Sunday, October 31, 2021

The Lowry Lounge 2021, Bluecoat, Liverpool (and my poem 'Circle of the City: following in the steps of Chapter Five')

The 2021 Lowry Lounge

Date Sat 30 October 2021

Time 1:00pm - 5:00pm

Location Sandon Room, The Bluecoat, Liverpool…

 LiteratureEvents

 


The annual celebration of Merseyside writer Malcolm Lowry (Under the Volcano) returned with its eleventh afternoon of talks and discussions at Bluecoat. As a Firminist, I took part.

 Diary entry 30 Saturday (303-62) Woke with an idea for taking sentences from the stories I’ve assembled, and cast aside. Sketched it out, before heading to Bluecoat with Patricia for another Lowry Lounge. It was socially distanced with the doors open for ventilation, which made it extremely chilly. Bryan Biggs played Lowry family 78s! (See Helen's photo.)


Bryan, Ailsa Cox and Helen Tookey spoke on Lowry events under lockdown; Alan Dunn talked about a project that looks as though it will be ready next year. (More then, I hope.) Rob Keith talked at length on the Panama Canal. Luckily, but coincidently, I’d re-read Lowry’s story ‘Through the Panama’ the day before, and it was most helpful.

Helen is beginning to write a carefully crafted creative non-fiction book on Lowry and ‘us’, ‘us’ meaning the wider Firminist community. (It’s interesting to note that all the original Firminists spoke on Saturday.) Colin talked about Lowry and Burroughs’ cut up, and Mark Goodall spoke on Lowry and Bossa Nova, both teasing, unproven connections (about which I have a lot to say, if I get the chance). Michael Romer ZOOMed in – and is onto something about sexuality in Under the Volcano (particularly using the ‘new’ 1940 UTV).

I read my piece, slowly and deliberately as part of the ‘Open Malc’, with three other contributors. I thought this poem worked quite well in the context, given that In the Ballast had been explored a number of times, particularly by Helen. (See below.)

We then went to The Lion (as in the poem!) and went Sardinian, before going home, masked through the Covid-rich Halloween crowds. Certainly more masks in the Bluecoat than on the streets, other than Halloween ones. Our annual Day of the Dead celebrations often coincide with this madness.

 


Introduction to my poem. 'This poem, Circle of the City, is a series of haiku written (or drafted) while following the walk taken by sailor-revolutionary Sigbjorn and his shipowner father as described (in both senses of the word) by Lowry in his novel In Ballast to the White Sea. Their Liverpool walk starts (and ends) at Exchange Flags and skirts the docks, the shopping centre, and rests at a cinema to view a Russian revolutionary film. They discuss politics generally and, more personally, their culpability in the deaths of others. Like Lowry, I take in the messages of the urban environment I pass through: street signs, adverts, t-shirt slogans. There are, oddly, both in Lowry’s chapter and my poem, references to Melville’s Redburn. The Liverpool ‘guidebook’ Redburn carried was 50 years out of date. My ‘guidebook’ was the novel itself, Bodega and cinema both long gone.'

My cringe-making reference to Liverpool’s ‘Day of the Dodd’ didn’t make the final cut of the poem, but I mentioned it for a laugh!  

This did make the cut, just a taster for now, since I hope to publish the poem elsewhere:


shadow of School Lane:

skirting backs of shaved buildings:

demolished landmarks:

 

INFORMATION IS

NOT KNOWLEDGE (Zappa)

 

(That’s one haiku and an interruption. It’s amazing what people put on t-shirts.) This poem has been incorporated into of my 2023 book, Doubly Stolen Fire, which you may read about, and purchase, here: Pages: Doubly Stolen Fire (a new book of hybrid texts) is now OUT (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

See here for last year (our missing year, though there was a critical publication to celebrate): https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/11/in-lieu-of-lowry-lounge-2020-remaking.html



And accounts of some earlier years:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2009/09/malcolm-lowry-from-mersey-to-world.html

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/03/forty-years-ago-i-visited-malcolm.html

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2012/10/malcolm-lowry-and-david-markson-events.html

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2014/10/malcolm-lowry-iain-sinclair-in.html

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2016/10/robert-sheppard-lowry-lounge-at-lowry.html

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-firminists-malcolm-lowry-conference.html

 

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

A Fictional Poet's Notebook (part 8)

 Some of these posts have been incorporated into a prose chapter of my 2023 book, Doubly Stolen Fire, which you may read about, and purchase, here: Pages: Doubly Stolen Fire (a new book of hybrid texts) is now OUT (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

*

26th October 2020: Poems. It is at a point like this, where I most importantly claim to be alive, that I’m not visibly alive at all.

