My DEFLATED EGO on Stride (a mini essay on my creative summer torpor)

Introduction to my DEFLATED EGO

Rupert Loydell asked me, over the summer, if I’d participate in his second set of ‘DEFLATED EGO’ (the capital letters seem quite necessary to me). He caught me at the right moment. I was restless, listless even, and in need of a holiday that was never going to arrive. Even taking a few days off never quite works for me. Indeed, far from being a holiday, writing this piece was a busman’s holiday, at best. Writing about not writing. But with the suggestive title and the brief – ‘You are welcome to choose your own approach, be that self-interview, review, manifesto, contextual/social material, statement of poetics, personal comment, or whatever', - I was propelled into imaginative boredom. This is another way of saying that I was hamming it up. After all, I got down to the writing he requested with enthusiasm!

However, I think the short piece does have something to say about the self-absorption of writers (and this writer, in particular) and it hints that anti-poetics or non-poetics or apoetics (to use Charles Bernstein’s term) is always lurking within poetics, as indeed non-creation is latent in creation, and we are always creating on the edge of not creating. Or no longer creating. 

I also pick up on a few projects, both completed and abandoned (and, again, those states might be intimately related), although there is a listing of projects not even begun. And thereby (I think, maybe even hope) dumped. I think the careful first sentence ‘Robert Sheppard is bored of Robert Sheppard and bored with the writings of Robert Sheppard,’ sets the scene well.

You may read it here: Deflated Ego 15: Robert Sheppard on Robert Sheppard | Stride magazine

 

Extras and Notes

I write about anti-poetics with regard to John Hall’s essay on ‘Not Writing’ in Bad Times that Made for Good Poetry (see here: Shearsman Books buy Robert Sheppard - When Bad Times Made for Good Poetry).

I make reference to my daily writing ‘machine’, Ark and Archive, in the EGO piece, but there is more about it here: Pages: Ark and Archive page 1,000 - keeping a daily practice of writing going.

 

The ‘fictional poet project’ that I refer to is best accessed here: European Union of Imaginary Authors (EUOIA) - Home, along with the three volumes that record it, particularly Doubly Stolen Fire, which is mentioned in passing.

 

My abandonment – and then recovery – of the ‘Dante project’, ‘Stars’, is detailed here, in the blogpost directly referred to in the piece: Pages: On abandoning my transposition of Dante: thoughts and extracts .

Here's some of the others I've enjoyed:

Peter Finch: Deflated Ego 10: Peter Finch on Peter Finch | Stride magazine

H.L. Hix: Deflated Ego 12: H.L Hix on H.L. Hix | Stride magazine

Eileen Tabios: Deflated Ego 14: Eileen Tabios | Stride magazine (though not deflated enough for my tastes). 

Andrew Taylor: Deflated Ego 16: Andrew Taylor | Stride magazine

Sheila Murphy: Deflated Ego 17: Sheila Murphy on Sheila Murphy | Stride magazine (she's not deflated though!)

Paul Hetherington: Deflated Ego 19: Paul Hetherington on Paul Hetherington | Stride magazine (interesting poetics, but some inflation clearly visible!)