FIVE Favourite Songs I've Sung : they're on Stride

My contribution to Stride's feature FIVE was to write about the FIVE FAVOURITE SONGS I’VE SUNG, which is literally what the piece is, an illustrated list. 

It may be read HERE: Five Favourite Songs I've Sung | Stride magazine

To tempt you, here are the five songs, quite a mixed bag:

1. Robert Johnson’s ‘Travelling Riverside Blues’

2. Traditional: ‘The Gower Wassail’

3. Van Morrison’s ‘Sweet Thing’

4. Antonio Carlos Jobim’s ‘Corcovado/Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars’

5. Ern Malley’s ‘Egyptian Register’ (composed by David Whyte)

It's not my desert island discs, by the way, but a chance to reflect, within the allotted wordcount (which was extremely tight) on the different situations in which I have sung music. There is a video of me performing number 4, here, the second one on this post:  Pages: More returns of Little Albert - the music I play, the music I listen to, the music I write about. 

Tony Parsons and me, circa 1976. 

TONE POEM and my other poems about music (links)

I have been slowly writing poems ‘about’ (in my sense of ‘round and about’) MUSIC for some time now. In fact I’ve often written about music, as the links at the bottom of this post demonstrate. 

One recent sequence is ‘Tone Poem: Starlight and Stardust’ which takes for theme recent jazz albums. (I was fed up with all those poems about Monk or Coltrane, great dead guys.) There are over 20 of these poems. The fact they started life as ‘interfering material’ for my Dante project shouldn’t devalue them, though there are a couple of references to paradise that remain. (The music was only destined for Paradise and Purgatory, for there is no music in Hell. This pattern follows Dante, of course.) They didn’t get used, but simply stood on their own as a peculiar exercise in audial ekphrasis. 

Perhaps one day there will be a book of music poems, perhaps destined to be called Easy Listening, somewhat ironically. Perhaps. I feature a few links to possible contents of that volume at the end of this post (which I keep updating). There are now FOUR online magazines featuring pieces from 'Tone Poem', seventeen poems in all, which I think is well over half of the sequence.

1. Read poems reflecting on music by Ant Law and Alex Hitchcock, Fire! Orchestra, Brandee Younger, Lakecia Benjamin, and James Brandon Lewis from Tone Poem on Litter,

HERE: https://www.littermagazine.org/2025/11/robert-sheppard-poems-from-tone-poem.html

(Thanks to Alan Baker for taking these. He’s also asked me to supply links to the music itself, which I did and which you can access.)

2. Here is another set, four poems, this time responding to the music of Fergus McCready, Daniel Herskedal, Mário Laginha and Cecile McLaren Salvant. 

 (Thanks to Rupert Loydell and International Times.)

HERE: from Tone Poem: Starlight and Stardust | IT

3. Here is a third set from Tone Poem, this time poems responding to recent albums by Samara Joy, Gretchen Parlato, Emma Rawicz, Micheal Wollny and Brad Mehldau (the last a very localised response to his 'Beatles' album, Your Mother Should Know. She really should, and she should know that these poems are 

HERE: five poems — Blood+Honey

Thanks to everybody at Blood+Honey, a very active (frequent) platform. 

4. Here is a fourth set from Tone Poem, this time responding to the music of Melissa Aldana, Don McCaslin and Miko Hazama. Three short poems.

HERE:  The Pi Review: from Tone Poem: Starlight and Stardust, by Robert Sheppard

Thanks to Pi Review. 

JazzIan to whom the sequence is dedicated has been telling some of the musicians about the sequence and he's had positive responses from Ant Law and Mats Gustaffson (of The Fire! Orchestra). 

5. Here is a standalone poem about jazz (or is it about time?) that is NOT in the sequence Tone Poem. Entitled 'Martin Smith Quartet at the Caledonia, Sunday Afternoon Sessions' that is exactly who and what it is a response to. BUT it is accompanied by two photographs by David Hynes of one of those Sunday afternoons. And it is published by International Times on 13 June 2026.

HERE: Martin Smith Quartet: Sunday Sessions at the Caledonia | IT

Thanks editor Rupert Loydell. And thanks to David. 