Not a set of aesthetic possibilities, but a cluster of impossibilities.

            I write myself out of existence.

            A fictional poet is something to be.

            A fictional poet’s oeuvre is a moveable quantity, ranging from nothing to everything. Some of the Luxembourgish poets invented by Georg Bleinstein don’t exhibit text at all. Erwin Wertheim has only one poem (excluded from the EUOIA anthology but online here!). Rene Van Valckenborch presents a book-load of selected poems, leaving phantom limbs of verse, aching. Even Ern Malley (yes, I’ve heard of him!) presents his complete, if limited, oeuvre. (See here). 

            So far, beyond some general descriptions of my style, I have a small number of solidly verifiable poems.

            ‘My poems sink like a sack of drowning puppies,’ I wrote. It looks as though the ‘new lyric’ announced in ‘Book One Poem One’ turned out to be too ‘lyrical’ after all. ‘Book Five’ (or the ‘Book Six’ I dream of) may indeed cross the threshold of lyricism into something beyond.


Sophie Poppmeier is one of the ‘fictional poets’ of my European Union of Imaginary Authors project, and she appears both in Twitters for a Lark and A Translated Man (both Shearsman book). The EUOIA website which describes both the project as a whole (here: European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) - Home (weebly.com) ) and contains a page about her (here: Sophie Poppmeier (1981-) Austria - European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) (weebly.com) ). Two relevant posts about her burlesque work may be read here and here. A poem from Book 4 may be read online here.

I have been writing a notebook to try to write her into the present, as it were, and I’m presenting most of it here, in instalments, like the text itself.

 The first installment includes links to all the posts: Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (entry one)(hubpost to other parts) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

A Fictional Poet's Notebook (part 7)

Some of these posts have been incorporated into a prose chapter of my 2023 book, Doubly Stolen Fire, which you may read about, and purchase, here: Pages: Doubly Stolen Fire (a new book of hybrid texts) is now OUT (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

*

Sophie Poppmeier: 20th October 2020: I can hear the nosy interrogators demanding what they would never ask of a man, or ask with less intensity: What about her love life? Does she only talk to a mannequin – which isn’t true, it talks to me! – because she hasn’t got a man in her life?

            The answer is not so unusual… In fact so ‘usual’ (he was called Anton) that I’m not going to type these pages up for you, me, or for anyone, least of all, for him.

Ditto: having children…

            I never really finished the anecdote about ‘the Bible’ in a previous entry. [See Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (part 5) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)Whatever is sketched out isn’t necessarily used. The story is bigger than the fiction. Petrarch never spoke of his wife or his sons, while Laura is centre-stage. In the sonnets. He was constructing an ethico-aesthetic object, not leaking his biography onto the page, like Bachman or somebody. (That’s unfair: Anne Sexton, then!)

 

23rd October 2020: On its own, the mannequin cannot speak, of course. (Though it might be learning to, it occurs to me.) Like dolls and toys I had as a child, they did not communicate, except through me. (See the toys of ‘Book 4 Poem 3’,online here.) That doesn’t mean I’m a ventriloquist at all. It means I’m ordaining speech, like a God whose creatures answer back! (There are examples of tricksters in certain fetishistic traditions, I know.)

            Of course, a speaking mannequin is still a long way from a co-author, however much it’s a collaborator.

            I feel it is more than a device to allow me to say something new. (That would be achieved by creating a fictional poet, which is something I know about intimately, from the inside.) There is genuine collaboration, in embryo, a mode that far exceeds looking at the mirror and having a chat with a picture of yourself; that merely mimes every move of your lips.

