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. In fact, only the dates are true! Here's the last part:
28th
April 2021: Outside Covid rages. Inside, Danny/i ignores me, no longer props up
my daily performance of life. Its job is done. Performing seems as far off as
ever (all the clubs dark, the tables around the stage gathering undisturbed
dust, the dancers porking out on schnitzels alone, the corsetry bursting, if
tried on at all).
Inside, I’m reading. Jason suggested
I tackle the poetry of Rosemary Tonks.
‘Rosemary who?’ I asked over Zoom.
‘Rosemary Bonks!’ He laughed.
‘What?’
‘Just a joke. Like Viz.’
‘What?’
He hasn’t learnt his lesson about
joking with Germans and Austrians. Jason seems further away than ever since
Brexit and Shexit, but his recommendation of Tonks was fortuitous.
What was not to like with her
orientalism of café life? She was the female Baudelaire of Swinging London (the
bits that weren’t swinging). Her poems are like scenarios for burlesque
performances with a soundtrack of Brel songs by Dusty Springfield – so European
in yearning, so British in restraint.
‘Her poetry is just the sort that
might have gone into your mannequin’s anthology, if only she’d written ten
years earlier…’
‘And was prepared to become
fictitious.’
‘Haven’t we?’
I didn’t like the turn of this
conversation. I felt I was sinking to the bottom of a dark fish tank. A bed of
envelops flapped at me with packets of possibility. One lick of a stamp that
tastes like strong Turkish coffee, and you’ve sealed your fate forever, in one
witnessed witness statement to a crime you only imagined. (Sorry about that.)
And now today, Jason asks, ‘Where’s
the mannequin?’ attempting to peer round me on the screen.
‘Waiting at the door. I’m getting
rid of it, once lockdown permits.’
‘But we need it to prove where the
anthology came from.’
‘If you could only hear yourself. Proof!
Who will believe you? Ghost hunters and conspiracy theorists. Purveyors of
talking mongeese!’
Jason was as silent as Danny/i.
‘You’re right. We’d be bungled onto
the last train to Bournemouth.’
I didn’t quite understand him, but I
knew it was a reference to Tonks, who lived in that town, in the north of
England, I think.
‘We’re going to have to invent
something less extraordinary…’
‘But less true!’
‘The oldest gothic plot: the
re-discovered manuscript in an obscure archive, the musty recovery from the
vault, the mysterious package left on the doorstep.’
(‘But
I wrote it,’ I said, too quietly for him to hear, almost lying.)
21st May 2021: There is no more poetry. I should have seen it coming, if an absence may be seen in advance. I have written nothing for months, except this notebook. The blank handkerchief is like a sudden bad mood.
The first installment includes links to all the previous posts: Pages: A Fictional Poet's Notebook (entry one)(hubpost to other parts) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)
and a further post here: Pages: A further thought on fictional poetry and imaginary authors (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)
