The Lowry Lounge 2024 - an account and links

The Lowry Lounge 2024. I wasn’t looking forward to it, too many other things (readings) going on, but felt enthusiastic once Patricia and I were on our traditional way to the Bluecoat in Liverpool. (I’d also decided I would read ‘Malcolm Lowry’s Land’ at/on my online reading on Wednesday; see Pages: Details of Readings this Autumn.) And I was justified because Helen Tookey and Bryan Biggs (the central Firminists) had spent a lot of time and energy to compensate for limited funding this year. Since it was The Day of the Dead, this year focused on that, and upon its appearance (a weak word for its omnipresence) in Under the Volcano.

 The Mexican altar from 2009 (the first Lowry Lounge: Pages: Malcolm Lowry: From the Mersey to the World) was re-envisaged (we brought a Hell Bunker golf ball, the Lowry beer bottle from 2009 and other bits and bobs; but I didn’t want to take leave of the notebook from my 1979 visit to Lowry’s grave!).

[Helen Tookey's photo of the altar upon which she spent much time]

Then in honour of the late John Hyatt (punk musician, visual artist and educator), who I liked very much, we watched his ‘backwards’ version, ‘resurrection’ he’d say, of the final chapter of Under the Volcano. (I’d embedded it on this blog, in my account of the 2018 Lounge: Pages: The 2018 Lowry Lounge in Liverpool and on the Wirral (including the Open Malc) (set list)). It occurred to me that my recent plan to narrate Dante’s Divine Comedy ‘backwards’ might have been unconsciously influenced by it. Might as well make it conscious. We saw some other of John’s contributions to the Lounge. What impressed me was the way he was able to re-imagine Lowry; I’ve long thought I’ve nothing more to say (or do), that the Lowry section of Doubly Stolen Fire was my final word. John Hyatt’s example suggests that that is not necessarily so. (See an account of last year, when I launched the book: Pages: Launch of Doubly Stolen Fire at the Lowry Lounge 2023, Liverpool (set list).)

'The Resurrection of Geoffrey Firmin' 2018. Oddly we watched a different video to this one, but it was the same performance!

Colin Dilnot talked about the Day of the Dead and found a solitary reference to Eisenstein’s epic filming in Mexico. Which we watched an edited version of. He also informed us that the novel sets Day of the Dead 1938 on a Sunday: it was a Wednesday! And Lowry and Jan didn’t arrive in Mexico for the first time on the Day itself (as we would be briskly informed in the Powell documentary we saw later). But a day or two before. (It strikes me now, perhaps on the Sunday before the Wednesday?) Death Day follows: 

 Lunch in the thriving Bluecoat with fellow-Firminist Ailsa, and Tim, catching up a little, before the afternoon session was called.

Bryan and Catherine Marcangeli talked about Adrian Henri’s early ‘The Entry of Christ into Liverpool’ (poem – painting (on hessian!) – performance) and the late ‘Day of the Dead in Hope St.’ (poem – paintings and studies – performance only planned), 1998. So, I thought, we were here in Liverpool when Henri raised the dead (with Lowry coming out of the Phil: I hope he wasn’t too disappointed with the beer). It was good to chat with Catherine who is only intermittently in Liverpool. (But she was here for Mersey Poets events in 2017: Pages: Celebration of 50 Years of The Mersey Sound (readings and pop up reading by Roger McGough) (set list).) Here's the Liverpool Scene with Henri, performing the poem. 

An Open Malc with Alan Peters blowing harp and singing a bit of Adrian’s ‘Day of the Dead’ poem, which he’d scribbled down as it was displayed (thus giving it the scratch performance that Adrian never achieved). Now I appreciate the inter-art aspects of Henri’s work, I’m I much bigger fan than I’ve been, seeing, as I did, the Mersy poets’ fame as a bit of a blanket over the rest of The British Poetry Revival – but I see now that that was never their intention, though it was an unintended consequence of that fame and notoriety. I know I’m rattling away from the theme, but it’s worth to add that Alan performed and toured with Henri at some point.

Helen Tookey read some more beautiful passages from her forthcoming book on/about/out of/round and about Lowry. More about that when it’s out, I think. In the meantime, here's the New Brighton plaque for Lowry, with the quote selected by Helen. 