            It is the opposite of ventriloquism. It involves one listening, a deep listening, to the sounds in silence, the speech in shutdown, lockdown, the living among the inorganic. Once the frequency, wavelength, is established, only concentration can strengthen the channel until the hissing turns into static, then into a signal, the noise parts to allow a phatic message through. Once fine attunement is achieved, the signal permits the message to be perceived, directly, clearly, though not completely understood.

            We’re nearly there, I feel.



Sophie Poppmeier is one of the ‘fictional poets’ of my European Union of Imaginary Authors project, and she appears both in Twitters for a Lark and A Translated Man (both Shearsman book). The EUOIA website which describes both the project as a whole (here: European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) - Home (weebly.com) ) and contains a page about her (here: Sophie Poppmeier (1981-) Austria - European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) (weebly.com) ). Two relevant posts about her burlesque work may be read here and here. A poem from Book 4 may be read online here.

 I have been writing a notebook to try to write her into the present, as it were, and I’m presenting most of it here, in instalments, like the text itself.

 The first installment includes links to all the posts: Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (entry one)(hubpost to other parts) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

A Fictional Poet's Notebook (part 6)

 Some of these posts have been incorporated into a prose chapter of my 2023 book, Doubly Stolen Fire, which you may read about, and purchase, here: Pages: Doubly Stolen Fire (a new book of hybrid texts) is now OUT (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

*


19th October 2020: Late to the notebook today, sorting through emails and responses to my ‘Book of Marvels’. The second edition has been reviewed (more than the first). ‘Pegging Putin’ pursues me, it appears. (My dose of Novichock has been already measured out and stored, by the apparatchiks of burlesque, if not the Russians. ‘The Russians are coming’, to quote myself.)

            It looks as though Berlin is heading for a second wave, the people tired, less compliant, but grudgingly masked.

            I put an old mask on Danny/i. Stuck it in the window. The stiff wave of a mannequin. A frozen gesture for the return of lockdown.

DANNY/i

Sophie Poppmeier is one of the ‘fictional poets’ of my European Union of Imaginary Authors project, and she appears both in Twitters for a Lark and A Translated Man (both Shearsman book). The EUOIA website which describes both the project as a whole (here: European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) - Home (weebly.com) ) and contains a page about her (here: Sophie Poppmeier (1981-) Austria - European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) (weebly.com) ). Two relevant posts about her burlesque work may be read here and here. A poem from Book 4 may be read online here.

I have been writing a notebook to try to write her into the present, as it were, and I’m presenting most of it here, in instalments, like the text itself.

The first installment includes links to all the posts: Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (entry one)(hubpost to other parts) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Monday, October 18, 2021

A Fictional Poet's Notebook (part 5)

Some of these posts have been incorporated into a prose chapter of my 2023 book, Doubly Stolen Fire, which you may read about, and purchase, here: Pages: Doubly Stolen Fire (a new book of hybrid texts) is now OUT (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

*

Sophie Poppmeier: 18th October 2020: I am writing myself into being, again, for I have done this a number of times, or so I’ve been written.

            Somewhere somebody is deciding I have a thing about feet or that I am a vegetarian. (Neither is the case.) Somewhere somebody is cooking up unsuitable boyfriends who, at a stroke of a pen, become husbands, and, at a further stroke of the pen, become ex-husbands. That would be an arranged marriage of a particular literary kind.

            I talked once to a woman who worked on a long running TV series, almost a soap opera, and she said they had a book called ‘The Bible’, in which all the details of the places and people in the narratives were spelt out at great length. For example, at the town’s top hotel (at which new characters often stayed as they were introduced to plot-lines) there was a rifle range out the back: not one episode, not one panning shot, not one overheard gunshot, not one sly reference, alluded to the rifle range. Was it there or not, in the monumental background fiction that was being constructed?

            Called away by my bowels.

I am becoming more of a Berliner every day, inspecting my evacuations.

Sophie Poppmeier is one of the ‘fictional poets’ of my European Union of Imaginary Authors project, and she appears both in Twitters for a Lark and A Translated Man (both Shearsman book). The EUOIA website which describes both the project as a whole (here: European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) - Home (weebly.com) ) and contains a page about her (here: Sophie Poppmeier (1981-) Austria - European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) (weebly.com) ). Two relevant posts about her burlesque work may be read here and here. A poem from Book 4 may be read online here.

