Friday, December 16, 2022

The launch of New Collected Poems by Lee Harwood/Christmas Break

The New Collected Poems of Lee Harwood is NOW available. HERE:  Lee Harwood - New Collected Poems (shearsman.com)

 


It will definitely be available for the launch in early January, so keep looking, and also follow up on all the Harwood related materials on this blog, via a hub-post, here: Pages: Lee Harwood: 4 Poems (and a note on them) in Abandoned Playground, ahead of NEW COLLECTED POEMS edited Corcoran and Sheppard (robertsheppard.blogspot.com). This includes a load of Harwood audio/video for you to enjoy: Pages: Lee Harwood New Collected Poems: the best audio and video recordings (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 Until the publication/launch, I’m having a little break from the blog as I do every Christmas. So here’s the date to look forward to.

Like all Shearsman launches, it will be held at 7.30 in the Swedenborg Centre in Central London. In this case, on 10th January, 2023…

Read all about it here: Pages: Lee Harwood New Collected Poems launched and on sale now (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Kelvin Corcoran and I have invited a number of poets and publishers to read their favourite Harwood poem – I was going to add ‘from the book’, but a. that’s a non-sequitur and b. there are some poems in the book that people may not know (yet)! (See here for more on that: Pages: Lee Harwood New Collected Poems (2023) Some of the new things we found to put in it (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)).

Until then, have a lovely mid-winter break (or whatever it is you wish for this season). Here’s the traditional Christmas banana to help you get into the spirit!

 


Those of you who usually receive a New Year's card from Patricia and me: we've not even selected the poem, designed the cover, let alone printed them out and posted them! Not even sure whether they will happen!

*

Locating Robert Sheppard: email: robertsheppard39@gmail.com  website: www.robertsheppard.weebly.com Follow on Twitter: Robert Sheppard (@microbius) / Twitter  latest blogpost: www.robertsheppard.blogspot.com

 

 

 


Friday, December 09, 2022

Lee Harwood New Collected Poems: the best audio and video recordings

The New Collected Poems of Lee Harwood is NOW available. HERE:  Lee Harwood - New Collected Poems (shearsman.com) 

I’m sure both Kelvin and I can ‘hear’ Lee Harwood ‘reading’ whenever we peruse a Harwood poem, even one we have not actually heard him speak. We can guess how he would have read it. This may be true of any writer, but it has been said before – most notably by William Rowe – that conversational (and often incomplete) segments are a kind of prosody in this work. Harwood signals it on the page, but this signalling cannot quite replace an actual audial, aural, experience of the work.  

‘There is a direct relationship between the compositional processes of a Lee Harwood poem and the way in which Lee Harwood the poet read his poetry,’ we say in our introduction to our New Collected Poems (though the words, and the thoughts, are Kelvin’s here). ‘Both work through an apparent simplicity which is typically intimated as the almost innocent disguise and disavowal of complexity and significance.  Through collage and various forms of declared and undeclared incompletion, the reader or listener is gently taken unknowingly into complex and charged moments of recognition …’ We add: ‘This fundamental feature makes hearing Lee Harwood read important,’ though that’s not anything we can obviously supply in our edition (a CD included or a set of web connections, a QR code would have been great). ‘Readings can be found on YouTube of varying technical proficiency.  The recordings in the British Library archive are extensive but not currently available online.’ (But, it is worth adding here, they will be!) The PennSound collection of readings is a major resource covering 40 years of Harwood’s poetry, and a guide to where other readings are available … The calm, measured, unostentatious delivery introduces the ambition and confidence of the poem. This is not a sort of coyness or false modesty but rather an acknowledgement of the scope and depth of the lyric as language at its most intense and meaningful.’

 I thought I’d spell that invitation out, and add my own.

 


The link Lee Harwood (upenn.edu) takes you to FOUR items containing Harwood reading:

ONE Lee Harwood and Ange Mlinko reading, St. Mark’s Church, NY, December 9, 1998

TWO The Chart Table, Lee Harwood: Poems 1965-2002.

