poems that weave through themes of separation, reflection, and rediscovery. [The publisher continues.] The collection spans his earliest work, such as Issues, Tissues & the Senseless Comic, to newer, unreleased writings in rags of light. With a voice that remains unflinchingly authentic, Mullen captures moments of longing, heartbreak, and resolution that will resonate with readers of contemporary poetry. 

it’s all come down to this may be purchased it here:

https://thebrokenspine.co.uk/product/itsallcomedowntothismullen/

it's all come down to this: a retrospective [selected poems & writings 1999-2024] - Paul Robert Mullen –

While I was musing on the introduction, or rather about how to write it, I came upon an interesting distinction between 'song' and 'story' by the German poet Lutz Seiler, and I wrote about the quotation here: Pages: On a passage of Lutz Seiler and a lift from Billy Mills. It led me down certain paths, away from Paul's book. Later, I integrated this quotation into my introduction to to it's all come down to this, which begins with these words:

I find the contemporary German lyric poet Lutz Seiler puts the matter better than I could: ‘“Everyone has only one song,” said the writer Paul Bowles in one of his last interviews. (He was also a musician.) You recognise the song by its sound. The sound forms in the instrument we ourselves have become over time. Before every poem comes the story we have lived. The poem catches the sound of it. Rather than narrating the story, it narrates its sound.’ This seems an apt way of talking about the poems of Paul Robert Mullen, where what he calls ‘a lifetime between two covers’ is transmuted into a song, a song that is intensely personal, though not necessarily flagrantly autobiographical, or where autobiography has become song, a distant echo of fact. Mullen no longer tells the story: he offers us that condensed sound, that song, that story of the sound of the poem. That is its artifice, of course, which I shall be examining below. However, it is worth dwelling on the musical analogy. Like Seiler, commenting on Bowles, I can say ‘Mullen is also a musician,’ one who I have seen perform (and I possess his entertaining CD Alchemy in the Garden). Although I will pursue the metaphor of ‘song’ in relation to Mullen – he writes much of music as part of that story of his life – it is important that he never confuses a song lyric for a poem (or vice versa). His songs are another story, and music is only part – an important part, as I shall show – of the story of his verse.

It's a distinction that carries on into the poems (and a little prose) that I examine in more detail in my response to Paul’s considerable collection of his work. And I conclude: ‘These are the ‘writings’ of the subtitle: ‘selected poems and writings 1999-2024’, a title and dating that reminds us that that story that Mullen has lived is a long one. The sounds that he has made during, and from, that life, are often exquisite and always truly affective.’

But to read the rest of the introduction and (more importantly!) the rest of the book, you'll have to buy it here: https://thebrokenspine.co.uk/product/itsallcomedowntothismullen/

it's all come down to this: a retrospective [selected poems & writings 1999-2024] - Paul Robert Mullen –

 

 Here's author, publisher and introducer mulling over matters literary.  

Reviews of The Necessity of Poetics

I'm pleased to say there has been a first review of The Necessity of Poetics, by Rupert Loydell, in Tears in the Fence. I suspect, as it is reviewed, and I hope it is reviewed widely (it's provocative enough I think), it will furnish different responses, with differing emphases, and it might look as though the reviewers were reading different books. That's because it's a miscellany rather than a unified volume like The Poetry of Saying or The Meaning of Form. It's also not a straight literary critical volume. Rupert writes from the point of view of a teacher of creative writing who is interested in nurturing poetics as a speculative and anticipatory writerly discourse in his students, who, as Rupert says, have been subjected to two of the pieces collected in the book. Of course, he responds in other ways too. It's a refreshing and personal (or professional) response. 

It may be read here: The Necessity of Poetics by Robert Sheppard (Shearsman Books) | Tears in the Fence

I describe the full contents of the volume here: Pages: The Necessity of Poetics - out now! (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

It may be purchased here: https://www.shearsman.com/store/Robert-Sheppard-The-Necessity-of-Poetics-p661888958

Saturday, 5th October 1974

Got pissed with Trev (from Barrow) and Mick from Coventry.

               Went into town. Got drink and food. Got [illegible: frassed?]

               Saw ‘3 up’ and Thin Lizzy. Bought things in Norwich. Talking Polemics in the next room. Puked up in Bog. Drunk.  

Details of Readings this Autumn (set lists and comments)

Readings this Autumn (set lists and comments)

During this autumn I have had, to my delight, six readings to perform, some full readings, others short contributions to larger events. (There were some earlier in the year too, bucking the post-Covid trend of fewer reading opportunities, though two of them were online, as was one earlier this year.) They are all quite different, with different work read, often from different books, or from no books (yet)! Sometimes with, or alongside Patricia Farrell, sometimes not.

