One review and two poems in Tears in the Fence 83

I usually post on this blog to alert people to the fact that I’ve published a poem or two in Tears in the Fence or – more recently – an announcement of a new review or two in this excellent, long-running magazine.

This time I have both some poems and a review and I thought I’d offer an account of both contributions in what looks like a very interesting issue. (I’m writing this before my copy has arrived.) Thanks to David Caddy for choosing the poems and for letting me choose Tim's books from his list of books for review (and for allotting a large space for it). 

Let’s detail the review first. This is a long review of three books by Tim Allen: A Democracy of Poisons, Shearsman Books, 2021, Peasant Tower, Disengagement Books, 2021, and Very Rare Poems Upon the Earth, Aquifer Books, 2023. These three, the first constructed, the second condensed, the third extemporised, demonstrate how Allen’s sensibility works within different literary processes, and how he, and his readers with him, can see the world anew, refreshed in all its post-surrealist ‘daily miracle’, to quote Lee Harwood quoting Louis Aragon. They also show how the finest contemporary British poetry, as exemplified by these books, can restore us to the fullest of imaginative possibilities. (There's also a review by Keith Jebb in this issue of yet another book by Allen!)

To read it, though, you’ll have to buy this issue. Indeed, why not subscribe? Details are to be found here: Tears in the Fence 83 is out! | Tears in the Fence. As I say, it contains lots of goodies.

 

To read my poems, too, you’ll have to buy the magazine. I have two examples of my recent work, ‘Radio Therapy’ and ‘Empty Diary 2024 in the Style of Empty Diaries’. They are not related (other than they were written by me).

‘Radio Therapy’ is (unusually for me) the result of a ‘real’ experience: the experience of listening to the radio while I was having radiotherapy for prostate cancer and realising that I was listening to Jimi Hendrix’ ‘Voodoo Child’ (it’s no longer styled ‘Chile’). I imagine it as another of the poems ‘about’ or ‘round and about’ music that seem to be moving towards some sort of ‘collection’. Listen to it, particularly the way it opens. Then imagine a radiotherapy machine encircling you! Sublime!

(I know from reading this poem in public that people are immediately concerned about my health. As I put it on my annually updated biography on my website: ‘I’ve been recently passed from consultants into the monitoring gaze of nurses.’ It’s quite nice to be no longer of interest to the profession, though I’m grateful for the continued monitoring. Information on Prostate Cancer may be gathered here: Prostate Cancer UK | Prostate Cancer UK. And, yes, we DO need a screening programme in the UK!)  

The second poem, ‘Empty Diary 2024 in the Style of Empty Diaries’ is the penultimate poem in that sequence ‘Empty Diaries’. I’ve written of it elsewhere, but it is worth recalling that it began in the 1990s, early poems published as a book from Stride in 1998, and reappearing as the ‘spine’ of Twentieth Century Blues. It continued on into the twenty-first century, until 2025. One poem for each year, basically: 1901-2025. This one is less egregiously sexual than others in the series, and is about AI rather than edging or conspiracy theorists (to pick a couple of the other themes in recent specimens).

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I wrote about my previous reviews in TITF here:  Pages: Tears in the Fence 82 Reviews Reviews Reviews, and about the review before that and about reviewing generally (my thoughts about it and literary criticism, and me) here: Pages: My Tears’ review of Philip Terry’s Dante’s Purgatorio and my own Dante project revived – plus thoughts on reviewing.

Here’s a pretty fulsome post, with links, and videos, about the ‘Empty Diaries’ poems over the years: Pages: Robert Sheppard: The last two Empty Diary poems are published on Stride

And, finally, here’s a contribution to the Tears in the Fence website that I’d completely forgotten: an account of my ‘European Union of Imaginary Authors’ project from 2015:  The ‘EUOIA’ collaboration | Tears in the Fence.

Happy reading!

Tears in the Fence 82 Reviews Reviews Reviews

I have two reviews in the latest Tears in the Fence:  

‘Poetry’s Geographies: A Transatlantic Anthology of Translations, eds. Kathleen M. Heeden and Zoë Skoulding, Tears in the Fence 82: Autumn 2025

‘A Line of Tiny Zeros in the Fabric: essays on the poetry of Maurice Scully, ed. Kenneth Keating, Tears in the Fence 82: Autumn 2025

This is to add to the review in the previous issue:

 ‘Dante’s Purgatory [sic] by Philip Terry’, Tears in the Fence 81: Spring 2025.