One of the images, (c) David Hynes. Access the IT page above to see the other. (Note: David is not the photographer of Holme Fell.) Our previous collaboration in International Times may be viewed here: Pages: Burnt Journal 1965: the last one and the photograph of David Hynes (and a look back at the series, with links and vids) 

A heap of earlier music poems appear in Yesterday's Music Today, edited by Mike Ferguson and Rupert Loydell: 

Pages: Robert Sheppard: Poems in YESTERDAY'S MUSIC TODAY co-edited by Rupert Loydell & Mike Ferguson OUT

A poem for Philip Jeck appears here: Pages: Philip Jeck 2022 (robertsheppard.blogspot.com).

See here about the saga (perhaps it should be a rock opera) of Charms and Glitter: Pages: Whatever happened to the book Charms and Glitter? (robertsheppard.blogspot.com) 

I write about the difference between the music I play, the music I listen to and the music I write about: Pages: More returns of Little Albert - the music I play, the music I listen to, the music I write about. 

Here's a piece on Stride about my 5 favourite songs to sing: it's not a poem, more of an annotated list: Five Favourite Songs I've Sung | Stride magazine

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!)

Poem on Stride's Algorithmic Prayers: ‘Pumpkin McPumpkin Face’

Rupert Loydell invited a number of writers to submit a poem or prose poem or short text for publication in Stride magazine, online: Stride magazine, responding to this sculpture by Diemut Strebe, ‘The Prayer’.

It is an eternal generative AI Prayer Machine! (It shows how AI can be used creatively and originally, instead of programming it to write substitute human novels or visualise Trump as a Superhero, or other banalities.)  

 There are various responses so far, including Rupert’s own, Algorithmic Prayers: Religious belief is a small installation | Stride magazine, Patricia Farrell’s  Algorithmic Prayers: The apparatus as designed | Stride magazine, and Ian Seed’s Algorithmic Prayers: the breath that has been | Stride magazine. They are being posted in March and April 2025. 

Now it’s my turn, and my poem may be read at Algorithmic Prayers: deliver us | Stride magazine. Here's a bit of it, read by me, with effaced FACE effect: 

 

This text, ‘Pumpkin McPumpkin Face’ I describe as ‘responding to The Prayer by Diemut Strebe: featuring some words and phrases banned by the Trump team and its algorithm.’ Here’s the first line: ‘Orange Pumpkin, deliver us from Activism McActivism Face.’

I like Rupert's invitations to participate in special features on Stride, or sometimes in pamphlet form, like this one: Pages: Nerve Damage ed Rupert Loydell now out (responses to Witkin).  

 

Robert Sheppard: seeing what's in print and what's not!

My post on The Anti-Orpheus (Pages: Robert Sheppard The Anti-Orpheus (pdf available online) got me thinking about how much of my work was currently available and how much wasn’t. I’ve concluded that a surprisingly large amount of it is, in a way that would have surprised earlier authors – earlier than the advent of Print On Demand technologies about 25 years ago, I mean. It was part of the life-cycle of a book to go out of print – and for the secondhand market to come into play. Add to that that I have a number of copies of officially o/p books stacked away, thus making them ‘available’, means that the number of books and pamphlets bearing my name that you might get hold of is quite large. Some texts (like The Anti-Orpheus) are available online (both officially and unofficially, of course), but I intend to not dignify the latter sources in this listing. And some books, of course, have been digitalized (or were in an electronic form anyway, as pdfs (like The Anti-Orpheus)).

Let’s examine the books. I am going to go through them and demonstrate whether they remain in print, or have been absorbed into other in-print books. As I go I expect to surprise myself, but it might be useful for anybody who wants to catch up with these. I’ve taken the list from my website, where there is a full list of my publications: Full Bibliography - Robert Sheppard (weebly.com)

 

 

Full Length Poetry and Creative Prose Collections (including a few pamphlets)

Daylight Robbery, Exeter: Stride, 1990: o/p but some of its contents are available in History or Sleep (see below). 

The Flashlight Sonata, Exeter: Stride, 1993: o/p but this book is reproduced entire in Complete Twentieth Century Blues (see below). However, I still have some copies of this book (which I’ve always rather loved).

Empty Diaries, Exeter: Stride, 1998: o/p but this book is reproduced entire in Complete Twentieth Century Blues and in part in History or Sleep (also below). However, I have some copies of this book left.