As they 'passed', I converted my announcements of them on this post into 'set lists' and commentaries. I must admit it's rather taken up more of my time preparing than I expected, and time away from writing. I'm sure Taylor Swift thought the same about the Eras Tour!  

*

1. Liverpool 24^th October 2024: for Liverpool Poetry Space hosted by The Open Eye Gallery (on the dockside). 

I read with Mandy Coe (I don't know how I haven't met her before) and Maria Isakova-Bennett (who I have seen develop as a poet over the the last decade into a fine writer who always keeps the analogy of her visual art practice to the fore). Eleanor Rees was ill, unfortunately. So we had to add an extra 5 minutes to our readings. 

I decided to launch British Standards (the first of two launches) and I read a bunch of Wordsworth 'transpositions', including this one:

. Then my version of Southey's 'Poem on the Slave Trade', which led, the slavery theme continuing, onto my versions of Mary Robinson, a few verses of 'Tabitha and Thunderer' (there was to be more of her at my November 12th London reading, see below); a bunch of John Clare; and the final final poem of the book, 'After Shelley' as I called it, slightly shortening its title.  

This seemed to go down well. Lots of laughter I was informed by some friends in the sizeable audience. However, the set was designed for sudden swings of mood, so that we were suddenly thinking about slavery or Covid deaths amid the capering of Bo, as the hubris of Brexit hit the mismanagement of public health during the Pandemic.  

2. London: Friday, 25^th October 2024 

The Cock Tavern, 23 Phoenix Rd, London NW1

Friday night, it was great to see so many old friends and comrades of our London days, all still thrusting and vital. Here's a brief itinerary of the evening, mainly launches. 

Part One

Bob Cobbing/Robert Sheppard, Collaborations (Veer/Writers Forum): performed by Patricia Farrell and me. We read 'Blatent Blather/Virulent Whoops', my 2001 collaboration with Cobbing. Thanks to Patricia for all the rehearsing and hoarse throats!  

Karen MacCormack, Quaquaversal (Veer): a fascinating unwriting of an earlier text into non-existent words, which were then discovered (mostly) to mean something in other languages. 

Steve McCaffery, Alice through the Working Class (Blazevox) (What a great title!) A wonderful or outwonderlandish version of Alice.

Break

Ulli Freer, Transition Pulse (Veer): Ulli pulsed this way through this new text, somewhat bucolic in places, excellent as ever.

Adrian Clarke, Walhalla (Veer): a few sequences from this excellent new book, plus a new sequence inspired by Bob Cobbing's decaying photocopier, now in Hugh Metcalfe's garden! This was in part an introduction to another 2 books relaunched that evening: Bob Cobbing, the five vowels & Third ABC in Sound (Veer/Writers Forum), two of his major works back in print. Get on the Veer website and find all these books (and more): Veer Books. (I wrote about the 'Third ABC' some 19 years ago on these pages: here: Pages: Robert Sheppard: Bob Cobbing: Two Sequences )

Although my Collaborations with Bob Cobbing was published by Veer in 2021, there wasn’t a launch (Covid, again) of this splendid box of pamphlets, reprints of Codes and Diodes and Blatent Blather/Virulent Whoops from 1991 and 2001, respectively. On the box: Pages: COLLABORATIONS (Bob Cobbing - Robert Sheppard) published in a box by Veer - out now. There is an earlier performance on video here (somewhere in this Cobbing tribute: OR 35 | Bob Cobbing: a celebration | Videos | 

 

Here's a very short video of me demonstrating how the 'box' of Collaborations is constituted. (The new Third ABC of Sound is similarly in a box.)  

Saturday morning, bag pretty heavy with all the new Veer publications, Patricia and I walked to the Wallace Collection. They have 3 portraits of Mary Robinson:

 

Romney, Reynolds and Gainsborough (the latter a huge canvas). This was connected to my editing of her work in Mary Robinson Selected Poems and my transposing of it in British Standards. Other specialities: a wonderful Poussin, two Rembrandts, some Boningtons, and an Icelandic drinking horn! Back to Euston... Liverpool ... home.

3. Wednesday November 6^th: 7.30. An ONLINE reading from Aquifer Books

I read one part of my finely-designed Aquifer volume, Doubly Stolen Fire, introducing 'Malcolm Lowry's Land' with these words: ‘My book, Doubly Stolen Fire, which I’m so pleased Lyndon has published, is an exploration of various modes of authorship: actual and fictional. The last part, though, collects my contributions to the Liverpool celebrations of the Merseyside born author of Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry, [like this one 2024: Pages: The Lowry Lounge 2024 - an account and links] and I’m going to read most of one of these. It tracks a 1979 notebook which itself tracks my visit to Lowry’s grave in Sussex. [Holds it up]. It mimics Lowry’s own writerly methods as it re-narrates the notes for a long-abandoned poem.’

