The Necessity of Poetics is now available: https://www.shearsman.com/store/Robert-Sheppard-The-Necessity-of-Poetics-p661888958
The Necessity of Poetics marks the moves I have made as a poet-critic around the notion of poetics in general, and the poetics of linguistically innovative poetry in particular, and my own poetics as an outcome of those. It traces those moves, but I also offer them to fellow poets, critics, and even, given my age, to literary historians. It incites and ignites and invites readers to identify poetics, to read poetics (as poetics, not as an impoverished literary criticism), to share poetics and, where appropriate, for readers who are also writers, to create poetics of their own. The book contains a definitive version of my well-known essay ‘The Necessity of Poetics’.
Also contained here is my experimental essay on poetic rhythm. Addressing the contemporary lack of discussion of the subject, ‘Pulse’ presents a new way of conceiving of metrical and non-metrical shape, rhythm as a form of consciousness, bringing together suggestive theory and the experiences of poets themselves. Abruptly changing gear from critic to poet, via poetics, I like to think that my poetic thinking is alive to the notion that poetic form is cognitive, that form knows something.
There are insights into the poetry and
poetics of Christopher Middleton, Adrian Clarke, Pierre Joris, Maggie
O’Sullivan, Allen Fisher, Lee Harwood, and Veronica Forrest-Thomson. I also dig
into the processes of my own poems to come up with generalized conclusions
about poetics and poesis, experimenting with new modes of creative-critical
writing, as a practitioner and pedagogue of Creative Writing, in quite personal
practice-led research. From a ‘radio-talk with no station to transmit it’ about
radio as an analogy for poetry, to an ‘undelivered talk’ on photographic
ekphrasis; from recent takes on my recent ‘English Strain’ sonnet project (whose
third part is published simultaneously with this volume) to rare documents that
take the reader back to the emerging linguistically innovative practices of the
late 1980s, this volume presents a relentless and repeated advocacy for poetics
as a genuine mode of thinking and writing. And poetics as an object of study in
its own right.
CONTENTS (with three online samplers)
Introduction: Gathering from the Past
ONE
Poetics in Anticipation: Shifting an Imaginary, towards British Standards (recent aphoristic poetics)
Pulse: All a Rhythm (Sampler One: part of this unusual ‘treatise on metre’ may be read here: https://www.tentacularmag.com/issue-5a/robert-sheppard)
The Formal Splinter (a condensed one page statement on cognition and ‘the meaning of form’, as in my critical book of that title)
A Voice Smears Across the Screen: Material Engagement with Form, Forms and Forming (a more discursive take on the meaning of form as cognition)
‘Era il giorno ch’al sol si scoloraro’: A derivative dérive into/out of Petrarch’s Sonnet 3 (a research as
practice piece on my 14 versions of ‘Sonnet 3’ that set off the ‘English
Strain’ sonnet project)
TWO
The Necessity of Poetics (my often-cited piece on the nature of poetics, with its list of definitions)
Speaking Differently: Poetics in the Twenty-first Century: Pierre Joris and Adrian Clarke, with reference to the poetics of Maggie O’Sullivan (a conventional critical essay on different writers' poetics)
Poetics as Conjecture and Provocation: an inaugural lecture delivered on 13th March 2007 at Edge Hill University (which starts as history, proceeds as lecture, demonstrates poetics (mine and Christopher Middleton’s), and ends as a poetry reading)
Critical Tuning: Radio Interference and Interruption as a Poetics for Writing (a kind of radio talk)
Ekphrasis and Anti-Ekphrasis: Undelivered Talk for the Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, for the Ideas Lab on Writing and Photography (a short talk I never delivered)
MATERIALS + PROCEDURE: an account of the writing of ‘The Given’ (Sampler 2: this short piece may be read here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2010/07/robert-sheppard-writing-given.html )
THREE
Took Chances in London Traffic (a memoir of the London poetry scene of the 1980s, which contextualises the older pieces that follow, in a sort of reverse chronological order)
Negative Definitions: Talk for the SubVoicive Colloquium, London 1997
Linking the Unlinkable: ‘Why Do You Do What You Do?’ (The title answers the question in the subtitle)
Working the Work: notes towards and beyond Internal Exile (poetics)
Incite! and Ignite!: No one listens to poetry: SubVoicive Colloquium, 20th July 1991, University of London (a cautionary examination of linguistically innovative poetry)
net/(k)not-//work(s) (a 1992 booklet of short pieces with interpollations)
Producing Now
Part One:
Poetic Sequencing and the New: Twentieth Century Blues (the poetics of that work)
Part Two:
New British Poetry in
the Eighties (a brief survey from when Pages actually had pages!)
Re-Working the Work:
Pausing for Breath (poetics)
Codes and Diodes are both Odes (homage to Bob Cobbing, poem as poetics)
Appendix: The Education
of Desire (Sampler Three: this early pedagogic piece may be read here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2015/12/robert-sheppard-far-language-education.html )
You can’t live
without all these ideas, can you?
Here are reviews of the book: Pages: Reviews of The Necessity of Poetics
Simultaneously, Shearsman is publishing my book of poems British Standards. See Pages: British Standards published by Shearsman - out now (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)
Locating
Robert Sheppard: books: Pages: Robert Sheppard: seeing what's
in print and what's not!; email: robertsheppard39@gmail.com; website: www.robertsheppard.weebly.com Follow on X: Robert
Sheppard (@microbius) / X; latest blogpost: www.robertsheppard.blogspot.com