The Lores, London: Reality Street, 2003: o/p but this book is reproduced entire in Complete Twentieth Century Blues (see below)

Tin Pan Arcadia, Cambridge: Salt Publishing, 2004: o/p: but this book is reproduced entire in Complete Twentieth Century Blues (see below)

The Anti-Orpheus: Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2005: pdf online: see Pages: Robert Sheppard The Anti-Orpheus (pdf available online .

Hymns to the God in which my Typewriter Believes, Exeter: Stride, 2006: o/p.

Risk Assessment (with Rupert Loydell), no location: Damaged Goods, 2006: o/p but I have a large number of these left.

Complete Twentieth Century Blues, Cambridge: Salt Publishing, 2008: STILL IN PRINT here: Complete Twentieth Century Blues, Robert Sheppard - Salt (saltpublishing.com). It collects many of the books above. (And I write about it here: Pages: Twentieth Century Blues published ten years ago! (robertsheppard.blogspot.com) )

Warrant Error, Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2009: STILL IN PRINT here: Sheppard, Robert (shearsman.com)

Berlin Bursts, Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2011: STILL IN PRINT here: Sheppard, Robert (shearsman.com)

A Translated Man, Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2013: STILL IN PRINT here: Sheppard, Robert (shearsman.com)

Words Out of Time, Newton-le-Willows: Knives, Forks and Spoons, 2015: STILL IN PRINT here: 'Words Out of Time' by Robert Sheppard (108 pages) | Knives Forks and Spo (knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk)

History or Sleep: Selected Poems, Bristol: Shearsman Books, 2015: STILL IN PRINT here: Sheppard, Robert (shearsman.com). It also selects from all the books listed above (apart from Risk Assessment).

Unfinish, London: Veer Publications, 2016: STILL IN PRINT here: Robert Sheppard - Unfinish - Veer Books

The Drop, Hunstanton: Oystercatcher Press, 2016: STILL IN PRINT here: Robert Sheppard : The Drop - Oystercatcher Press

Twitters for a Lark: Poetry of the European Union of Imaginary Authors (with Others), Bristol: Shearsman Books, 2017: STILL IN PRINT: Sheppard, Robert (shearsman.com)

Micro Event Space, New Mills, Red Ceilings Press, 2019: STILL IN PRINT: Micro Event Space - Robert Sheppard | Red Ceilings Press (theredceilingspress.co.uk)

Charms and Glitter (with Trev Eales), Newton-le-Willows: Knives Forks and Spoons, 2020: WITHDRAWN! The sorry story surrounding this magnificent colour photo/poetry book may be read here: Pages: Whatever happened to the book Charms and Glitter? (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

The English Strain, Swindon: Shearsman Books, 2021: STILL IN PRINT: Sheppard, Robert (shearsman.com)

Bad Idea, Newton-le-Willows: Knives Forks and Spoons, 2021: STILL IN PRINT: 'Bad Idea' by Robert Sheppard (102 pages) | Knives Forks and Spo (knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk)

Collaborations (with Bob Cobbing): Odes and Diodes and Blatent Blather/Virulent Whoops, Veer Publications, 2021: STILL IN PRINT (pictured below): Bob Cobbing - Robert Sheppard - Collaborations - Veer Books

Doubly Stolen Fire , Aquifer Books, Flangattock: 2023: Pages: Launch of Doubly Stolen Fire at the Lowry Lounge 2023, Liverpool (set list) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 BRITISH STANDARDS is now available:  https://www.shearsman.com/store/Robert-Sheppard-British-Standards-p661920471

Short Fiction Collection

The Only Life, Newton-le-Willows: Knives Forks and Spoons, 2011: STILL IN PRINT: 'The Only Life' by Robert Sheppard (41 pages) | Knives Forks and Spo (knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk) Three short stories about writers.   