 A showing of Tristram Powell’s 1960s documentary on Lowry followed. (Meeting the film maker himself a few years ago was a privilege. He died earlier this year, after a legendary career in film and TV. Rough Passage was his first feature in 1967: it's worth it to hear the dreadful John Davenport, who elsewhere accuses Lowry of being an onanist, here calls him 'a little tipsy Delilah'!) I can't the video or Tristram's website. 

The traditional toast to Lowry and (this year) to John: mescal, of course!

A final photo of me at the Lyceum Day of the Dead crazy golf bid accompanied a farewell to us all until next year.

Jeremy Lowry (yes, he is), Cian Quayle, Helen and Patricia and I had a quick scope of the crazy golf ‘course’ between a beer at the Post Office and a hearty meal at the Greek Taverna… 

An image of Messers Lowry and Sheppard...

Reviews of my edition of the Selected Poems of Mary Robinson

I’m pleased to say there has been a first review of my Shearsman edition of Mary Robinson’s poems, by MC Caseley in the very solid online magazine Litter, which I link to in my ‘blogroll’, and which I recommend. (For example, there’s a great review of Sarah Crewe’s brilliant new book, which I saw her reading from last night, and I’ll be sharing an online reading with her next week!).

Back to Mary. I particularly liked MC Caseley’s paragraph on ‘Sappho and Phaon’, which he (correctly) regards as the masterwork here, and says, ‘Much of the value of this collection and reassessment, however, must rest on her sonnet sequence Sappho and Phaon, published in 1796, the first such since the Renaissance. This is undoubtedly powerful and revolutionary, taking freely from Pope and Ovid, but imposing a narrative frame around the events.’ (This seems more succinct than my introduction.) He continues, ‘In her introduction, Robinson also places Sappho among the other lovers traditionally associated with the sonnet form, such as Petrarch and Laura – a confident act of rewriting and appropriation,’ which is also nicely put. He calls my introduction ‘helpful and comprehensive’, which is gratifying. MC Caseley finds the early work too Augustan and Mary’s epic ‘The Progress of Liberty’ too Wordsworthian, but these reflect, of course, the poetic paradigms she worked between. I think there is a case for ‘The Progress of Liberty’, but it is good to see this review of my considerable and (I must admit) slightly surprising labours, particularly this week in which I have finally seen the three portraits of Mary Robinson in the Wallace Collection! So, thanks to MC Caseley and to Alan Baker, the editor of Litter.

Read the whole review HERE:  Review - The Selected Poems of Mary Robinson | Litter

The book may be purchased HERE: Mary Robinson - Selected Poems (shearsman.com) 

 

There’s quite a lot about Robinson on this blog, too, branching from a hubpost, here:  Pages: Selecting for a Selected: The Poems of Mary Robinson 1

It’s worth saying I got ‘into’ Mary Robinson during the composition of my transpositions of Romantic sonnets, and ‘Sappho and Phaon’, which, as I say, Caseley rightly sees as a highlight of her work (which is voluminous), was subject to my satirical method in ‘Tabitha and Thunderer’. It’s a parody in some ways of the Ovid-Pope-Robinson narrative of Sappho and her obsessive love for hapless Phaon, but I refused to follow the sequence's tragic ending. Tabitha/Mary/Sappho takes back control of the plot, and the poem, and ‘Thunderer’/Phaon (and dare I say /Boris Johnson) is rebuffed, big time. I write about my poem here, Pages: My Transpositions of Mary Robinson's sonnets 'Tabitha and Thunderer' are now complete (hub post), a post posted seemingly well before this present volume was a twinkle in Shearsman editor Tony Frazer’s eye.

He suggested the task to me, after spotting ‘Tabitha and Thunderer’ in the manuscript of British Standards, which he has also published. (See here: Pages: British Standards published by Shearsman - out now; this post has full contents and a video of a sample poem.) I dithered for a while (not being a critic of Romantic literature, but having read a fair bit, not least of all in preparing British Standards) - and then said 'Yes!'

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.  