This is the recording released as Rockdrill CD published by the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre, Optic Nerve for Birkbeck College, 2004, and indeed the recordings stretch those years, the first item being from the Steam LP of 1965 and (used without permission, I note) ‘Animal Days’, at least, taken from the tape magazine 1983, Supranormal Cassettes, which I published in 1976 (a whole 20+ minutes of it). It’s a nice ‘selected poems’ (the texts also stretching across the years of recording! They are, in order, with tracking:

As Your Eyes Are Blue (3:47)

The Doomed Fleet (8:13)

Question of Geography (2:17)

Linen (1:52)

The Words (2:25)

Animal Days (5:55)

Qasida (3:49)

One, Two, Three (4:12)

You Essai. You O.K. (8:42)

Summer Solstice (3:12)

African Violets (5:37)

The Rowan Tree (4:32)

For Paul / Coming Out of Winter (1:28)

October Night (3:01)

Czech Dream (4:39)

Gorgeous (1:28)

Late Journeys (1:13)

The Wind Rises (4:32)

Salt Water (3:58)

Hampton Court Shelter (2:46)

THREE Reading at the Shearsman Reading Series at Swedenborg Hall, London, June 17, 2008

FOUR "Chanson Tzara" with Lee Harwood by Alexander Baker, 2012

Of course, Lee recorded for the audio resource The Archive of Now. His poems are located here:

This recording was made on 22 August 2005, at Lee's flat in Brighton.

 ANOTHER NICE SET IN FOUR VIDS Lee’s quietly assertive delivery caused some problems with recording, as you will find looking online elsewhere, particularly with video performances, where the microphone is positioned where the camera is (i.e. at a distance from Lee). Often one can see him, but you cannot hear him clearly. BUT the following recordings, from Sound Eye 2005, in Cork, probably recorded by cris cheek, are clear and entertaining, and are embedded from YouTube. Each is only a few minutes long. 

Part one begins with ‘As Your Eyes are Blue’ (p. 65)

 Lee Harwood-from Collected Poems-1/4 - YouTube

 


Part two consists of ‘Dream of Blue Paint’ (p. 633) and 'African Violets' (p. 562)

Lee Harwood-from Collected Poems-2/4 - YouTube

 


Part three begins with ‘The wind rises’ (p. 619)

Lee Harwood-from Collected Poems-3/4 - YouTube

 


Part four begins with ‘Hampton Court Shelter’ (p. 636)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TXPJll3JFE

or

Lee Harwood-from Collected Poems-4/4 - YouTube

 


If you work your way through these recordings, with our edition to hand, you will appreciate, I hope, what we have described above.

 My recordings of Lee, made by my friends John Purdy and Tony Parsons in 1976, were published as 1983 number 2, and I donated the master tapes to the National Sound Archive in the 1980s, BUT they have never appeared in the catalogues of the British Library. However, a copy of one of the cassettes (whose quality must have eroded) appears in the BL’s Cobbing Archive, and may be digitalised in the future.

Read about the BL Harwood and Cobbing archives here: Pages: POEMS IN PROGRESS : a new book of poets' drafts from the British Library (featuring Lee Harwood and Bob Cobbing) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com).

 More on New Collected Poets, and links to all posts about Lee Harwood on this blog, may be accessed via what I call a hub-post, here: Pages: Lee Harwood: 4 Poems (and a note on them) in Abandoned Playground, ahead of NEW COLLECTED POEMS edited Corcoran and Sheppard (robertsheppard.blogspot.com).

 


You may order New Collected Poems from Shearsman here: Lee Harwood - New Collected Poems (shearsman.com)

*

Locating Robert Sheppard: email: robertsheppard39@gmail.com  website: www.robertsheppard.weebly.com Follow on Twitter: Robert Sheppard (@microbius) / Twitter  latest blogpost: www.robertsheppard.blogspot.com

 

Wednesday, December 07, 2022

The John James/Chris Torrance issue of Junction Box - plus my poem for, essay on, James

John James was – is – one of my favourite poets, but you might not know it, from my published work, particularly as a critic. As a reviewer, I once hoisted the banner by ending a review of one of his minimal 1990s volumes with the words, ‘A Collected John James please!’, which was quoted years later by Simon Perril, introducing the Salt Companion to John James, when – indeed – there was a Collected Poems (published by Salt themselves), to which the contributors could make happy reference. This is latterly supplemented by Sarments, a new and selected poems from Shearsman.  

