I am pleased to say I have three poems in the second issue of the Liverpool-based magazine Overground Underground, masterminded and edited by Michael Sutton. More about those poems later. The editorial says the magazine contains ‘just the kind of echoey, interrelational, intergenerational jewellery box we strive to unlid before the world’. I’m something to do with that third adjective.
It’s
a colourful, visual gathering (I’ve not had time to read it yet), and may be
obtained here: https://overgroundunderground.bigcartel.com/product/overground-underground-issue-2
Issue
2 also features work from Ameek, Amphis Design, Kathryn Aldridge-Morris, George
Ashdown, CD Boyland, Emma Buckley, Kayleigh Cassidy, Janet Clare, German Dario,
Darren C. Demaree, Joe Devlin, Michelle Lynn Dyrness, Joel Robert Ferguson,
Emma Filtness, Hollie Goodwin, Paul Hawkins, Rus Khomutoff, Charles J. March
III, Richard Marshall, Michelle Moloney King, Zach Murphy, Jacqueline Nicholls,
Emily Orley, JP Seabright, Craig Sinclair and Rob Stewart. It was printed with
love at Printworks, Liverpool.
I noticed that Rob Stewart’s ‘Poem Model 1’ is a transposition of ‘Sonnet 72 by Shakespeare’ (one of the few sonneteers to escape my clutches in ‘the English Strain’ project).
My contribution consists of three ‘sonnets’ from the ‘14 Standards’ section of British Standards, part three of the project. See below for news of the first two parts. These are transpositions of ‘To a Young Lady, Purposing to Marry a Man of Immoral Character in the Hope of his Reformation’ (what a title! what a cad!), by Anna Seward, ‘The Idiot Girl’ by Mary F. Johnson (which is a sort of true story, re-narrated during lockdown), and ‘A Dance of Nymphs’ by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. They are all in different ‘forms’. I read two of them here, but you’ll have to get the magazine to see the forms. ‘The Idiot Girl’ is too long for these short videos.
‘To a Young Lady, Purposing to Marry a Man of Immoral Character in the Hope of his Reformation’
'A Dance of Nymphs'
You
can read more about ‘14 Standards’ section here, and find links to more texts and/or videos: http://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/05/robert-sheppard-14-standards-from.html
and about the third book, British Standards, here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2021/04/transpositions-of-hartley-coleridge-end.html
And about the first two books (now both available) The English Strain here: http://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2018/04/robert-sheppard-petrarch-sonnet-project.html
and Bad Idea here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/09/on-bad-idea-and-reference-to-earlier.html
(All of these have further links to more poems and the sites to buy the books and read their reviews, so far.)
