I’m pleased to say two poems from the last part of ‘The English Strain’ project, British Standards have been published in Anthropocene. You may read them here:
2 poems by Robert Sheppard (anthropocenepoetry.org)
Thanks to the dedicated editors!
‘British Standards’ is best described here: Pages: Transpositions of Hartley Coleridge: the end of British Standards (and of The English Strain project) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com) where you will find links to other magazine appearances of parts of the book. I transpose sonnets by Wordsworth, Mary Robinson, Shelley, Keats and others, as well as Clare (but not Arthur Symons, my second model here).
The first poem on Anthropocene, ‘The rich-brown umber hue the oaks unfold’ is an ‘overdub’ of John Clare, one of 14 such poems, written late 2020/early 2021. I write about the Clare poems here, with videos,: Pages: Robert Sheppard: Four new versions of John Clare published in Talking About Strawberries (plus videos and links).
And here
is a video of a reading of the poem:
The second poem is ‘After Image: Improvisation upon “Idealism” by Arthur Symons’, which comes from the ‘After…’ poems that I amassed in serial attempts to end my three volume trek through the English Petrarchan sonnet tradition, particularly the end where the subject matter was tracking the hubris of brexit colliding with the mismanagement of Covid. I wrote about this version at the time, here: Pages: Should I write a fourth ‘book’ of The English Strain project? (robertsheppard.blogspot.com). This one dates from early 2022, though this video dates from this afternoon, late 2023!
For the record, I did finish the project, and it is great to publish in magazines a few of the poems that weren’t published nearer the time of composition, particularly as there remains no collecting volume to finish the job!
Read about Book One of ‘The English Strain’, The English Strain here . Book Two, Bad Idea, is talked about here . Both are available for sale.
Three poems from The English Strain book were published in a very early post of Anthropocene, here:
3 poems by Robert Sheppard (anthropocenepoetry.org) - versions of Charlotte Smith.