I wrote about this sudden spate of reviewing some few posts ago, and I’m pleased here to be reviewing two outstanding books (an innovative book of translations and translators’ poetics and a fine book of essays on the excellent Maurice Scully, whose recent death was a horrible surprise).

 The reviews section, which has now grown to half the contents of the magazine is excellent and, when you add to that the ongoing reviews on its website, it is one of the most comprehensive cluster of (mainly) poetry reviews in the UK. It’s good to be part of it (my poetry has appeared for decades in the magazine, but this is a different enterprise, and involves a lot more work than the writing of many poems!

There are lots of other goodies in the issue as well: The critical section alone consists of the Editorial by David Caddy, Robert Sheppard on A Line Of Tiny Zeros In The Fabric, Robert Hampson on Andrew Duncan’s Beautiful Feelings, Chris Turnbull on Jennifer Spector, Guy Russell on Dominic Hand, Mandy Pannett on J.R. Carpenter, Andrew Duncan on New German Poetry, Nadezhda Vikulina on Caroline Clark, Peter Oswald on Paul Stubbs, Mandy Pannett on Lynne Wycherley, Andrew Duncan on Rachel Mann, Keith Jebb on W.N. Herbert, Steve Spence on Arcadian Rustbelt, Robert Sheppard on Poetry’s Geographies, Steve Spence on Plymouth Language Club, Keith Jebb on Frances Presley, Morag Kiziewicz ‘s Electric Blue 17, Notes On Contributors, David Caddy’s Afterword.

Two items here are particularly pleasing:

Steve Spence, ‘Arcadian Rustbelt – the Second Generation of British Underground Poetry’, Tears in the Fence 82, Autumn 2025.

David Caddy, review of Mary Robinson’s Selected Poems edited by Robert Sheppard in ‘Afterword’, Tears in the Fence 82, Autumn 2025.  

Steve Spence has some nice words to say about my work in this anthology, and about my work generally. Modesty forbids I quote it (though it might end up on the back of a book sometime).

David Caddy (who is the editor of Tears in the Fence) has a nice account of my edition of Robinson’s Selected Poems, which now has two reviews to its name.

Tears in the Fence may be bought and subscribed to here: Pay/Subscribe/Donate | Tears in the Fence, and see here: Tears in the Fence 82 is out! | Tears in the Fence

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My thoughts on reviewing are collected here: Pages: My Tears’ review of Philip Terry’s Dante’s Purgatorio and my own Dante project revived – plus thoughts on reviewing

I write about Arcadian Rustbelt and my part in it, here: Pages: Arcadian Rustbelt: The Second Generation of British Underground Poetry - some thoughts

The reviews of Mary Robinson are commented upon here: Pages: Reviews of my edition of the Selected Poems of Mary Robinson

More on Mary’s book here: Pages: Selecting for a Selected: The Poems of Mary Robinson 1

 

Here’s a random post (one of many) to catalogue my poetry contributions to Tears in the Fence: Pages: Two more sonnets from British Standards (from Keats) in Tears in the Fence 75. This one has videos of me reading two of the chosen poems.

My Tears’ review of Philip Terry’s Dante’s Purgatorio and my own Dante project revived – plus thoughts on reviewing

I have just published a review of Philip Terry’s Dante’s Purgatorio in the 81^st edition of Tears in the Fence. I have published poems quite regularly in the magazine for a long time now, but I think this is the first time I have written a review for them. The review section is very good and it’s a nice place to appear. Despite having published a new book of (kind of) critical pieces in the last six months (The Necessity of Poetics) I have not written many reviews for a long time. (Pages: The Necessity of Poetics - out now! ) Partly, this is the result of having moved from an early policy of book reviewing for magazines small and large (including New Statesman, TLS, PN Review) to writing academic literary criticism, which resulted in several books (not so much The Necessity of Poetics which largely collected disparate materials) but like The Poetry of Saying and The Meaning of Form. (Believe it or not I’ve only recently noticed that ‘The X of Y’ structure of these book titles! ‘I thought it was deliberate,’ Patricia opined. It wasn’t.)