 I have been writing a notebook to try to write her into the present, as it were, and I’m presenting most of it here, in instalments, like the text itself.

 The first installment includes links to all the posts:

Sunday, October 17, 2021

A Fictional Poet's Notebook (part 4)


Some of these posts have been incorporated into a prose chapter of my 2023 book, Doubly Stolen Fire, which you may read about, and purchase, here: Pages: Doubly Stolen Fire (a new book of hybrid texts) is now OUT (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

*

Sophie Poppmeier: 17th October: OK, let’s get some dates right.

            The ‘Pegging Putin’ outrage (I’m outraged!) occurred before 2019, just before I published the second edition of ‘The Book of Marvels’.

            The EUGE was formed, almost immediately after the break up of the EUOIA in March 2017. I left the former in late 2019, intending to get on with my ‘Book 5’.

            Danny/i spoke to me first in early 2020. Then lockdown occurred. Or were they the other way round? I can’t remember.

            My PhD, from 2010, was entitled ‘Masks of the Anti-Self: Dolls, Mannequins, Effigies, and other Hollow Men in Modernist and Postmodernist Art’. None of it is published. Come on, I’ve been busy with Book 3 (2013) and Book 4 (2015), but I moved (back) to Berlin in 2015, I think it was, and resumed the burlesque for just over a year. I rescued Danny/i from a retro-boutique that had managed to survive the economic crash, but couldn’t withstand a change in fashion. I obtained some shelves, too, for my apartment.

            What about people (Danny/i excepted)? I’ve spoken of the women of the EUGE. We’re still close, especially Trine.

            Jason Argleton is my English translator. We’ve only met once, but our relationship seems warm. He allows me to transmogrify into another language. He is the magic mirror I step through (to you).

            Influences? Early ones: Mayrocker and Bachman. Middle ones: Lutz Seiler and Karla Schaffer. Contemporary ones: Trine Krugeland and Jugita Zujute.

            I suppose I should take some responsibility for Rene Van Valckenborch. I have, in a sense, sucked the wind from his sails (drawn fire?). I’d rather not think of my trips to Antwerp, Ghent (‘where I have never lived’, he claimed), Amsterdam, in search of him. A rumour evaporating into rumours. I had to conclude that he didn’t currently exist, which is not to say that he didn’t, or that he won’t. His twitterfeed keeps him going as an aphoristic whisper in cyberspace. He claims to have ‘presented me first’ according to my website, yet he is as fictional as I am.

            A final note: Augusto de Campos’ book on bossa nova, referred to by Jason Argleton in Twitters for a Lark, does exist: Balanço De Bossa e outras bossas. Editoria Perspectiva, Sao Paulo, 1974.

The cover of the book containing the poems of Van Valckenborch

Sophie Poppmeier is one of the ‘fictional poets’ of my European Union of Imaginary Authors project, and she appears both in Twitters for a Lark and A Translated Man (both Shearsman book). The EUOIA website which describes both the project as a whole (here: European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) - Home (weebly.com) ) and contains a page about her (here: Sophie Poppmeier (1981-) Austria - European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) (weebly.com) ). Two relevant posts about her burlesque work may be read here and here. A poem from Book 4 may be read online here. 

I have been writing a notebook to try to write her into the present, as it were, and I’m presenting most of it here, in instalments, like the text itself.

The first installment includes links to all the posts: Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (entry one)(hubpost to other parts) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 

Saturday, October 16, 2021

A Fictional Poet's Notebook (part 3)

 Some of these posts have been incorporated into a prose chapter of my 2023 book, Doubly Stolen Fire, which you may read about, and purchase, here: Pages: Doubly Stolen Fire (a new book of hybrid texts) is now OUT (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

*

Sophie Poppmeier: 16th October 2020: One reason for writing this account is to keep everything consistent. I’m writing this during the second wave of the Covid-19 crisis, not the heroic first wave, when the world hushed, in awe at death as it breathed its way through the population, but also in awe at the medical resistance. I dressed my mannequin as a nurse and propped it in the window. People cheered. I live in a Bohemian street near the Mitte, in a small apartment in an ancient block, anonymous enough for me not to drift away from myself, particularly during the isolation imposed by the pandemic. But, then with my mannequin, I’m not alone, am I? It was at this point that it acquired a name, Daniel, Danielle, Danny, Dani (never Dan). Danny/i. Once named, it spoke. Or its first grunts and gurgling gestured towards speech. There must be a more economic way of telling this story, one that convinces the reader of each implausibility as it occurs, until it is the ‘new normal’, ways of slipping past the gatekeepers of credulity into the gated community of unreason!

