New poem in THE LONG POEM MAGAZINE (and in LITTER); and a blogpost on process

I am pleased to say that I have made another appearance in the excellent The Long Poem Magazine, a periodical I enjoy reading very much. It is interesting to see writers (of quite different kinds) who do something so unpopular as writing poems committing acts that create something even less popular: writing long poems.

 This time it is the first half of a poem called ‘The Palisaded Ditch’ and it is a sort of ‘history of the world in numerous maps’, as I put it. To the readers of the magazine I explained it thus, in the prose introductions that contributors are compelled to write: ‘It is the much-edited result of a process of daily “writing-through” of a deluxe book of the history of maps. I normally name my “sources”, but in this case, my common practice of squinting, misreading, and distorting the material renders this unnecessary. I didn’t know it would result in a poem… But something of the same level tone was maintained throughout these daily engagements and they appeared to accumulate… Reading the poem today it feels uncannily appropriate for a world of “strong men” carving up “spheres of influence”: in particular, the despotic slavering over the map of Greenland.’

The Long Poem Magazine may be read about here: ISSUE 35 – Long Poem Magazine. And purchased here: Shop and subscribe | Long Poem Magazine. 

As I said, this is about half of the poem. Its second half may be read here on Litter magazine:  Robert Sheppard - Poem | Litter. 

Thanks to the editors of the two magazines!

That’ll get you from

 

‘That stretch of wavy grey [which]

is the river,’

 

through to

 

‘Tributaries claw[ing] their ways toward the

greenish patches,’

 

with which it ends.

I ALSO write about the processes I used to write both 'The Palisaded Ditch' and my previous poem in Long Poem Magazine, 'The Area', here: Robert Sheppard: Ark and Archive: description of a process | Long Poem Magazine

I write about that previous appearance in The Long Poem Magazine with my sequence called ‘The Area’ here: Pages: My poem THE AREA is published in The Long Poem Magazine number 30 (background and links), which put me in happy communication with the photographer Tricia Porter.