Details of the whole book: Pages: Reviews of my book DOUBLY STOLEN FIRE (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

This Zoom reading was of new and forthcoming collections by Sarah Crewe, Mélisande Fitzsimons, Allen Fisher as well as myself. More info at: Glasfryn Project. It was good to hear the other readers, and I had Sarah's book to hand, to follow her reading. 

4. London 12th November 2024: 7.30: A Shearsman launch of 4 new Shearsman books. 

This reading took place at the Swedenborg Hall, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH, hosted by Tony Frazer, publisher of Shearsman Books. The building has a painting of the religious sage painted by P. Louthenburg (the subject of one of Mary Robinson's finer earlier poems, and the designer of 'light shows' from when she was an actor). I noticed too late to tell the audience!

I read from British Standards but pointed to The Necessity of Poetics AND to my edition of the Selected Poems of Mary Robinson.

My notes and set list

I’m very greedy – but very grateful (to Tony) for Shearsman publishing three books this year. I will only read from one of them, but I’ll sketch links between them. The Necessity of Poetics, which collects various works on, of, about and around ‘poetics’ as a speculative and anticipatory writerly discourse, also contains a treatise on poetic rhythm, an inaugural lecture, notes on the meaning of form, and some ancient documents which stretch back to the 1980s and 90s, but it comes up to date with a couple of pieces on the poetics of the book I will be reading from, British Standards.

British Standards, book three of ‘The English Strain’ project, was completed in September 2022. Brexit was originally the continuing theme of the project, but in early 2020 the Pandemic intervened to alter its trajectory, although the government's enthusiasm for the former contributed to its tardiness in the face of the latter, as celebratory hubris collided with the failure of Johnson’s government (he’s called Bo in my poems) to take sensible public health measures. Formally speaking, these are transpositions of sonnets of the Romantic period (Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley, but also Mary Robinson and Hartley Coleridge, and others, as you’ll hear), and I’m paying faithless homage to it.

I read three 'Wordsworth' poems. This one below (shown here from the pages of Shearsman magazine), and on video.

Then 'O Friend I know not which way I must look'. (See the other video above for a reading of it.) Followed by 'Vanguard of Liberty, Ye Men of Kent.' 

Then a shift to Robert Southey and his 'Poem on the Slave Trade'.

After that, I said (more or less): 

The third book launching today is my edition of the poems of Mary Robinson, which might seem a surprising departure for me, until it’s realised that I first came to her work through writing a transposition of her 1796 sonnet sequence ‘Sappho and Phaon’, an extraordinary work that (even at the time) was read as analogical of her relationship with Banastre Tarleton, Liverpool slaver referenced in the street name of the previous poem. I call them Tabitha and Thunderer, but Thunderer seems to become Boris Johnson at several points. Mary called herself ‘The English Sappho’ on occasions. My sequence is a corona, 14 sonnets, with a volta at which I’ll pause, to change the hapless narrative, to allow her, in Brexit-speak, to ‘take back control’. Sappho is hetereosexual in Ovid’s version of her life that Mary followed, though she has a troupe of women following her: they become the weather girls, registry girls and Mamas of this poem, written just after the first lockdown, summer 2020. Here is a video of me reading one of the sonnet-verses, the one which refers to Mary-Tabitha-Sappho having read Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan' long before it was published.

I finished with one of the 'final' final poems to the book: 'After Shelley, After Sheppard, which I wrote about when I wrote it, here: Pages: Robert Sheppard: A final final poem for British Standards! With pictures of some of the poem's weird contents.

Details of all three books: Pages: British Standards published by Shearsman - out now (robertsheppard.blogspot.com) and Pages: Selecting for a Selected: The Poems of Mary Robinson 1 (robertsheppard.blogspot.com).

Details of two of the books: Pages: British Standards and The Necessity of Poetics published simultaneously (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 

I was reading with Elaine Randell, which was very exciting. I'm never ceased to be moved by her accounts of working with children, AND by her affective lyricism. She was launching her Collected Poems. 

It was good to see some old friends, including those not associated with the poetry world.

5. Patricia and I had a very small part in From the Grooves of Vinyl at the Bluecoat on Saturday 16th November 2024 (Nobody said, but 15th November was Phil's birthday!)

