Real beginning of new series of 'liberties' taken with Wordsworth's sonnets (temporary post of The English Strain' series)

My ‘English Strain’ project squeezes on. There are two posts about the background to it: one that looks back at Book One, The English Strain here and another at Book Two, Bad Idea here .The final part of Bad Idea is called ‘Idea’s Mirror’, which is described, along with some of the prospective poetics plans I had before the general election in December 2019, here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/12/my-last-ideas-mirror-post-election-poem.html

Update 2021: I’m delighted to announce that Bad Idea is available NOW from Alec Newman’s excellent press Knives Forks and Spoons, with a cover design by Patricia Farrell. You may get it HERE:  https://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/product-page/bad-idea-by-robert-sheppard-102-pages

'The National Thrust' by Patricia Farrell

The third book is entitled British Standards. It is planned to present versions (or transpositions) of sonnets of the Romantic period (between those of Charlotte Smith, which I’ve already worked on here, https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/07/more-english-strain-poems-overdubs-of.html

 and those of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, that I’ve also worked on, both in the final parts of Book One. https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/02/robert-sheppard-four-sonnets-from-non.html

 I’m thinking of poems to be ‘transposed’ as ‘Standards’ in two senses: I am listening to Anthony Braxton’s ‘Standards’ albums, where he plays those communally malleable tunes dubbed ‘standards’ by jazz musicians, but I’m also thinking of the ‘standards’ that British locks and other devices conform to, which seem, incidentally, to have survived the supposed uniformity of EU Regulations, and which Bo and others will doubtless champion. 

I am using poems in a section of Wordsworth’s 'Poems Dedicated to National Independence and Liberty', retitled ‘Poems of National Independence and Liberty’, and subtitled ‘liberties with Wordsworth’. Each will carry the first line as a title, for identification. The poems are easy to find (I am still finalizing my selection of 14 of them; Wordsworth wrote over 500 sonnets; I’ve read about 100 of them in the last couple of weeks).

See my update on having finished the 14 'National Independence' poems! HERE.

Two poems from ‘Poems of National Independence’ (in British Standards) have been published on International Times here:

http://internationaltimes.it/poems-of-national-independence-liberties-with-wordsworth/

BONG!

Read about Book One of ‘The English Strain’, The English Strain here . Book Two, Bad Idea, is talked about here .

You can buy both of the published volumes so far, via this link: Pages: How to buy The English Strain books one and two together (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)