In my Berlin Bursts there is a poem ‘As Yet Untitled Poem’, that is dedicated to (is a homage to) John James, written on the day he was up Edge Hill talking to our students (the night before he’d read in the Rose Theatre, one of the many readings I organized at Edge Hill. 

JJ at Edge Hill, Collected Poems aloft

The more recent Edge Hill connection was through the anthology of poetry and poetics that James Byrne and I edited in my last year as a full time wage-slave, Atlantic Drift. We also asked him to read for us at the launch in the London Review of Books shop in January 2018. There’s a report here, and a video of most of one of one of his poems (with the missing words provided as text), shot by poet Jennie Byrne (see her work in some editions of Tears in the Fence): Pages: John James reading 'Baudelaire at Cebazan' (robertsheppard.blogspot.com).

 


However, within weeks John was no longer with us, as I posted at the time, along with the text (and video) of ‘As Yet Untitled Poem’:  

 https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2018/05/im-john-james-and-my-poem-as-yet.html

Now we have to thank Lyndon Davies for producing an edition of Junction Box with a feature on the work of James, and I have to thank him for including my work.

 I particularly have to thank him, because I have two contributions to this feature, a new poem-sequence ‘Swift Songs for John James,’ and an essay John James and Poetics: ‘A Theory of Poetry’. Thanks Lyndon.

Here is a reading of 'Late Advance to Bonheur', the first part (or poem) of the sequence on video. You will hear that I allude to that last meeting with John, and our walk along Museum Street, and to the anthology, and its student-interns:

the Atlantic Drift scrum

spiders ahead to leave us

pacing behind…

 


The remainder of the text may be read here: Robert Sheppard: ‘Swift Songs’ and Essay on James’ ‘A Theory of Poetry’ – Glasfryn Project

My essay also alludes to that last meeting, or rather, to the occasion of using John’s poem ‘A Theory of Poetry’, as the poet’s poetics in this anthology of poetry and poetics, a tricky move as the essay explores. As I say, ‘This was an inevitable choice for our anthology of poetry and poetics, since James was not given to statements of poetics, in the sense I have defined it in a number of places,’ but I’d forgotten about it, until I’d submitted the poem to Lyndon. I then revised it (only to find it had been revised before!), top and tailed it, and presented it in its final (I hope) form. (It could have been part of my critical volume When Bad Times Made for Good Poetry. http://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2011/02/two-new-books.html.)

John James and Poetics: ‘A Theory of Poetry’ may be read here. I hope I have dealt with one of the most idiosyncratic, teasing, examples of poetics that I could find. HERE: Robert Sheppard: ‘Swift Songs’ and Essay on James’ ‘A Theory of Poetry’ – Glasfryn Project OR Microsoft Word - John James and Theory.docx (glasfrynproject.org.uk)

Do explore this special issue in total. Here is the editorial: Editorial to Issue 17: The John James / Chris Torrance Special – Glasfryn Project

Note Andrew Taylor talks about finding an uncollected poem by James, and Simon Smith provides another.

This is also an issue i.m. Chris Torrance, another Welsh poet, by adoption, who I had been reading an interview with, while waiting to have radiotherapy, and it occurred to me that the one with Peter Hodgkiss hadn’t been seen since the 1970s. I suggested it to Lyndon, and it’s good to see it here, with a few introductory words from Peter. HERE: Peter Hodgkiss: Interview with Chris Torrance for Poetry Information 1977 – Glasfryn Project

(I’ve also incidentally been re-reading William Rowe’s Three Lyric Poets, that also has a good chapter on Torrance’s work.) I only met Chris Torrance once, and that was at a reading by John James, so this issue of Junction Box seems ‘just right’ for me! 