Critical Books

Far Language: Poetics and Linguistically Innovative Poetry 1978-1997, Exeter: Stride Research Documents, 1999; second printing 2002 : o/p, But I have many copies left, so email me. (The whole book also appears on this blog, beginning here: Pages: Robert Sheppard: Far Language: Poetics and Linguistically Innovative Poetry 1978-1997: New Introduction and links to chapters)

The Poetry of Saying: British Poetry and its Discontents 1950-2000, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005, print o/p, but there are various online versions and second hand copies of the print version. Its introduction appears here: Pages: Robert Sheppard: The Poetry of Saying: Technique: The Poetics of Form

Iain Sinclair, Writers and Their Work, Plymouth: Northcote House, 2007 (distributed by Liverpool University Press: STILL IN PRINT and in digital form: ‘A unique insight into the history of British literary criticism’, Writers and Their Work now available as a digital collection | Liverpool University Press Blog.  

When Bad Times Made for Good Poetry, Exeter: Shearsman, 2011: STILL IN PRINT: Sheppard, Robert (shearsman.com)

The Meaning of Form in Contemporary Innovative Poetry, New York: Palgrave, 2016: STILL IN PRINT and available online. I write about it here: Pages: Robert Sheppard: The Meaning of Form in Contemporary Innovative Poetry PUBLISHED. I also have a navigable pdf of the whole book which I can send easily. Contact me by email.

 

Edited Books

 

Floating Capital: New Poets from London, with Adrian Clarke, Elmwood, Connecticut: Potes and Poets, 1991: o/p.

News for the Ear: a homage to Roy Fisher, with Peter Robinson, Exeter: Stride 2000: o/p though I have a few copies left.

Salt Companion to Lee Harwood, Cambridge Salt: 2007: o/p. This out-of-printness hurts!

The Door at Taldir: The Selected Poems of Paul Evans, Exeter: Shearsman, 2009: STILL IN PRINT: Shearsman Books buy Paul Evans - The Door of Taldir — Selected Poems

Atlantic Drift: Poetry and Poetics, with James Byrne, Arc/EHUP, 2017: STILL IN PRINT: Arc Publications - Books

New Collected Poems: Lee Harwood, with Kelvin Corcoran, Shearsman, 2023: JUST GONE INTO PRINT: Lee Harwood - New Collected Poems (shearsman.com)

For Me/On Me

An Educated Desire edited by Scott Thurston, KFS, STILL IN PRINT:

'An Educated Desire, for Robert Sheppard, at 60' Anthology (75 pages) | Knives Forks and Spo (knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk)

The Robert Sheppard Companion edited by Christopher Madden and James Byrne, STILL IN PRINT: James Byrne & Christopher Madden (eds.) - The Robert Sheppard Companion (shearsman.com).

So there you have it. A lot of books are still in print, others are available in newer formats, for sale second-hand, and a few I have copies of. Email me for information.

It's clear also that Complete Twentieth Century Blues operates as a kind of 'Collected Poems', or a first volume of a pair, maybe. 

I thought I might go through the same process for pamphlets, but they feel too numerous (see my full bibliography - link above - or the summary form: Publications - Robert Sheppard (weebly.com)). So I have smuggled a few pamphlets that are still available into the listings above for good measure. I’ll leave the rest to fate; most are o/p, though some Ship of Fools pamphlets are around in very small numbers. (See here for an account and images of Ship of Fools: Pages: Ship of Fools press Exhibition Edge Hill 2017: Hub post (links) and Introduction (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)).

*

Locating Robert Sheppard: email: robertsheppard39@gmail.com  website: www.robertsheppard.weebly.com Follow on Twitter: Robert Sheppard (@microbius) / Twitter  latest blogpost: www.robertsheppard.blogspot.com

A version of a Keats sonnet published on STRIDE today (links and video and context)

‘When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be’ has just been published on Stride. Thanks to Rupert Loydell for publishing this one. It is, fairly obviously I think, a version of one of Keats’ most famous sonnets, though mine begins with the contemporary-sounding ‘When Bo has fears that/ Trump may cease to be //President…’ You may read it here:

 A poem by Robert Sheppard | Stride magazine

 And here is a video of me reading the poem the day it was written, which was 9^th November 2020. As I say in my diary for that day: ‘I felt it building. The fifth poem, having to deal with with Trump, still boxed up in The White House, investigating phantom fraud. Done, blogged, etc, during the morning.’

I temporarily blogged the poem on that day (leaving it ,and the video up for about a week). Now it’s out in the open, I can repost the video of the poem that I posted that day (there’s just one difference with the final text).

