Trev Eales and Robert Sheppard: HOLME FELL: A Sample of Landscapes Number Two

Holme Fell: A Sample of Landscapes is the title of a collaboration between myself and Trev Eales, based on, coming out of, springboarding from, his photographs of the Lake District: Holme Fell in particular, and Hodge Close, an old quarry, as its central node or focus. 

Here's a second poem and photograph. The project progresses and draws towards its completion and its becoming, or being made, public, i.e. PUBLISHED. More details later. 

While the presentation of text and image may differ from this format, for this blogpost sampling of this ‘sample of landscapes’ I will present a poem and an image that relate quite closely together.

Here is a second piece from the sequence and a second image to accompany it. 

10

 

Blue peaks, shiny but wrinkled,

under the ragged underbelly of thick cloud.

 

The sandy alluvial fingers of the middle distant fell.

 

Far off: icy caps, hunkering down,

unvisited.       

 

            A sample of landscapes

            for human choice:

 

            I cannot think myself unstunned

            by their rival majesties even

                        through recourse to evasions

                        of the artifice of selection

                        and election,

                        a window on diverse

                        confluences

 

Unpopulated space but not unpeopled

(even through planet time):

the stone wall pens in speckled ground,

be-ribboned by its shadow,

and stony paths trail down upon thick woodland

 

On a road or track

at the base of the far blue rockface, tracing the valley:

a speck of white van or truck pinpointed

 

How much of that prickly sliced-raw cliff face

was once worked

the human unworked

by its sharp treachery?

 

 

John Casson, 27 November 1901, aged 25, Quarryman. Deceased was turning off a new working when a huge mass of rock fell from the side and buried him. No one suspected any danger from the quarry side, as it had been in the same condition for quite a dozen years.

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This is the first poem to introduce documentary text into the 'flow' of the sequence, and, hopefully, of the book. (More of that later.) There are a number of such pieces, particularly as the text becomes more 'post-industrial'. No video this posting. 

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Trev Eales is a photographer specialising in landscape photography and rock concerts and festivals, based in his hometown of Barrow-in-Furness. He and I met at university in Norwich in October 1974, over half a century ago, and we’ve been in touch over those years. We meet up regularly in Lancaster for discussions and entertainment. He has a website here:  Trev Eales Photography. You could spend hours lost in his back-catalogue. Here’s an interview with him about his work:  Capturing the Festival Spirit with Trev Eales · Lomography. All good things come in threes, so here’s a third site:  Articles by Trev Eales’s Profile | eFestivals.co.uk Journalist | Muck Rack. This is a list of links to Trev’s reviews of festivals and gigs for Louder than War, via the Muck Rack site.

All my information is everywhere on this blog of course, but I did write (but never delivered) a talk on my use of photographs in my writings, here: Pages: Robert Sheppard: Talk for the Open Eye Gallery on Poetry and Photography December 2016.  

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The first 'showing' (also a Hub post for all the 'Holme Fell' posts) may be found here: Pages: Trev Eales and Robert Sheppard HOLME FELL: a Sample of Landscapes Number One

ELLE A VERSE NOVEL Reviewed

I’m pleased to announce that Billy Mills has reviewed my latest book, Elle – a verse novel on his impressive blog.

The review may be read here: Two Broken Sleeps – Elliptical Movements.

 

I thought his description of the main ‘character’ spot on: ‘And then there’s the titular Elle, or “She”, Belle without the B, who is both a character and not one, and who merges at times with Christine, the woman murdered in the Brighton story.’ The text is based on Belle de Jour and 'the Brighton story' is of a terrible murder. I particularly hope other readers will concur with Billy’s reflection: ‘What the book achieves, in the end, is to replace the double victimhood of Christine, once at the hand of her husband and again at the hands of his judge and jury, with a sense of her power, of her being, in spite of everything, in control of her choices.’ 

I describe the process of writing the ‘novel’ here, with some account of the backstory that is described in more detail in the book’s ‘Afterword’: Pages: My Verse Novel ELLE is excerpted in Shuddhashar 37: Surrealist Poetry edition. I also described the book again, on its publication, here: Pages: My new book Elle: A Verse Novel is published by Broken Sleep Books.  

‘It’s a tour-de-force of a book,’ Billy concludes, ‘in which Sheppard makes the verse novel his own.’

Elle may be bought here: Robert Sheppard - Elle, a Verse Novel | Broken Sleep Books.

 

Trev Eales and Robert Sheppard HOLME FELL: a Sample of Landscapes Number One

Holme Fell: A Sample of Landscapes is the title of a collaboration between myself and Trev Eales, based on, coming out of, springboarding from, his photographs of the Lake District: Holme Fell in particular, and Hodge Close, an old quarry, as its central node or focus. I am going to blog one poem and photograph (and maybe more) once a month, as the project progresses and draws towards its completion and its becoming, or being made, public. 

We are in discussion about how to present text and image, but for this blogpost sampling of this ‘sample of landscapes’ we shall present poems and images that relate quite closely together.

Here is a piece from quite early in the sequence and an image to accompany it.

 

 Holme Fell 4

 

Heavy blue-grey clouds

low over russet-green pines

surround the old quarry reservoir,

the rock ground peppered with snow.

 

The water’s surface is frozen,

broken in places, a slow thaw.

The blue-white peaks of the Langdale Pikes

draw back from this arrangement,

a lone tree stretching something like human scale.

 

My father refused to enter forests and thickets

and he’d have turned away from

the darkening embrace of this wood, preferring

cricket-pitch open spaces, though this frozen expanse

would have also reminded him of the Polish death march.

 

There’s nobody about, it seems at first,

but the place is humanised

in unprogrammable ways,     

                                                by looking.

 

Zoom in, and you’ll spot two people

                                                one in a blue coat

coming out from the wood, following

the exposed bank of the reservoir.

Trev Eales is a photographer specialising in landscape photography and rock concerts and festivals, based in his hometown of Barrow-in-Furness. He and I met at university in Norwich in October 1974, over half a century ago, and we’ve been in touch over those years. We meet up regularly in Lancaster for discussions and entertainment. He has a website here:  Trev Eales Photography. You could spend hours lost in his back-catalogue. Here’s an interview with him about his work:  Capturing the Festival Spirit with Trev Eales · Lomography. All good things come in threes, so here’s a third site:  Articles by Trev Eales’s Profile | eFestivals.co.uk Journalist | Muck Rack. This is a list of links to Trev’s reviews of festivals and gigs for Louder than War, via the Muck Rack site.

All my information is everywhere on this blog of course, but I did write (but never delivered) a talk on my use of photographs in my writings, here: Pages: Robert Sheppard: Talk for the Open Eye Gallery on Poetry and Photography December 2016.