Paul Evans' Selected Poems and Lee Harwood's Collected

Writing a post about another book that I’m editing, I remarked on the difficulties of selection, and I made reference to the Selected Poems of Paul Evans that I edited in 2009: The Door of Taldir. What I realised for the first time was that I hadn’t mentioned this book on this blog at the time, only recently. The process of getting this book together (I don’t mean the selection) was somewhat fraught and I think I was happy to let the book appear and find its way – there were a few appreciative reviews, and there should have been more.

What do I want to say about it now? Well, I think anybody buying the New Collected Poems of Lee Harwood, which Kelvin Corcoran and I have just edited (see a hubpost here to a variety of posts on, and around, the book and its launch: Pages: Lee Harwood New Collected Poems (2023) Some of the new things we found to put in it (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)), or indeed buying the Selected Poems of Lee Harwood, might think of buying Paul’s book as well. Then, both men would have agreed, you have the ‘Brighton School of Poetry’ whole! That is a joke they shared – but, of course, they shared a lot more in their poetry. They refer to one another, though they never collaborated. More sadly, Lee writes a number of elegies to Paul, who died in a mountaineering accident, while climbing with Lee.

I’ve said a lot about Lee’s work on this blog (again, check out Pages: Lee Harwood: 4 Poems (and a note on them) in Abandoned Playground, ahead of NEW COLLECTED POEMS edited Corcoran and Sheppard (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)), but not a lot about Paul (although I did publish some pre-digital reviews of his excellent Tourneys book, and included him on my cassette tape magazine 1983). What I found myself writing (this morning, as it happens, but I am posting this comment (again) on a different, future, day) was: ‘This book, which I don’t mention on this blog until a post of March 2023, meant I had to balance the already-published poems (possibly the stronger ones, definitely the ones I liked most) with the poems in an unpublished manuscript in the possession of Lee Harwood. I knew that any poem from this manuscript that I didn’t pick – and these I liked less than the early free verse poems – would never see the light of day. It’s a position of some responsibility.’ Whereas the ethic of editing Lee’s New Collected was about getting everything in, the ethics of selection, which I’ve only hitherto had to think about in terms of my own work, which is easy (the work's mine and the decisions are mine!), was finely balanced in terms of Paul’s work. My simpler problems on my own account were discussed here: Pages: Robert Sheppard: How I selected History or Sleep: Selected Poems.

As an enticement for both books, I’d like to point to the online publication of their Introductions.

The Door at Taldir: The Selected Poems of Paul Evans, Exeter: Shearsman 2009, is still available: Shearsman Books buy Paul Evans - The Door of Taldir — Selected Poems.

That link shows you another link to my Introduction, or you can go straight there: paul-evans-the-door-of-taldir-selected-poems-SAMPLE.pdf (multiscreensite.com)

 Lee Harwood, New Collected Poems. Bristol: Shearsman 2023, is available: Lee Harwood - New Collected Poems (shearsman.com)

That link shows you another link to our Introduction, or you can go straight there: lee-harwood-new-collected-poems-sampler.pdf (cdn-website.com).

Any difficulties, go to https://www.shearsman.com/ and search.

The question of why Paul took up a traditional lyric style in later work after a deft non-metrical lyricism is another question, one which I’m not sure I can ‘answer’, though I could explore it. Was it a great swerve from the influence of Harwood, I wonder (with my Harold Bloom hat on)? I make good use of a 1982 interview I did with Paul in which he explains his stylistic changes in the Introduction you can access above. Andrew Duncan has a few thoughts about Evans (embedded in this long post): angel exhaust: british poetry revival.

