[A hubpost for this sequence may be accessed here: Pages: Reflections on Fictional Poetry and Fictional Poets (1 and hubpost for the sequence) (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)]
Different Lines (the fictional anthology) is a chimera and will remain so, the invisible mirror of the Movement’s New Lines. It shall never be written, beyond its sample title poem. Its poets – Elaine Jackson, Joshua Henderson, Perceval Lynam even (he has one poem written for him, by me!), Tristram Garner, Keith Ashville, M.C. Evans, James Johnston, Rupert Collyer, and Manxman Reginald Killip – remain spectres of its hauntology.
Its single review – the one ‘produced’ by ‘Shexit’ Sheppard – also remains unfinished, beyond its opening volley: ‘Rather than review this anthology,’ Archibald Pratt is supposed to have opined, writing in The Witness in early 1956, ‘I propose to walk it up and down, as one would an intoxicated stranger, but I will refrain from taking it home with me, to impose upon wife and servant.’ The title of the anthology is an own goal: Pratt surely would have called his riposte ‘Indifferent Lines’! Rather than form its content (as I thought I might) I propose to set it free, like a mythical beast, a phantom or rumour of implication. Or like Prospero, releasing Ariel, drowning his books. If that isn’t a far-fetched analogy.
Of course, something (or somebody) inside me wants to write such poems: all 78 prospective contributions to Different Lines, (imagine!) as well as Sophie Poppmeier’s innumerable new poems, but I need motivated impetus to propel me, or compel me. A Translated Man already traces the complexities of an author function – René Van Valckenborch’s – haunting its own bibliography. Rene Van Valckenborch - European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) (weebly.com) Twitters for a Lark expands on that, through literary collaboration, across a continent, into multiple biographies. (See here: European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) - Home (weebly.com) All the poets of the EUOIA are listed (with videos) here: The Poets - European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) (weebly.com))
)
In my essay, ‘Doubling Up: Modes of Literary Collaboration in Contemporary British Innovative Poetry’, composed after completing Twitters for a Lark, I define the activity: ‘Literary collaboration is the co-creation of a literary work or works by two (or more) writers by whatever method.’ More importantly, I wonder if ‘the possibility that a writer’s most important work might be that which is produced collaboratively may be seriously entertained.’ (Sheppard 2021: 247) While privately reflecting on my own experience of making fictional poet translations with a dozen or more other writers, I remark of others' collaborations: ‘One of the frequent traits of this kind of to and fro-ing coauthorship is what we might call diversive responsiveness,’ (Sheppard 2021: 250) and I conclude: ‘Collaboration … produces a double entity that the single author could not have produced by other means… It is something we experience as growth.’ (Sheppard 2021: 264) See Pages: My piece on 'Collaboration' is published in The Yearbook of English Studies 2021 (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)
and
the ‘Collaborations’ posts out of which the essay emerged: I assembled 14 posts
(with links to one review on Stride and another on Litter related
to it). You can find all that here:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/01/robert-sheppard-thughts-on.html
For
Sophie Poppmeier’s lockdown journal, begin here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2021/10/a-fictional-poets-notebook-entry.html
Books one and two are described
here: Pages:
Celebrate Belgium’s Independence Day with European Union of Imaginary Authors
poet Paul Coppens and with Rene Van Valckenborch (robertsheppard.blogspot.com).