            Perched as Danny/i was in the window it received the applause of the street, the distant approbation of the masses.

            I’m getting ahead of myself here, because I need to update (who? you? me? Danny/i?) my web presence. On my website [NB: before the update of summer 2021; see below!] it leaves me writing Book 5 (or proposing to – I am not sure I’ve written it. Is it possible I am writing Book 6 before I’ve written Book 5? Is that possible? It is, but only if we accept that Book x is not a numerical denominator but a name for the book, a title like any other…). It also refers a little to the controversy over ‘Pegging Putin’ that my Angela Merkin persona performed here in Berlin. I enjoyed the performance: it was curiously empowering, be-decked as I was with over-bearing phallic symbols… At least until I was off-stage, carrying my costume in a bag, and with the mannequin under my arm. I was in tears by then, disempowered by weird committees of taste and decency, whose power – I’d decided – I could only evade by renouncing burlesque as a police state! I say something like that in the new afterword to the revised edition of my ‘Book of Marvels’: I denounce not the artists, but the promoters and critics of the art. As I say there – I must have been thought insane – the only one not to judge me was my mannequin, who stood impassively watching as I reduced an invisible Putin to a quivering jelly. It was dressed as a Russian military officer (my detractors said that it was in Nazi uniform; couldn’t they see?).

            With a wooden knee there can be no knee-jerk reactions.

DANNY/i

Sophie Poppmeier is one of the ‘fictional poets’ of my European Union of Imaginary Authors project, and she appears both in Twitters for a Lark and A Translated Man (both Shearsman book). The EUOIA website which describes both the project as a whole (here: European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) - Home (weebly.com) ) and contains a page about her (here: Sophie Poppmeier (1981-) Austria - European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) (weebly.com) ). Two relevant posts about her burlesque work may be read here and here. A poem from Book 4 may be read online here.

 I have been writing a notebook to try to write her into the present, as it were, and I’m presenting most of it here, in instalments, like the text itself.

The first installment includes links to all the posts: Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (entry one)(hubpost to other parts) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)


Friday, October 15, 2021

A Fictional Poet's Notebook (part 2)

Some of these posts have been incorporated into a prose chapter of my 2023 book, Doubly Stolen Fire, which you may read about, and purchase, here: Pages: Doubly Stolen Fire (a new book of hybrid texts) is now OUT (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

*

Sophie Poppmeier: 15th October 2020: I didn’t feel any of it, until I opened this book and resolved (this is an exercise of the will rather than a discovery of something beyond my control) that the sentence I found already written there was a message from the mannequin, in some way. The blank handkerchief is like a sudden bad mood.

A few days have passed – do I mention ‘lockdown’; all of these shifts in my consciousness and conscious self-conditioning happened under lockdown? – and the mannequin is answering me when I talk to it. Just as it performed motionlessly on stage – now it speaks without movement, or sound, back. At first, I heard a grunt, or a cough, as I’d look over and see it looking at me, ironically, or sardonically, or with assertive humour, and hear the almost-words in my head.

            Here I go again, experiencing that lapse of energy again. I need to write the mannequin into existence, as it talks itself into being. Before the mannequin takes over, I ought to say what practical matters I had to deal with.

I enjoyed the EUGE collaboration at first and – despite the philosophical discursions I wanted to avoid – I was happy alternating lines with the others, particularly with Trine, who I visited in Copenhagen on a few occasions. I learnt a lot about her conceptual poetics there. But the EUGE collaboration was simply taking over. The fanciful notion that it might last forever, this dedication to the eternal ampersandic edifice we were building (like Cage’s organ piece) dizzied me, knocked me off balance. What for a conceptualist was a cool eternity of heaven, seemed to me an eternity in Limbo, never finishing, ever-contributing. Without being too pompous, I was left without any time to write my own work. ‘Who would want to produce their own work?’ Trine would reply, when I moaned. One of the others said, mysteriously, ‘We’re all written by somebody else!’ But, damn it, I do want to write my own work, poems with titles (well, you know how mine go) with my name (alone) at the bottom.