Join us for 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
Date: Monday, 2 December
Time: 20:00 GMT
Duration: 90 minutes
Location: Zoom

What to Expect:

• 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.
• Q&A Session: Explore Paul’s creative world in a live Q&A hosted by Alan Parry, exploring the themes, influences, and experiences that have shaped his writing.
• Open Mic with Special Guests: The spotlight will open up for specially invited readers, offering an intimate chance to hear voices that resonate with Paul’s own approach to life and poetry. Open Mic readers are restricted to a two poem or five minute slot maximum.
• 
  

Details to be added here: Here's the Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-party-for-paul-robert-mullens-its-all-come-down-to-this-tickets-1064189091219 

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)

During this autumn I have had, to my delight, five readings to perform, some full readings, others contributions to larger events. They are all quite different, with different work read, often from different books, or no books! Sometimes with, or alongside Patricia Farrell, sometimes not.

As they 'pass', I've converted my announcements of them on this pot 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!  

I thought I'd finished for the season, but I've got another mini-reading ('a couple of poems' to help launch Paul Robert Mullen's new book, for which I wrote the introduction'. Here's the details:

 

And an extra 'tail' to this 'tour'! 

Monday, December 2 · 8 - 9:30pm GMT Paul Robert Mullen launch.

Join us [they say] for 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

Date: Monday, 2 December

Time: 20:00 GMT

Duration: 90 minutes

Location: Zoom

What to Expect:

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.

Q&A Session: Explore Paul’s creative world in a live Q&A hosted by Alan Parry, exploring the themes, influences, and experiences that have shaped his writing.

Open Mic with Special Guests [I'm one of these, just a couple of poems]: The spotlight will open up for specially invited readers, offering an intimate chance to hear voices that resonate with Paul’s own approach to life and poetry. Open Mic readers are restricted to a two poem or five minute slot maximum.

I will read some music poems. Details to be added here: Here's the Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-party-for-paul-robert-mullens-its-all-come-down-to-this-tickets-1064189091219 Paul's book: Pages: it's all come down to this by Paul Robert Mullen is out, with an introduction by me. 

Readings this Autumn (set lists and comments)

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 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' (they'll be more of her at my November 12th London reading); 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.  

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.

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. 

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). 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.

*

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’. 

*

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

'Pretend-sleep' published in International Times

 I still get a frisson from being published in International Times. I feel like, retrospectively, I am being admitted into Bomb Culture or something from my precocious entry into the 'underground' as a teenager. (Appropriate, since this week it is 50 years since I met Tom Pickard, Barry MacSweeney, Pierre Joris, Paul Brown and others, when I recorded the first two reading at the Entreprise pub!). But, of course, International Times rages on, online, as a radical journal, and is very much worth reading. Rupert Loydell is poetry editor and he has published a number of poems of mine. (This link takes you to all the items I've contributed over the years: (https://internationaltimes.it/?s=Sheppard.))

This time Rupert has published an impacted little piece called 'pretend-sleep' which was written in November 2023, with the war in Ukraine and and with the asymmetrical killing in Gaza, very much in mind. Read the text online here: Pretend-Sleep | IT (internationaltimes.it)

But I also read it here: 

Patricia (Farrell) has also been published a lot in International Times too, and this is her most recent appearance: From looking like winter illegibly read | IT (internationaltimes.it)

How Twitter developed my poetry and why I'm leaving X

I have – quite reluctantly – left the social media platform X. In fact, I never really wanted to be on X (to be able to leave it): I joined something called Twitter, along with millions of others. Some people are defiantly calling it that still, but it isn’t that anymore. (I suspect readers of The Daily Herald did the same when their former Labour-supporting paper re-branded as The Sun, an event I just about remember.) 

This is a sad departure for me because Twitter was intimately involved in some of my poetry. I first went on the platform under the guise of my fictional Belgian poet Rene Van Valckenborch – and he still has a microblog there (I lost access to it and therefore can’t deactivate it). I posted his so-called ‘Twitter Odes’ there (I also posted them here: here’s a few: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2010/12/twitterodes-35-42.html.