*

Locating Robert Sheppard: email: robertsheppard39@gmail.com  website: www.robertsheppard.weebly.com Follow on Twitter: Robert Sheppard (@microbius) / Twitter  latest blogpost: www.robertsheppard.blogspot.com

Robert Sheppard: Far Language: Poetics and Linguistically Innovative Poetry 1978-1997: New Introduction and links to chapters

In 1999 I published my first work of ‘criticism’ and ‘poetics’ in a book that deliberately mixed reviews I had published on linguistically innovative writers and the ‘linguistically innovative’ poetics of my own writing, particularly the then-still advancing Twentieth Century Blues. In both cases this was a selection, leaving out, for example, an essay on David Miller that had appeared in a Stride volume already (for Far Language was published in the Stride Research series) and a series of overlapping pieces on Paul Evans that had appeared in several places (interestingly, parts of it turn up in the Introduction I wrote for the Selected Poems of Paul Evans, The Door at Taldir, that I edited a few years ago for Shearsman). I excluded the gloriously-indulgent reviews I produced for New Statesman which were rich in insult against the Movement Orthodoxy (some re-appeared in samidzat from Ship of Fools). It built up a picture of British Poetry of its time, and some of it found its re-written way into ThePoetry of Saying (or even beyond). When I moved to work at Edge Hill in 1996 and turned my back on literary reviewing in favour of literary criticism, I also left behind the concise, telegraphese of some of these pieces, particularly the ones I wrote for the paper version of Pages (precursor of this blog; see here): having few actual pages free I squeezed the criticism into as few as possible, and used every line – but in the process invented a style, I think. (See the pieces on Adrian Clarke, Ulli Freer, Maggie O’Sullivan and Bob Cobbing, for example, though the latter was for And).

The poetics again is selective (my interlinked early 1990s Ship of Fools net-(k)not-works, influenced by Roubaud's The Great Fire of  London, was my most intricate attempt at poetics), but the pieces here relate to a developing writing practice and to the overall construction of Twentieth Century Blues (and ‘Poetic Sequencing and the New’ is indeed part of the poem itself). ‘Propositions 1987’, flawed perhaps, in interesting for its attempts to define postmodernism in a way that didn’t mean what it had come to mean for mainstream British poetry, Craig Raine, for example.  

There is still stuff that is relevant here. Perhaps as confirmation of that fact: it is a surprise to find 5 chapters of the book already on-line. But having the files, typed at the expense of the research fund of Edge Hill University, I sent them to various places (I was not slow to see the eventual importance of the internet, despite my reputation as a technophobe, and a free repository of literary ideas). These are:   

‘Far Language’, on Barry MacSweeney, whose phrase this is and was used, with permission, as the title of the book (see here); ‘Poetic Sequencing and the New’ (see here); 'Buoyant Readings', about Bruce Andrews and others (see here); ‘Sightings and Soundings’, on Bob Cobbing (see here).

Rupert Loydell (who published the book) writes about Far Language and ‘The Education of Desire’ here.

I shall be reprinting one chapter a week, including links to these, until the book is re-published entire online. With an index amassing here as I go:

The (original) 'Introduction': here.
'Reading Prynne and Others': here.
'Far Language' (MacSweeney) here.
'Irregular Actions' (Allen Fisher) here.
'Timeless Identities' (Roy Fisher) here. 
'Utopia Revisited' (John Ash) here.
'Flashlight Propositions' (Robert Sheppard's 1987 poetics) here.
'Education of Desire' (pedadgogic poetics) here.
'Commitment to Openness' (Roy Fisher, Lee Harwood, Tom Raworth) here.
'Poetic Sequencing and the New: Twentieth Century Blues' (poetics) here.
'Buoyant Readings' (J.H. Prynne, Bruce Andrews, Ken Edwards, Aaron Williamson and Gilbert Adair) here.
'Collosal Fragments' (Adrian Clarke) here.
'Tune Me Gold' (Maggie O'Sullivan here.
'Linking the Unlinkable' (poetics of Twentieth Century Blues) here.
'Adhesive Hymns' (Ulli Freer) here.
'Bob Cobbing: Soundings and Sightings' here.

I do have copies of the 2002 re-print still, and anybody who wants one can have one free, as long as they pay postage. Email me here.

2015