            I had to leave. I found a replacement: Anne Hoffman, a veteran of a number of large-scale poetic projects, from Luxembourg.

            Unlike the Oulipo, I left without having to kill myself, and received eventual forgiveness from Trine. In fact, my leaving tested the system of the EUGE, that one pillar of the edifice could be replaced without the whole toppling, so I served a function. I miss it as well, its Tower of Babel stapled together by glittery ampersands.

            I am not mad, alone with my sotto voce chatty companion. I am eminently sane, because, as a fictional writer, I am super-conscious of the power of ordaining another imaginary author, especially one so obviously constructed of inorganic matter (with an ‘organic’ veneer). But I can see that the EUGE was a conceptual collaboration, whereas my relationship with my mannequin is as unsettled as it is unsettling.

            At first, free of the EUGE, I couldn’t write a thing! I marvelled at the fluency of my earlier work. It dried up as performance dried up. I don’t see a connection between the two.

            Until the mannequin spoke (to me) I was speechless (poetically speaking). Now it’s difficult to choreograph the patter into poems, but there’s no lack of material, words, parts of words. The problem is, without wanting to sound like Robert Sheppard (the ex-EUOIA one), a problem of form.

            Now I think of all my poems as collaborations. (Even with myself.)

            I dream of us sitting on a train passing pieces of paper between us as we bullet through hamlets with medieval spires, crash into the thick cover of a forest, or tunnel through the alps, with only our reflections looking back at us. A mannequin’s reflection will look back even if the mannequin does not look in, there’s an irony.


Sophie Poppmeier is one of the ‘fictional poets’ of my European Union of Imaginary Authors project, and she appears both in Twitters for a Lark and A Translated Man (both Shearsman book). The EUOIA website which describes both the project as a whole (here: European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) - Home (weebly.com) ) and contains a page about her (here: Sophie Poppmeier (1981-) Austria - European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) (weebly.com) ). Two relevant posts about her burlesque work may be read here and here. A poem from Book 4 may be read online here.

 I have been writing a notebook to try to write her into the present, as it were, and I’m presenting most of it here, in instalments, like the text itself.

 The first installment includes links to all the posts: here: Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (entry one)(hubpost to other parts) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Tuesday, October 05, 2021

A Fictional Poet's Notebook (entry one)(hubpost to other parts)

Sophie Poppmeier is one of the ‘fictional poets’ of my European Union of Imaginary Authors project, and she appears both in Twitters for a Lark and A Translated Man (both Shearsman book). The EUOIA website which describes both the project as a whole (here: European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) - Home (weebly.com) ) and contains a page about her (here: Sophie Poppmeier (1981-) Austria - European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) (weebly.com) ). Two relevant posts about her burlesque work may be read here and here. A poem from Book 4 may be read online here.

I have been writing a notebook to try to write her into the present, as it were, and I’m presenting most of it here, in instalments, like the text itself. It's probably best to start with her page on the EUOIA website (see above). 

This first installment includes links to all the posts (so far).  I'll be posting them a year after they were written - except the final two, because we'd have to wait too long for the climax.



The blank handkerchief is like a sudden bad mood.

5th October 2020: I begin to write in this notebook and I find the above already there, though it is not in my handwriting. I imagine it is a message from the mannequin that stands, dressed in my outfit from the Ute Lemper burlesque, in my bedroom. I know it has powers of apparition, one might say. It suddenly embodies, disembodies, and droops (like a Bladerunner replicant). This is the prologue to my notebook, to its performance. I have heard of talking creatures in folktales, of boars in Middle European forests, rodents on British dependencies. It works like this: if I talk to it long enough, it will cease to be a thing, and become a person, a personality. It’s not going to have a gender – like on stage. It was my female lover in one, but Putin’s soldier, in another, act. (You know which one, that one, 'Pegging Putin').

