We’ve taken part in another of Steven Fowler’s European Poetry Festivals, this one in Liverpool, at the Open Eye Gallery on October 4th 2026.
Featuring Anna Luňáková and Michael Sutton / Hannah Kaip and Lenni Sanders / Thor Magnus Tangeras and Stephen Sunderland / Elspeth Mclean and Julia Rose Lewis / Patricia Farrell and Robert Sheppard / Tom Jenks and SJ Fowler / Pauline Rowe and Kate Deegan-Munro for Maria Isakova-Bennett (mostly in the image above)
All videos and some photos up here https://www.
I’ve been involved in many of these readings, going back as far as 2013ish, I think. See links to other years below. Because of a series of mishaps (which I won’t bore you with) I ended up paired domestically, as it were, with Patricia, with about 24 hours to compose (collate would be a better word) our piece. We did it and the video is here.
Waterfront Impromptu
Robert: It’s the beginning of the university year, but the
story is different this time. This year, there is universal fighting and
bloodshed among the students. One man attempts to counter the violence by
showing a film which consists of a series of blank screens. He sits proudly in
the audience but it soon becomes clear that the audience is bored. There’s more
fighting. Two women are ejected, covered in blood, their own and each other’s.
The situation in Ormskirk is hopeless.
Patricia:
sense knocking over the ladder
holding pigheaded to the economy of the immanent
imminent from masks to masquerades
logical pictures/ limits of the sayable
I gift you this cogito
or another monkey that they then may ape
throwing a few lively spanners
turns all philosophy homesick
you would be a fool not to assume/ as you have come to
predict
your experience of
we look at the cheeseboard and the cheeses ‘behave’ as
they ‘should’
but grate one through the slits// it doesn’t split
it splits the world it doesn’t split in
live as if/ each luncheon is your last
search for the short-beaked echidna
find ‘you might also like music for plants’
nothing/ nothing// I have transcended nothing
I’m chucking back the cucumber
won’t do nothing till I get a grape
Robert: He takes the film on the train to Liverpool, a place
of relative peace. He is able to show his blank-screen-film at the Open Eye, or
some other municipal venue, and is satisfied with the technical and general
arrangements. However, he is still aggrieved and is planning ways to return to
his beloved Ormskirk after he has shown the film. His friends and colleagues
who have helped make the film gather around him. They discuss all sorts of
arrangements, but they become more and move involving, excessive, given that
Ormskirk is only thirty minutes away on a regular suburban metro rail line.
Patricia:
particulate I watch myself in all directions
waving hello and god be with you as I pass
if the universe is infinite/ then I cannot be unique
beyond the pale// the happly and unhapply fellows
I have no idea what an animal is
but one day in A&E in mid-November
I discovered my inner squirrel
a thought which is nice enough to hold
though not ergonomically designed to stand on a shelf
I am not a plant
coelacanth is the risen fish// consciousness is a red
herring
for cogito ergo sum say aaargh!
Robert: We knew the day would proceed nicely, and we’d grasp
the nettle of its stingy pleasures. ‘They can self-repair in a way I don’t
quite understand!’ said the angel, of his wings, as we carried him back to our
humble hut. ‘You’ll be safe with us,’ we said, ignoring him and feeling rather
distinguished that a celestial being should appear in our midst, albeit
accidentally. We laid him on the temporary bed we used when hunting, and we
gave him a little brandy from one of our hipflasks. We were quite inebriated,
but we knew even then that nobody would believe our stories when we recited
them in the tavern. Once comfortable, the angel folded his injured wings about
him and slept for many hours. An angel’s radiance, even while asleep, is a very
fine thing indeed. We sat around the supernal creature as around a brazier in
winter and our faces drank his spirit. We were blessed, without a prayer or a
wing (except his, of course; otherwise he looked like one of us)! We felt
warmth inside, a generosity to all the creatures of the earth, a feeling that
everything was possible, and that ‘everything’ was all right, here and
everywhere, now and forever. The angel awoke! He unfurled his spiky wings, and snapped
his jaws, spangling the air with his sharp breath.
Patricia:
the universe all at once upon a time// the entire DVD
to be a player/ but have no drive
this is dedicated to all of us who hate the sun
sing to me
the perfect animal/ the fear of the lord
if pigeons can invent their own religions// which they
can
you couldn’t make this up/ I didn’t
Maquillage/ Maskirovka// painted mouth
this is fun I said/ with the desire to be as difficult
as Wittgenstein
Gesamtkunstwerk Gotterdammerung
I don’t need a biscuit!
Robert: Somehow the arrival of all his extensive extended
family has to be factored into the filmmaker’s plans. He longs for the simple
countrified bloodshed of the disorganized campus in Ormskirk and quite forgets
his film. After all, it is nothing but a sequence of blank screens, with no
sound, no dialogue. The violence begins to make sense, as he realizes that the
film needs the audience uproar to make the film, complete and impure.
Patricia:
letting yourself evaporate
leaving your body in space
the bricks I laid// met/ unparalleled // indifference
a spiritual tomato has left these images
the tomato to which I am distantly related
the map or grid that picks your meaning
containing your own dismemberment// projected inside a
camera obscura//
or I could play accordion outside Liverpool Central
Station
killing the last bird of paradise in a fit of
euthanasia
hiding the feathers under the floorboards
as I have wrestled poodles and lost
I have a mind to put my shoes on the table
more like a child/ or a chimp/ or a lunatic
how far am I prepared to go to rescue reality
drifting in the watches of the night
Patricia Farrell and Robert Sheppard
It was a very jolly affair, as so often, and it was good to talk to Anna and Lennie in the pub afterwards. As well as Chris McCabe and Tom Jenks and Steve himself. (The latter performed their 2001 Proverbs which is a hoot.) I was also happy to offload some copies of Holme Fell to the Open Eye bookshop (see here: Pages: TREV EALES AND ROBERT SHEPPARD: HOLME FELL: a sample of landscapes PUBLISHED NOW!) It's a photography gallery.
As I said above Patricia and I (in different combinations and with each other) have been involved in collaborations organized by Steve over many years, Patricia even going on a North West Tour in 2017 (I think it was).
Here’s a previous Open Eye reading:
My collaborative volume of fictional (European) poets Twitters for a Lark was launched at one of these events:
Pages: Twitters for a Launch part of the European Poetry Festival Manchester April 13th (set list)
I enjoyed this one with Rimas Uzgiris too. (There’s our text too)
And Patricia and I have collaborated before, here: Pages:
Robert Sheppard and Patricia Farrell: Collaborating as part of the Manchester
European Camarade: April 2019
Images and videos used by permission of SJ Fowler.