 

All that stuff about ‘decompensating’ comes from an interview with Mary Trump about her uncle’s mental and physical lack of well-being. I didn't quite understand it, as you can see from the video.

I recently had another two of these Keats poems in Tears in the Fence. There's a link to that publication, and two more videos here: Pages: Two more sonnets from British Standards (from Keats) in Tears in the Fence 75 (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

There are  yet three more Keats versions (and accompanying videos!) online here:  https://www.pamenarpress.com/post/robert-sheppard

These Keats poems come from a manuscript called ‘British Standards’. It is best described here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2021/04/transpositions-of-hartley-coleridge-end.html where you will find links to other magazine appearances of parts of the book. I transpose sonnets by Wordsworth, Mary Robinson, Shelley and others, as well as Keats. I wrote specifically about the 14 Keats variations here: Pages: Weird Syrup: The final Keats variation: a (premature) farewell to satire as a strand in British Standards (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

‘British Standards’ is also book three of a longer project of refunctioning traditional English sonnets, called ‘The English Strain’.

Read about Book One of ‘The English Strain’, The English Strain here .

Book Two, Bad Idea, is talked about here .

You can buy both of these published books so far, here: Pages: How to buy The English Strain books one and two together (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 

 

 

My review of Marjorie Perloff's reviews Circling the Canon appears on Stride (reflections and a link)

From the point of view of the writer there are two kinds of critic (of course, there are more, but I’m drawing a simple explanatory binary): there are critics who seem to furnish poetics, who seem to push the art forward, and there are those who, for all their scholarship, do not. Jonathan Culler is, I think, one of the latter: however much I take from his remarkable The Theory of Lyric, it will not feed into my creative writing. Marjorie Perloff, an equally scholarly critic it is worth stating (that’s not part of the binary), is one of the former. At least as far as I’m concerned (and I reckon others, too, particularly US language writers). Her Poetics of Indeterminacy arrived at just the right time to spur me on as a writer (and at the right time to feed into my critical PhD). Her Radical Artifice performed a similar task when I was fully engaged with the poetry that became Twentieth Century Blues. Her Unoriginal Genius taught me how was I was, and how I wasn’t (or, rather, how much I was and how much I wasn’t) a conceptual writer (and that fed into chapters of The Meaning of Form). Pages from her On and Off the Page were the only critical prose I used with writing students in the early years (to get them to get free verse and then to get them ‘beyond free verse’!)

In person, too, it comes back to me, she could be immediate and critical (in a good way). ‘Lose that line about Arafat!’ she commented on an early version of The Lores that I read in New Hampshire. I lost that line about Arafat! If her Frank O’Hara is a ‘poet among painters’, then she is a critic among poets.

It was a pleasure, therefore, to consider her work again, to review her reviews! (This experience suggested I should steadily re-read those books and read the essays, abundantly archived, poetry people, on her website HERE.)

The reviews are published as Circling the Canon: The Selected Book Reviews of Marjorie Perloff, 1995-2017, Volumes I and II, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2019.

I think I say everything I need to say about those two volumes in the review itself. You may read it here on Stride. And then you may check out the rest of her work.   

My Guest Editing of STRIDE magazine Summer 2019 (links to all items)

I have guest-edited a fortnight of posts for STRIDE magazine. I thought it might absorb some of the energy I still had in reserve for a poetry magazine that I was thinking of starting myself, called 3 famous aviators, and which, like a number of other assumed ‘ambitions’ waiting for ‘retirement’ (that which is not one), passed me by.

Rupert Loydell at work

Rising to editor Rupert Loydell’s kind invitation to guest-edit for a couple of weeks over the summer, I decided not to cast my net out widely into the world, but to call upon the local resources of the Poetry and Poetics Research Group at Edge Hill University, which I started 20 years ago this autumn, and which is now coordinated by poet and poetry organiser Joanne Ashcroft. This wide-ranging body of writers presents work in poetry and poetics (and occasionally criticism), but isn’t a workshop. (It has also published its own ‘Journal’ which will be available soon.)

Here I call upon current members and, although I received an overwhelmingly male (and white) response from its mixed membership, and that was a disappointment, at least one of the two reviews I freely commissioned is of the work of a woman writer.

My own contribution was an interview with a former member of the group, so that seems appropriate.