            Why does my enthusiasm drain so quickly for these writings? (I want to leave the desk to delight myself with my own thoughts, not to perform for anybody any longer.)

*

This post is also a hubpost with links to the rest of the notebook as they are posted. There are eleven parts in all. The last two are perhaps the most important. 

Part two: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2021/10/a-fictional-poets-notebook-part-2.html

Part three: Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (part 3) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Part four: Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (part 4) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Part five: Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (part 5) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Part six: Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (part 6) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Part seven: Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (part 7) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Part eight: Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (part 8) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Part nine: Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (part 9) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Part ten: Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (part 10) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Part eleven: Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (last part: 11) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

*

Some of these posts have been incorporated into a prose chapter of my 2023 book, Doubly Stolen Fire, which you may read about, and purchase, here: Pages: Doubly Stolen Fire (a new book of hybrid texts) is now OUT (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

You may also be interested that these reflections continue into another sequence of posts, beginning here: Pages: Reflections on Fictional Poetry and Fictional Poets (1 and hubpost for the sequence) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

*

And guess what? Yet another prose reflection on fictional poets here: Pages: A further thought on fictional poetry and imaginary authors (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)


An essay on the Ern Malley affair and its Liverpool celebrations may be read here:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2022/05/robert-sheppard-my-essay-on-ern-malley.html


Monday, October 04, 2021

A review by Billy Mills of 'The English Strain' and 'Bad Idea'



I’m pleased to say that there is another review of the first two books of ‘The English Strain’ project, by Billy Mills on his ‘Elliptical Movements’ blog. (I list it in my blogroll because there is always something of interest there. One day I’ll post exclusively about the blogroll.) I particularly like this review by a self-identifying ‘sonnet sceptic’ (I would have thought that my sonnets contributed to that scepticism!) because Billy notes the sound of the poems. I’ve just been reading Marjorie Perloff’s Infrathin which analyses sound structures, so this impressed. It also impressed me because I don’t think people have commented on sound and rhythm in my work (partly because they don’t think it’s going to be there).   

Billy's piece is HERE: The English Strain and Bad Idea by Robert Sheppard: A Review | Elliptical Movements (wordpress.com)



Here is me reading the poem he quotes in full, 'The Michael Drayton Companion' where I confuse myself (I was thinking of The Robert Sheppard Companion, see here) with Drayton (full of his real resentments and his supposed relations with Ben and Will). 


There are many inter-linked posts about ‘The English Strain’ project on this blog. You could almost say I wrote it on the blog (particularly in posts that were up no more than a day). Here, though, are several comprehensive ones, with further links to earlier stages of the project.

Read about Book One of 'The English Strain', The English Strain here .


Book Two, Bad Idea, is talked about here . (The final part of Bad Idea is slightly different; called ‘Idea’s Mirror’, it’s described here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/12/my-last-ideas-mirror-post-election-poem.html

You can buy both books so far from one source, here: 
Pages: How to buy The English Strain books one and two together (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Billy finishes: ‘I find myself wondering what he’ll do with the morass of the Romantic sonnet in the final volume.’ Book Three is called British Standards. Unpublished, it is best described here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2021/04/transpositions-of-hartley-coleridge-end.html

Read the first review of Bad Idea, by Alan Baker, in Litter here: Review - "The English Strain" and "Bad Idea" by Robert Sheppard | Litter (littermagazine.com)

 Read the second, by Clark Allison, here, on the Tears in the Fence website: HERE: https://tearsinthefence.com/2021/04/27/the-english-strain-shearsman-books-by-robert-sheppard-bad-idea-kfs-press-by-robert-sheppard/

The third by Steve Hanson for the Manchester Review of Books here: Pages: BAD IDEA reviewed by Steve Hanson in The Manchester Review of Books (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Sunday, October 03, 2021

Untitled by Joanne Ashcroft and Robert Sheppard performed at the European Camarade 2021(video and links)

The European Camarade at The International Anthony Burgess Foundation

October Friday 1st : 7pm doors : Free entry

 3 Cambridge St, Manchester M1 5BY. www.anthonyburgess.org 

Supported by The Manchester Poetry Library, the 2021 European Poetry Festival came to Manchester once again with some of the finest modern poets of the thriving Manchester (and beyond!) scene in collaborative pairs with writers, some from across Europe (but not all). New performances made for the night in this unique Camarade event, all recorded here (Manchester 2021 — European Poetry Festival) featured the pairings of 

Patricia Farrell and Michael Egan

Ailsa Holland and David Gaffney

Tom Jenks and SJ Fowler

JT Welsch and Colin Herd 

Lydia Unsworth and Sarah Clare Conlon

Callie Michail and Scott Thurston

David Spittle and Stephen Sunderland

James Davies and Matt Dalby

and Joanne Ashcroft and myself.


