An interview with me, by SJ Fowler, has been posted on Maintenant 107/3am magazine

An interview SJ Fowler conducted with me last year (and early this) during various lockdowns, is published here on 3AM Magazine.

It appeared within minutes of my sending my final copy to Steve today (!) and it is an interesting interview in that the focus was on poetry scenes, now and in the past, and partly on Creative Writing as an academic discipline, but also took in: how one keeps going, how one selects a collection, one’s neglect, one’s influences…   I was asked about my own work, Twentieth Century Blues, my associations with Writers Forum and Bob Cobbing (collaborations soon to be re-published), and (of course, since I was in the middle of writing them), my transpositions of English sonnets that I call ‘The English Strain’ project: The English Strain (Shearsman, 2021) and Bad Idea (Knives Forks and Spoons, 2021). I was working on the third ‘book’ of that at the time, which I call British Standards. So, wide-ranging. Things like: 'The other thing I learnt from the scene of the mid-70s was that you got it together and did it yourself, through the provisional institutions of little magazines, small presses and pub-room reading series...'

Read it here:

Maintenant #107 - Robert Sheppard - 3:AM Magazine (3ammagazine.com)

 The exchange evolved in some ways from my posts (and subsequent essay) on literary collaboration (which, curiously, is not one of the things we talked about!), many of which feature accounts of Steve’s ‘Enemies’ projects: you read those posts here, and a link to my review of his selected collaborations, Nemesis!

 Look here for those: The introductory part one, flags up the themes and surveys the territory, here:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/01/robert-sheppard-thughts-on.html

Part 10 is an account of Fowler’s poetics of collaboration. Here:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/04/robert-sheppard-thoughts-on_3.html

Part 11 is an account of Fowler's collaboration with Camilla Nelson (as it reads on the page), here.

Part 12 continues to analyse Fowler's collaboration with Nelson, but it takes account of the extraordinary dynamics of its 'Enemies' performance (which was filmed), here.

Other interviews with me: rob mccellan’s interview may be read here. 

Here’s an interview with me (conducted by Joey Francis), where I talk about the PAGES project from the inside, though I stray into defining 'linguistically innovative poetry' and the experience of homelessness. Read that here.

A  wide-ranging Wolf interview with me, conducted by Chris Madden may be read here.