Somehow, the thrill of writing reviews wore off. Perhaps I could do it in my sleep. Perhaps I regret not being paid (the New Statesman stuff was vital to our survival, I seem to remember, even though I had a full time job in FE). But I’ve seldom returned to it. Of course, my disenchantment with academic publishing is pretty high, too. A system where you’re lucky if you receive a pdf of your book title instead of the whole book, or where you have to buy a copy yourself is difficult to explain to friends in the pub. One said, ‘You need a better agent.’ (I didn’t like to tell him.) I don’t mind paying a bus fare but I don’t expect to have to build the bus first before I travel!

Another reason why I think I should review new poetry books (in particular) is that there is a shortage of reviewers out there (as I have discovered with my own latest, British Standards; I am thankful for Billy Mills’ tracing of its trajectory here: Two by Robert Sheppard: A Review – Elliptical Movements). And I feel I need to do my bit.

Now I have, with my account of Philip Terry’s Dante’s Purgatorio which you will not be too surprised to hear is his follow-up to his masterful Dante’s Inferno! In short (and without repeating the review) it’s great fun and serious at the same time, an Oulipo wonder, using the constraint ‘Up to Date’, which he operates in a much more systematic way than I did in my ‘English Strain’ project; I have collaborated with Philip and have observed him at work. See here (Pages: Twitters for a Lark launch at Bangor University 6th April 2018 (set list)) and here (Pages: 'My' Quennets from A TRANSLATED MAN published in The Penguin Book of Oulipo) for our meetings, over the remains of my ‘fictional poets’ project (something close to Philip’s own heart!).

Details of Tears in the Fence 81 here: Tears in the Fence 81 is out! | Tears in the Fence

Anybody reading this blog carefully (is there such a being out there?) will perhaps notice that I was advancing my own ‘Dante’ project, which I rather flagrantly ‘abandoned’ in this post here: Pages: On abandoning my transposition of Dante: thoughts and extracts.

For the moment, the old text shall remain there but I might remove it, since I have (as I thought I would, and said so, on the post itself) found a way to ‘treat’ the text, submitting it to a ‘coherent deformation’, daily working through the 80 pp of notes with a method, not (it should be recorded) an Oulipo method. In fact, today yielded, probably roughly, and in need of further work, these lines:

 

 Lower down the

proscribed Covid stairwell, very finely done, ‘Oh,

you know, the plague!’ says Blake. ‘Let’s watch

“this metamorphosis of a malefactor.” Everything’s

one day about this man. You’ll write other

dimensions, you already have.’ The riding figure

disintegrates before any masks. The Poet muffles

his nose in human decomp, arriving like an olfactory

fester. He acts to bloat and gloop the great naked

blasphemer, knocking, who blasts flames,

sequenced backwards like this story, which is,

admittedly, unambiguous and coiled with serpents.

 

Blake is my Virgil, and Dante is ‘The Poet’. Blake was my Virgil, since I used his very lopsided coverage of the Commedia, for the object of the original ‘writing through’, which I have now returned to, partly because I’ve forgotten the ‘abandoned’ text (and have not looked back at it); I have, however, kept its title, Stars: a Comedy Machine, and one of its epigraphs is

                                    Thus the cause

                        Is not corrupted nature in yourselves,

                        But bad government that has turned the world

                        To evil.

                                                Purgatorio XVI

 

which I mention in my review of Philip’s work, plus his own version of these lines. I say, ‘In a version of lines in Dante from Canto XVI that I think of as central to the Commedia, Terry has:

 

                                    What I’m saying is that the

           

Present state of the world is caused predominantly

By one thing and one thing alone: bad leadership.’

 

Interestingly, he keeps this in focus as a major theme.

 

Talking of epigraphs, mine, to the third, HELL, part of my ‘commedia’ (it’s narrated in reverse, ‘sequenced backwards like this story’ as I ‘wrote’ this morning) is taken from Terry’s Inferno:

 

 Capital divides

                                                            and rules     its kingdom

                                                Like a greedy spoilt dictator,

 

though I might choose another from his Inferno.

My own version is thus much taken with Terry’s. In fact I might have abandoned my version much sooner, since the very existence of his version threw mine into doubt. But Philip encouraged me to continue: as an Oulipean there can never be enough versions of the text for him (so long as he doesn’t have to write them all, I suspect!).

 I agreed to review the book in order to deal with it (and I knew it would be as funny as I found the first volume, though more poignant). I’m glad I did. It’s been useful for seeing what he’s up to, what I’m up to, and it might very well propel me to write further reviews for whoever wants them. It gets the news out there. There is always this blog, too, for further thoughts.  