Why has Rupert done this? He explains: ‘I am hoping it will introduce some new writers and readers to Stride.’ I hope so too, although former members Andrew Taylor and former and present member Matt Fallaize (neither represented here) are frequent contributors as poets and reviewers for Stride. (So am I, as it happens.) There's more about Andrew here from a decade ago, and here from earlier posts on this blog(zine), and a post about Matt here.

I haven’t set out to prove anything by my selection. I hope you like it. It’s probably cured me of wanting to run a magazine full time, but doing the interview with Scott Thurston (short, focussed on one issue) has stirred a desire to continue this avenue of talking poetics, as it were. It is a bit of a shock that I’ve only conducted four interviews (for publication), and so long ago: With Robert Creeley: ‘Stories: Being an Information: An Interview,’ in 1984; with Roy Fisher: Turning the Prism (Toad’s Damp Press, 1985) (those two were conducted within a fortnight of one another!); Lee Harwood: ‘So It Shifts’, in The Salt Companion to Lee Harwood ed. Robert Sheppard, Cambridge: Salt, 2007; and now this one with Scott Thurston, 2019! There are huge gaps of time there. Here's an old (but not the oldest) post about Scott.

I shall post a link to each contribution as it is posted. But of course they may all be found on Stride, here.

Monday 15th: Adam Hampton, 'Tongue': here. (And an earlier Pages post here.)
Tuesday 16th: Hampton again, 'Atom', here.
Wednesday 17th: Christopher Madden reviews Sarah Crewe's Floss here.
Thursday 18th: Joanne Ashcroft, 'Emptied Cradles' (part one, Autumn, here)
Friday 19th: Ashcroft, 'Emptied Cradles' (part two, Winter, here)
Saturday 20th: Ashcroft, 'Emptied Cradles' (part three, Spring, here)
Sunday 21st: Ashcroft, Emptied Cradles' (part four, Summer, here). More on Joanne here.

Monday 22nd: 'Writing Poetry and Dancing: An Interview with Scott Thurston', HERE
Tuesday 23rd: Roy Bayfield: 'Train Lines Angled to a Shimmering Horizon', HERE.
Wednesday 24th: Roy Bayfield: 'Staffage' (a new word for me, usefully defined) HERE
Thursday 25th: Roy Bayfield: 'Suburban Homecoming' HERE. 
Friday 26th: Roy Bayfield: 'Confetti Arrives from Other Times'. Read that here.
More on Roy Bayfield (my fellow Sussex poet) Here. And my role in his leaving do here.
Saturday 27th: Another concise review: Tom Jenks reviews Marcus Slease's The Green Monk, HERE. (There's more on Tom here.)
Sunday 28th: Patricia Farrell: from 'Rime'. Patricia’s website is http://patriciafarrell.weebly.com but also see here.

Note (Sunday 28th July 2019): It's been a pleasure and an honour to present this work over the last two weeks. I have enjoyed both seeing the work daily, and spreading news of it through social media. I think I was right to limit my 'pool' of writers to the PPRG; how else to select down a selection to a select two dozen slots. I think I've also proved that I wouldn't want to run a magazine full time, but I do have an editorial urge that is worth cultivating now and then. And I did enjoy conducting the interview, foccussed on one aspect of Thurston's work. And thanks again to Rupert for letting me loose on his Stride site! 

Andrew Taylor and Angela Keaton from the early years

These links take you to earlier PPRG activities, particularly the Going Public talk series we organised to celebrate ten years of literary activism in 2009. Around that time the membership consisted of:  Andrew Taylor, Scott Thurston, Neil Addison, Bill Drennan, Dee McMahon, Matt Fallaize, Daniele Pantano, Steve Van Hagen, Michael Egan, Colin Harris, Patricia Farrell, Angela Keaton, Alice Lenkiewicz and me.

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2009/05/introduction-to-fifth-series-edge-hill.html

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2009/09/going-public-autumn-2009.html

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2009/11/going-privategoing-privateafterword-to.html

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2009/11/going-privategoing-privateafterword-to.html

This post celebrates 25 years of writing at Edge Hill (now 30 by the way) and features 25 Edge Hill poets: http://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2014/09/twenty-five-years-of-creative-writing.html

My most recent publication, Micro Event Space, is available now. Details here!


My website may be found here.