They appeared eventually in A Translated Man. But Van Valckenborch also invented the ‘Twittersonnet’ (140 characters and/or spaces (as it was then) divided into 14 lines of 10 characters each. There’s one of those in A Translated Man. But I couldn’t let my creature have all the fun. I wrote a series of ‘Twittersonnets’ about small things for a festival of small things at the Bluecoat under my own name. I actually set up my now deactivated account to post these little poems (I used ‘microbius’ as my handle because I imagined a younger brother to the Roman astronomer Macrobius who specialized in small things and was called Microbius; that must be my only ‘classical’ joke!) These poems are, appropriately, collected in my small volume of short poems Micro Event Space which I had fun ‘launching’ in micro non-event spaces, https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/07/robert-sheppard-micro-event-space.html and I thank Red Ceilings Press for this publication (still in print). Here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/07/robert-sheppards-micro-event-space-is.html. And here is one of them that was exhibited at the Blackpool Illuminations: Really: Pages: Robert Sheppard: My twittersonnet 'Dwarf Planet' is part of the KFS poetry illuminations in Blackpool. I think this image can be read, but I've added the poem (and another) below): 

 

dwarf planet (pluto)

 

ice-coated

 mountains

 (30% H₂0)

 polygons

 

by a whale

’s tail/cr

isp bald c

rust faces

 

 redtipped

 charon su

cking meth

 

ane/pebble

 moons in

the kuiper

 

 

 

and here's another  

 

 

 

 

lucretius

 

atoms make

 space & t

hen discom

pose in mo

 

tion/littl

e letters

make words

 & then re

 

contextual

ise atoms/

lettery cl

 

inamens li

ke ‘world’

 to ‘word’

 

There’s another Twittersonnet in my 14 variations of Petrarch published as Petrarch 3 and republished in The English Strain. It will be my last.

OK back to Twitter-as-was. I left the account alone then, for a while, until I was talking about this very blog to the ex-Comms person at Edge Hill, Angela Samata (Merseyside Woman of the Year a few years back for her pioneering work in suicide prevention). And she asked what was the point of blogging if you didn’t tell people about your posts. Realising the truth of this, I set about using my Twitter account to announce new (and sometimes old) posts. I think it fulfilled that function – but I also found myself absorbed by the cut and thrust and to and fro of information and (deliberately fun) nonsense online. (As does Angela herself, by the way: I followed her.) Perhaps it now seems like an age of innocence. Eventually I had 1,500 followers and I followed 800. (I deliberately kept that number low to make it manageable.)

So why come off the platform?

The answer is, predictably, him,

 

Elongated Muff as I call him (or would have, if he’d entered the carnival of grotesques in my now-completed ‘English Strain’ project along with Bo and Go and Fox and Dox).

This would-be Citizen Kane increasingly interrupts one’s posting with his increasingly conspiracy theorizing fascistic comments. When it came to the riots in Southport, he was reporting Civil War in Britain (which is at least hyperbole) and defending some of the rioters as being guilty only of posting on FB, when even they admitted – for example – criminal damage. An acquaintance of mine knows one Scouser that Muff was defending: the jokes around the pubs are that he’s going to get him out! He won’t. (The rioter was reportedly quite calm on the afternoon of the evening of the riots, but an afternoon and an evening is a long time to keep drinking, and he ended up chanting at and abusing policemen as the Spellow Library, to whose rebuilding fund I have contributed, burned!)

Technically, the Muff algorithm has made more of that conspiracy stuff arrive in my stream (or whatever it’s called). It’s not helped by followers of mine who attack these people; the only effect is that their monetized accounts are worth even more. So I am becoming part of, say, Lawrence Fox’s income stream if I repost his deliberately-constructed nonsense. Even more than that I was increasingly not seeing my followees’ posts; so my followers weren’t seeing mine.

So, I am – reluctantly – on Bluesky now, where, of today, I am following 115 sites, with 90 followers so far. I am at https://bsky.app/profile/robertsheppard.bsky.social.

I’ve always avoided FB with my English temerity about what a ‘friend’ constitutes. But I might migrate. There is a bigger question about whether blogs are the dinosaurs of the internet. Coming up to my 20^th year HERE (See post number one: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2005/02/editorial-to-third-series-robert.html) that’s an open question for now. 

Until then, come and join me on Bluesky. It is rapidly growing and is benign so far.