It was a splendid evening, and I enjoyed all the performances: from Scott and Callie moving to James and Matt tramping and registering the byways of Manchester; from Tom and SJ's guide to life after Covid, to JT's and Colin's tongue-in-cheek scrying into the ether to pick up signals from the last pre-Covid Manchester Camarade..(this one: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/04/robert-sheppard-and-patricia-passionate.html

It was splendid also to SEE PEOPLE after Covid (if it is 'after Covid' yet), and just to get that feeling of being at a poetry EVENT. (My use of capitals hints at my excitement. Well done everyone, and thanks Stephen!)

Anyway, here is what Joanne and I did, text and video.



Untitled European Poetry Piece 

When was the last time you ate a pear?

Who in response reaches out to me with their voice?

What happens in Venice when the wind doesn't blow?

How did the moon rise in their fluttery hearts? 

Didn't you stay over at her house that night when we did the blues?

Do I remember?

Maybe I should just go solo?

Maybe I should just go?

But can we really live so deliciously in this word world?

What happens after the end of the world?

Shall we bump and rattle our way out into the savannah once more?

Or trace the goosestep of the phrase?

Whose flesh makes that sound?

Can the dog register the nuance when the woman calls him Lennon while the man calls him Lenin

How does lemon drizzle cake tickle your taste buds?

Could you misspeak a melon for no elm at Noel?

Whose lips could manoeuvre that tongue twister?

Am I part of some puzzle, a puzzle within a puzzle?

To whom will I sing when I am upside down?

¿ You mean, like a Spanish question mark for the Spanish Question?

You mean tapas or paella?

Did you notice that the special effects in the park ensured 'autumn', the few leaves blown by a wind-machine around the shoulders of the actors we have become?

Shall we quit that masquerade ball and run along the narrow, frozen pathways in the forest, scoured of snow by the wind?

Whose memories of earlier days are flooding in to erase today's details, or to fill the blanks with some counters which are not the counters of our counterfeit day? 

Must I trace the loss of today's daydreams that catch in my throat like notes floating on dry air?

Must you?

Which way are you going?

What do people have for breakfast? 

Why does my skin itch less in the summertime?

Well, you never know - do you? 

Who left the light on, again?

Whose eyes rose, and neck strained, towards the brown ceiling, from which musical instruments hung: a flute; several Spanish guitars; a miniature violin with bow; a trombone with its slide extended, mute witnesses to music that may not be heard, the melodies that float above our heads at all times? 

Whose belly hummed at each note played, whose toes tapped an irregular rhythm while in a corner the skull was shaking a deeper colour from its body's memory up into that shimmering web?

Is the same note always the same note? 

Is the listening ear always human?

Do you want to buy a book of my poems? 

Do you want coffee with that?

Are you sure you don't want a book of my poems?

Or perhaps a wooden bowl of milk?

Beautiful world (comma) where are you (no question mark)

 

Joanne Ashcroft and Robert Sheppard: September 2021


All the videos of the above performers may be accessed here: Manchester 2021 — European Poetry Festival



Here we all are!

Curated by SJ Fowler and Martin Kratz. 

Some of my previous collaborative readings in Manchester are featured here:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2018/04/twitters-for-launch-part-of-european.html

Pages: Rimas Uzgiris and Robert Sheppard: collaborative poem 'Unreadable Expressions': text and video and notes

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/03/robert-sheppard-and-patricia-farrell_25.html

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/04/robert-sheppard-and-patricia-passionate.html

I write about the Camarade in some of my ‘Collaborations’ posts, beginning here, and review SJ’s book of selected collaborations. 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.