Three March readings up the North West coast (set lists)

ONE 

This was part of a two monthly poetry evening at the above venue, that I will be helping out with in the coming months. I was the headline act and I read a full (20 minute set) of poems as a retrospective of my writing, reading from my selected poems History or Sleep. I read the selection I made there of my other book, Warrant Error. It seemed to go down well, and I was pleased to see Adam Hampton there, who wrote on this sequence in The Robert Sheppard Companion. He also read in one of the open mic slots. Just for the record the upcoming dates are 21/5 (with Tim Allen), 16/7 (with Sarah Crewe), 17/9 (with Maria Isakova-Bennett) and 19/11 (undecided) this year. I'll leave the details here:  

 Headline Poets – Featuring big names who push the form forward.

✅ 8 Open Mic Slots – Step up, whether it’s your first time or your fiftieth.

✅ Sell Your Work – Poets can bring books, zines, and merch to share.

✅ A Community That Gets It – No gimmicks, just words that matter.

Be Part of It

📍 Venue: Royales, Lord Street, Southport

🎟 Entry: Free

Secure your open mic slot now: paul.robert.mullen.1982@gmail.com (note all those full stops!)

TWO

I read my poetics/poem 'The End of the Twentieth Century' (1999), from Twentieth Century Blues, at the Jerome Rothenberg Conference at the University of Glasgow on 22 March. 

The text of the introduction, where I talk about the network structure of Twentieth Century Blues, is (going to be) posted on this blog.

The conference was a great success, I thought. My little bit was requested by one of the organisers, Jeffrey C. Robinson. (I first met Jeffrey when he drove Jerome Rothenberg and his wife Diane on a reading tour, and all three stayed with Patricia and I, another great occasion.) I also talked about teaching Creative Writing with Scott Thurston, using Rothenberg and Joris' Poems for the Millennium (my poetics/poem also features a 'reading' of that anthology.    

Looking Back at ‘The End of the Twentieth Century’ (and a half) and at some poems for, at, and beyond the millennium may be read here:Pages: Robert Sheppard Looking Back at ‘The End of the Twentieth Century’ (and a half) and at some poems for, at, and beyond the millennium.  

 

THREE

I also read for Mary Earnshaw's Ainsdale readings Poets' Corner on Thursday 27th March, which was fun, and it was fully booked! Good responsive audience in a great venue (recommended for food and drink and bikes!) I read from British Standards : versions of Wordsworth (4), John Clare (4) and a single silly Shelley one, 'Astro Zen Knickers'. 

Photos of the event by the well-known Crosby photographer Ron Davies of: me; Eleanor reading to the room; Alison, Paul Mullen, me and David; me again.  

Here are a number of videos of me reading the poems, which, although not recordings of last night, will give you some idea of how they were performed. (These vids were made largely on the days I wrote the poems, and do differ a wee bit from the published versions.)

 The above is my version (transposition) of Wordsworth's 'One Might Believe'...

The above is my version of Clare's 'I Love to see the Old Heath's Withered Brake'...

The above is my version of Shelley's 'To Wordsworth', an address to a fallen hero, as is mine.

More on British Standards here, from the period when I wrote it: Pages: Transpositions of Hartley Coleridge: the end of British Standards (and of The English Strain project). It feels like ageing news now, and I need to read new work soon.