You wait for ages and 7 Keats variations come along at once. Yesterday, I had 4 poems on Litter (see here: Pages: Four more Keats' overdubs published online in LITTER (and videos here) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)). Today I am pleased to say that three (more) sonnets from Weird Syrup: Contrafacts and Counterfactuals from John Keats (part of the ‘British Standards’ volume of The English Strain project) have appeared in Shearsman 131 and 132. They are ‘overdubs’ of relatively well-known Keats poems. Thanks to editor Tony Frazer.
This first double-issue of Shearsman magazine for 2022 also features poetry by Tim Allen (his Shearsman book A Democracy of Poisons is jolly good: https://www.shearsman.com/store/Tim-Allen-A-Democracy-of-Poisons-p377708505, Kate Ashton, Isobel Armstrong (good to see), Carmen Bugan, Jonathan Catherall, Wendy Clayton, Tom Cowin, Claire Crowther, Julian Dobson, Katy Evans-Bush, Amlanjyoti Goswami, Lynne Hjelmgaard, Penny Hope, Eluned Jones, Fiona Larkin, Mary Leader, DS Maolailai, James McGonigal, James McLaughlin, Deborah Moffatt, Mark Russell, Tim Scott, Rufus Talks, my European collaborator Rimas Uzgiris, (see here for our text and film) , https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2018/05/rimas-uzgiris-and-robert-sheppard.html ) Ann Vickery, Margaret Ann Wadleigh, Polly Walshe, Fiona Wilson, Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese; and translations of Max Jacob (by Ian Seed, always interesting), Denis Rigal (by David Banks) and the energetic and interesting Portuguese modernist Mário de Sá-Carneiro (by Chris Daniels).
Purchase details here: https://www.shearsman.com/store/Shearsman-131-132-p389203122.
Each of my
three contributions has a video, below, recording – nay, celebrating! – the
completion of its first draft, as did the four published yesterday. They were posted briefly at those times, as part
of a performance ritual of writing them (all quite a new sensation for me, as an
habitual collagist, to get poems written in a couple of hours). They often differ slightly from the final poems that
appear in print, and that is true of the ones here. But they give a good
sense of the texts’ first manifestations than an updated version would, even read through clearer sinuses! There is a weird glitch on one of the versions, I seem to
remember, and a lot of clowning about with the life-mask of Keats (and of
Blake). These videos are not performances, so much as signatures. (They also compensate, I think, for the lack of poetry readings post-pandemic.)
The first poem, 'On Looking Again into Peter Hughes' Petrarch', is another (there are others) acknowledgement that it was his volume of Petrarch translations that started me off on 'The English Strain' project (which I describe below). I write about this first Keats version (because I had problems with it) here: Pages: an overdub, an understudy, a version, of Keat’s most famous sonnet (and then a further version) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com) and I have a literary critical response to his Petrarch (and Tim Atkins, and, then, mine) here: Pages: Robert Sheppard: Tim Atkins' and Peter Hughes' Petrarch versions compared.
In 'Keen Fitful Gusts...' I deliberately recall the poems written after my Petrarch obsession, when 'The English Strain' project indeed turned to the English Petrarchs (Wyatt and Surrey; see here: Pages: Robert Sheppard Hap: Understudies of Thomas Wyatt's Petrarch published NOW).
And there's more, much more. I recently had another two of these Keats poems
in Tears in the Fence. There’s a link to that publication, and
two more videos here: Pages:
Two more sonnets from British Standards (from Keats) in Tears in the Fence 75
(robertsheppard.blogspot.com)
I’m thinking that must mean nearly all 14 of the ‘Keats’
sonnets are now firmly on the interweberals. I wrote about the whole lot, when
I’d just finished them here: Pages:
Weird Syrup: The final Keats variation: a (premature) farewell to satire as a
strand in British Standards (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)
(We are in a different era. It needed a different focus.)
Read about
Book One of ‘The English Strain’, The English Strain here .
You can buy both of these published books so far, here: Pages: How to buy The English
Strain books one and two together (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)
