http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2005/02/editorial-to-third-series-robert.html
The first series of Pages has been digitalised: see here for access.
To relive the early days of the blog, I will refrain from adding any images to this post (though you’ll find loads in the links!). And I’ll use raw links (a term I think I made up). This is what a blog looked like in 2005: all text and html!
Last year I posted this. It’s a longer post than I remember, with links to some earlier posts that I felt were more interesting:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/02/robert-sheppard-my-14-years-of-blogging.html
Five years ago (that’s the tenth anniversary) I posted extremely comprehensive celebrations, that had the purpose of alerting readers to content that they may have missed. They are still worth viewing for that reason. Here there are:
1. This post has a long interview with me as a literary blogger, not a category of person that I consider myself to be, though I suppose I am one:
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/ten-years-of-pages.html
2. On this one I collected what I judged to the be best bits of the first ten years (my favourite image, my favourite post, etc):
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/ten-years-of-pages-best-bits.html
3. I decided to list one important post per year that seemed not to be represented in the other selections:
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/ten-years-of-pages-one-post-year.html
4. Although this is mainly a literary blog, you may have noticed that I often include passages that have nothing to do with poetry. Here’s stuff about Pussy Riot (see below), Frank Sinatra, my father’s funeral, etc…Ten years of posts (thankfully, you might conclude) not about poetry:
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/ten-years-of-pages-ten-posts-nothing-or.html
This last post (ho ho) is less interesting I think, but I include it here for the sake of completion. These were my future plans:
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/ten-years-of-pages-plans-for-future.html
I adopted (or invented, more likely) the term ‘hubpost’ to describe a post which is, at least in part, a list of links to other posts. I thought it might be interesting to list the best of them (that may include such posts from before I used the term). Although posts are dated, that doesn’t stop me updating, which is essentially what I am doing with hubposts. (It's also why some early posts have images; I added them later.) Currently I am writing a series of posts on ‘literary collaboration’ and the first post of the series is also the hubpost:
Read (and link from) the hubpost on collaboration here:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/01/robert-sheppard-thughts-on.html
All six of Bill Griffiths’ ‘Ghost Stories’ may be accessed here:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/10/bill-griffiths-six-ghost-stories-for.html
Here's a hubpost on my 1969 diary, which I posted throughout 2019, though I'm not sure why, here:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/01/saturday-3rd-january-1970-last-entry.html
A hubpost concerning 'The English Strain' book two, the ‘Bad Idea’ poems (with examples) may be accessed here:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/09/on-bad-idea-and-reference-to-earlier.html
This is a sort of hubpost concerning the generous book about my work, The Robert Sheppard Companion, here:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-robert-sheppard-companion-ed-byrne.html
I guest edited Stride over the summer of '19 and here's a hubpost to all the items I selected (they were all connected to the Poetry and Poetics Research Group at Edge Hill): here.
A hubpost introducing all the collaborators of the EUOIA (that's the real people, mostly):
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2018/02/meet-euoia-collaborators-general-intro.html
and another post, listing all the European poets my collaborators and I invented, here:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2016/05/euoia-european-union-of-imaginary.html
Here’s a guide to the Ship of Fools Exhibition held at Edge Hill University in 2017, showing slightly grey photos of many of the collaborations of Patricia Farrell and myself:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2017/04/ship-of-fools-press-exhibition-edge.html
Here are routes to all the contributions to Patricia Farrell’s online 60th Birthday celebrations:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2016/12/december-1956-patricia-farrell.html
The Necessity of Poetics begins here:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2016/04/robert-sheppard-necessity-of-poetics-1.html
(We are now among hubposts that didn’t use the term, edging back through time.)
For the complete text of my 1999 critical book, Far Language
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2015/09/robert-sheppard-far-language-poetics.html
For posts relating to my 2005 critical work, The Poetry of Saying hub here:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2015/09/robert-sheppard-poetry-of-saying.html
For links relating to, and dry-runs of, my 2016 critical work The Meaning of Form look no further:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2014/06/robert-sheppard-meaning-of-form-forms.html
Twenty Five Edge Hill University poets:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2015/05/25-edge-hill-poets-and-total-numbered.html
My lecture on the innovative sonnet was in 14 bite-sized parts, accessed here:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2011/07/innovative-sonnet-sequence-one-of-14.html
An inventory of poetics in four parts (research for a book on poetics that has still never quite come together):
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2009/06/robert-sheppard-poetics-1-poetics-and.html
My ‘History of the Other’ about alternative poetries begins here:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2005/02/history-of-other-part-one-robert.html
PLEASE note: this is now the earliest post on the blog because I moved (re-posted) the original post uploaded 15 years ago today, and linked to above.
The most interesting or important poetry post recently (for me) must be
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/01/prison-camp-violin-riga-anthologised-in.html
Here’s some posts that I simply think were fun:
Two posts on retirement:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2017/09/is-that-lump-sum-in-your-pocket-or-are.html
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2017/09/robert-sheppard-my-leaving-rap-for-my.html
and the life-story (with lots of images and embedded videos, some now dead) of EUOIA poet George Bleinstein, which I composed as a shaggy poet story with Tom Jenks:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2016/06/luxembourgs-georg-bleinstein-says-dont.html
Here's a post I never dreamed I would have to write, in memory of the poet Sean Bonney.
To mark this day, annually, I usually post the most looked-at pages on the blog (according to blog statistics, which are at variance with the tally beside each post on the ‘inside’, as it were). I almost decided not to do that today, because those statistics are compromised by massive multiple hits that emanate from Russia (there’s a map showing clearly the origin of hits) and are clearly part of an internet harvesting project that is doing … what … exactly? I believe it started after I posted a fairly bland invocation to ‘Free Pussy Riot’, which you may see here. Why not look at it, it might excite 'them' if it received a few new hits? Or should I have a post called 'Putin Wrestles with a Bear'. Here:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2012/08/free-pussy-riot.html
OK. You'll only wonder. Here are the most 'accessed' posts:
