I have four poems published in the latest handsome Shearsman, for which many thanks to editor Tony Frazer. They are from British Standards, the third part of my ‘English Strain’ project, mainly sonnets transposed from the ‘English’ tradition. This part contains versions of Wordsworth’s sonnets, but they also ‘document’ the transition from the hubris of brexit (exemplified in the four poems here) to the criminal incompetence of the mismanagement of Coronavirus (exemplified in the later poems of the sequence, though the subject is raised in the last poem here, as on the videos you may link to below). The motif that Britain (particularly Kent) has been converted into a huge dogging site as a brexit 'benefit' is one of the comic recurrences of the sequence. It seems history now, but here's a post from that happy time: Pages: Happy Dogging New Year via a statement from Go and a transposition of a Wordsworth sonnet (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)
Shearsman 137/138 published October 2023. Paperback, 102pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £9.95 / $17
ISBN 9781848619104
The second double issue of Shearsman magazine for 2023 features poetry by Serena Alagappan, Wendy Allen, Mark Byers, Elizabeth Chadwick Pywell, Peter Dukes, David Dumouriez, Marie-Louise Eyres, Dominic Fisher, Mark Goodwin, Amlanjyoti Goswami, John Greening, Finn Haunch, Neal Hoskins, Fiona Larkin, Peter Larkin, Rupert M Loydell, Valeria Melchioretto, Eliza O’Toole, John Phillips, Amber Rollinson, D’or Seifer, Natalie Shaw, and Judi Sutherland; plus translations of Kjell Espmark (by Robin Fulton Macpherson), Attila József (by Ágnes Lehóczky & Adam Piette), Lutz Seiler (by Stefan Tobler), and Roelof Ten Napel (by Judith Wilkinson). And my sonnets…
You may buy it here: Shearsman 137 / 138
https://www.shearsman.com/store/Shearsman-137-138-p573171515
Lots to
enjoy here. I’ve had a quick read and a poem by Trevor Joyce and translations of
Lutz Seiler are good. Both favourites of mine.
Back to my dark pages, and to other of my sonnets.
Here’s a
video of another Wordsworth transposition, and a text about it: Transposed!
Robert Sheppard – Zwiebelfish
Here’s two more: Pages: Robert Sheppard: Two transpositions of Wordsworth from British Standards published on International Times
And a post (with a video) about the last of these 14 poems based on Wordsworth’s 1802-3 sonnets. I write about all of them, and how they fit into the (still-unpublished) volume British Standards, here: Pages: Transpositions of Hartley Coleridge: the end of British Standards (and of The English Strain project) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com) – and how the ‘English Strain’ project fits together. See The English Strain (Shearsman, 2021) and Bad Idea (Knives Forks and Spoons). I’m over it now! Hope you enjoy them!
Locating Robert Sheppard: email: robertsheppard39@gmail.com (don’t use the Edge Hill or the supanet emails);
website: www.robertsheppard.weebly.com Follow on
Twitter: Robert Sheppard (@microbius) / Twitter latest blogpost: www.robertsheppard.blogspot.com