 My last appearance in Junction Box was for the ‘Dante’ issue: see here: Pages: A poem about Dante published in Junction Box (links) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com). But there were previous appearances too, which is gratifying. It’s a fine project; it’s more than a magazine, as you’ll discover if you roam through the site.

*

Locating Robert Sheppard: email: robertsheppard39@gmail.com website: www.robertsheppard.weebly.com Follow on Twitter: Robert Sheppard (@microbius) / Twitter latest blogpost: www.robertsheppard.blogspot.com

Friday, December 02, 2022

Lee Harwood New Collected Poems (2023) Some of the new things we found to put in it

The New Collected Poems of Lee Harwood is NOW available. HERE:  Lee Harwood - New Collected Poems (shearsman.com)

How does the 2023 New Collected Poems differ from the 2004 one that Lee himself compiled, some people must be asking (other than the correcting of creeping errors, etc.)? Of course, it collects poems written later than that date (some of his best, I think, from Orchid Boat). We have also restored poems removed from the 2004 edition, and added poems taken out of earlier ‘collecting’ and ‘selecting’ volumes, including from the monumental The White Room of 1968. Admittedly some of these are weak poems (not all), but the restoration of the whole of his 1965 pamphlet title illegible turns up some fascinating poems, not least of all the opening poem-letter to his then literary hero Tristan Tzara. That provides a bit of a blaster to the collection, a direct hit back to modernism. (Just to confirm: Harwood's translations of Tzara, still in print elsewhere, are not included in our volume.)

At quite a late stage of editing, a pamphlet slid off the shelf (literally!), an edition of 12, published by Lee for ‘connoisseurs’, entitled In the Mists, the same title as his later Slow Dancer pamphlet. I idly thought it an early version of that; but it isn’t. There are 9 poems not already published and we have included these in a section entitled ‘Moon Phase’. Oddly, I’d always remembered the poem of that name, a second elegy to Harwood’s grandmother, and had long assumed it had been long published alongside ‘African Violets’, a poem Lee would often read at readings (reading will be the subject of my next pre-publication blog). In some ways I’ve always preferred this shorter poem, and it seems apposite to offer it here as a brief taster for the book:   


Moon Phase

A misty full moon tonight

coloured pale orange

– clear as that.

Clear as the afternoon death

of a frail woman in a hospital bed,

her arms thin as sticks,

her words clear.

Overcome by age her time come,

as she desired, as it must.

Yet beyond her time she lives

in my heart, in my dreams,

as the night clouds shift.

 

            (In memory of Pansy Harwood 1896-1989)

 

Poem © and permission: the Literary Estate of Lee Harwood.

 Our editorial principles were to publish every poem or creative prose Lee published in book and pamphlet form, but there are two (late) exceptions: a collaboration with John Hall, called ‘Loose Packed’, a series of texts to print on card, and shuffle, and read, and his final poem ‘Philatelic Counter’, a homage to the artist Donald Evans. Kelvin managed to find a fine example of his work as our cover design.


More on the book, and links to all posts about Lee Harwood on this blog, may be accessed via what I call a hub-post, here:
Pages: Lee Harwood: 4 Poems (and a note on them) in Abandoned Playground, ahead of NEW COLLECTED POEMS edited Corcoran and Sheppard (robertsheppard.blogspot.com).

You may order New Collected Poems from Shearsman here: Lee Harwood - New Collected Poems (shearsman.com)

Here's another new thing, one of Lee's collaborative poems, with John Ashbery, in manuscript (also included in our book: Pages: POEMS IN PROGRESS : a new book of poets' drafts from the British Library (featuring Lee Harwood and Bob Cobbing) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com).

Listen to the best of Lee on audio and video here: Pages: Lee Harwood New Collected Poems: the best audio and video recordings (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)


*

Locating Robert Sheppard: email: robertsheppard39@gmail.com  website: www.robertsheppard.weebly.com Follow on Twitter: Robert Sheppard (@microbius) / Twitter  latest blogpost: www.robertsheppard.blogspot.com