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