As a tribute to Philip Jeck who died in 2022, the Bluecoat presented an evening of film and performance in celebration of the life and work of this remarkable composer and artist who wrought exquisite sounds from the worn grooves of old records. [I'm quoting the copy for the evening, and amending it.] An internationally renowned pioneer of experimental ‘turntablism’, he brought old record players and vinyl together with electronic effects to create expansive sonic landscapes.

Throughout his career Philip worked with dance and theatre makers, visual artists and musicians and composers across the musical spectrum and toured internationally. He was also a lover of poetry (he came to a lot of the readings I organised or gave.) Over three decades, his work was released and promoted by the experimental electronic music label, Touch.

Philip also had a long association with the Bluecoat and this special tribute included a screening of an excellent film by Gina Czarnecki of him performing in the intimate surroundings of a friend’s kitchen. (This was fascinating, not least of all because I was there, and have my own memories of that performance.)

There was also the launch of a double CD tribute to Philip collated by Touch, and performances from experimental composers Chandra Shukla (US), excellent sitar and electronics work, Benjamin Duvall and Andrew Hunt (Liverpool), who (Ben told me) have a complete album of work improvised with Phil in preparation. (They are half of the band Ex-Easter Island Head. Poets Patricia Farrell and Robert Sheppard briefly read (although Patricia ‘appeared’ via tape). The bar was open till 11pm, with a disco-banger DJ set from Bryan Biggs (and then off with Bryan to the Grapes for a last two).

Click here for further information on Touch, its work with Philip and his releases.

This was a moving evening, particularly when Bryan and Mary Prestidge introduced the event, and later, when Jon Wozencroft and Mike Harding from Touch introduced the new album (which I have bought and am much looking forward to). The music was inspiring, whether on film, tape or live. 

Patricia’s poem was written especially for the event, and was untitled.

I introduced my piece, ‘Spectres of Breath’ with something like these words:

‘I’m going to read a text I wrote for Phil’s birthday in 2012. It comes out of a conversation we had about writing about music, music journalism in particular. About that time I was subscribing to The Wire – and I was particularly taken by the short reviews which tried to describe the nature and quality of certain musics in very few words. Partly mimicking this facility, possibly purloining the odd phrase here and there, and condensing descriptions and coining the odd neologism, I proceeded to compose a compilation album in words. It is not – even in the passage that mentions ‘styluses scraped’ – an attempt to describe Phil’s own music. After all it is a ‘compilation’, though the imaginary musicians of this imagined music are unnamed. As we reach side B (how could this not be a vinyl record?) the descriptions become more synaesthetic, relating to more senses than sound. I’m not being entirely serious, which is fitting since Phil was the funniest man I’ve ever known, as well as a musical genius.’

It seemed to go down well, particularly with the two guys from Touch, for whom such language is a constant torture! The poem may be read here, after my memoir of Philip: Pages: Philip Jeck 2022. When I said ‘genius’ (Bryan also used the word) I mean ‘genius’. 

6: 2nd December : Online Reading by Paul Robert Mullen with Guests:

a landmark celebration of Paul Robert Mullen’s work as we launch it’s all come down to this, a powerful retrospective spanning 25 years of poetry and prose from one of contemporary and independent literature’s most distinctive voices. This special online event will bring together readers, writers, and fans for an unforgettable evening of live readings, conversation, and community.

Hosted by: Alan Parry, Editor-in-Chief, The Broken Spine

• Readings by Paul Robert Mullen: Experience selected works from it’s all come down to this as Paul takes us through his journey from 1999 to 2024, offering insights and reflections on his evolution as a poet. This he did through short poems and a long extract from a long poem 'Vinyl Redux'. 
• Open Mic with Special Guests: specially invited readers offered an intimate chance to hear voices that resonate with Paul’s own approach to life and poetry. In my case, I decided (as I did when I last read 'with' Paul, pre-Covid, see here: Pages: Robert Sheppard: The Broken Spine reading, Southport (set list)) to read poems about music (possibly amassing towards a collection), and (I'm certain) influenced by his 'Vinyl Redux'. I read a few sections from 'Tone Poem: Starlight and Stardust', the sections relating to recent albums by Fred Hirsch, James Brandon Lewis, Brad Mehldau, Donny McCaslin, Shakti, and Miho Hazama's m_unit.    

A fine ending to a mini-tour!

Locating Robert Sheppard: email: robertsheppard39@gmail.com; website: www.robertsheppard.weebly.com NEW, note: follow me on Bluesky not on X , at https://bsky.app/profile/robertsheppard.bsky.social