Andrew Taylor: Robert Sheppard and the Edge Hill Poetry and Poetics Research Group on Litter

Up on Litter now is ‘“Isn't it time somebody wrote all this down”: Robert Sheppard and The Edge Hill Poetry and Poetics Research Group, 1999-2013.’ This is a generous account of the PPRG, focussing on the years the author Andrew Taylor was a member, but nevertheless acknowledging that this poetics anti-workshop is still going (strong: there is a new publication on its way). There are some nice photos too, of our meetings and publications. Thanks for the article Andy.

Read it here.

Cliff Yates and Andrew Taylor talking at the 'Going Public' open meetings of the PPRG 2009

It is a detailed piece on its history, much of it I'd forgotten, and my only concerns are that it might mythologise what should remain historicised: the attempts we made to define the nature of poetics (see here) were crucial, both in terms of defining the discourse and defining OUR discourses. It is good to recall that the PPRG is still operative. There's a meeting next week!

Andrew Taylor and others at the Symposium

A version of this article was presented at the Robert Sheppard Symposium at Edge Hill University, 8th March 2017. (More about that here.)

Details of The Robert Sheppard Companion which came out of the symposium may be read here:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-robert-sheppard-companion-ed-byrne.html

Pages goes back almost as far as the PPRG. Here’s an early post about it with some links:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2009/11/going-privategoing-privateafterword-to.html

Here’s some thoughts on the group here, which I think I posted after including the thoughts in an email to Andy; he quotes some of it: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2017/09/robert-sheppard-thoughts-on-edge-hill.html

And don’t forget that this summer I guest-edited Stride and exclusively featured the current members of the PPRG. See here for an account of that with links to all the items.

In a nice neat symmetry, there are also four new poems by original PPRG member Cliff Yates in Litter too: here: http://leafepress.com/litter13/yates/yates.html

My last appearance in Litter was four ‘Burnt Journal’ poems, birthday poems for poet friends: http://leafepress.com/litter12/sheppard/sheppard.html

Litter also carries the first review of my Micro Event Space here.