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Previous appearances in Tears in the Fence are recorded here, the first 2 links carrying details of poems printed from the aforesaidmentioned ‘English Strain’ project, with videos of me reading some of these poems. Thanks again to editor David Caddy for taking these works and the new review! 

Pages: Two new poems from British Standards published in Tears in the Fence 73

Pages: Two more sonnets from British Standards (from Keats) in Tears in the Fence 75

Pages: Robert Sheppard: 'Between' a poem for Roy Fisher published in Tears in the Fence

'Between' published as part of 'The Worked Object' for Roy Fisher on Blackbox Manifold

Covid intervened in a lot of things, and one was a celebration of Roy Fisher to inaugurate the Roy Fisher Archive at Sheffield University. There is a healthy newsletter you may read and a website, here: https://royfisherarchive.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/ .

One of the offshoots of that launch was to be an anthology of poems for Roy Fisher, or in his memory. Of course, since my PhD days I have been a student of Roy Fisher in many ways, and I’ve written criticism on his work (here’s a snippet: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2018/06/robert-sheppard-actual-poetics-roy.html) and I’ve previously composed poems for his birthdays, etc. all of which may be found in my published books. (Here’s one reprinted in his memory on the occasion of his death: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2017/03/robert-sheppard-tenatives-poem-for-roy.html)

I had a fresh poem ready for this proposed anthology, because I found myself writing a poem (unusually for me) on the way to work, and (even more unusual for me!) I carried on writing the poem, at work. I’d seen a mention of his death in a Tweet on then Twitter (halcyon days before the fascistic re-branding as X), which I couldn’t re-locate. Then on the bus … well, the poem can really speak for itself as it may be read here, and heard on the video I made today:

‘Between’ : https://blackboxmanifold.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/issue-32/robertsheppardbm32

This appears, not in a booklet, but as part of a special feature of tributes, ‘The Worked Object’, in the wonderful magazine Blackbox Manifold in which I have appeared many times: https://blackboxmanifold.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/home.

 Current issue here: https://blackboxmanifold.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/issue-32-current-issue .

 I suggest reading Peter Robinson’s introduction first, followed by a trawl through the poems, Fleur Adcock to Cliff Yates. Blackbox Manifold - PeterRobinsonPrefaceBM32 (sheffield.ac.uk) .

 It’s interesting how many people, as I do, address Roy in their poems (a feature of elegy, I wonder?) whereas others take elements of his style, and sometimes landscapes familiar to him (and jazz, of course), and play and juggle with those.

Thanks to Peter for editing this and finding a home for these tributes and elegies. As he notes in the introduction, many poets gave up waiting for the Covid interruption to be over, and published the poems they’d written in advance of yesterday’s appearance. I feel less guilty than I did to realise I wasn’t the only offender in this category. My poem previously appeared in Tears in the Fence (a magazine, like Blackbox Manifold, that has been a great supporter of my work, and thus its continuation). I blogged about its first appearance here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2018/09/robert-sheppard-between-poem-for-roy.html

Looking for a photograph of Roy to flesh out my post, I discovered that my 1982 interview with Fisher (‘Turning the Prism’) which first appeared in Gargoyle magazine (before it was published as a booklet by Toads Damp Press) is archived online here: Interview with Roy Fisher – Gargoyle Magazine . Conducting that interview (I did another with Robert Creeley in the same month) was an education. Good to see it again, and Richard Peabody, the editor, still going strong.

Two new poems published in Tears In the Fence 78

 Tears in the Fence 78 is now available at https://tearsinthefence.com/pay-it-forward 

It features reviews by others as well as poetry, prose poetry, visual poetry, translations and fiction by: Mark Dickinson, Ian Seed, Eliza O’Toole, Lisa Pasold, Lizzi Linklater, Mark Goodwin, Blossom Hibbert, Morag Kiziewicz, Kate Noakes, Kenny Knight, Matthew Carbery, Pratibha Castle, Lesley Burt, David Ball, Toon Tellegen translated by Judith Wilkinson, Chrissie Gittins, Carla Scarano D’Antonio, Siân Thomas, PQR Anderson, Elizabeth Wilson Davies, benjamin cusden, Basil King, Janet Hancock, Melissa Buckheit, Benjamin Larner, David Miller, Steve Spence, Amber Rollinson, Beth Davyson, Claire Watt, David Harmer, Sue Johns ,Kathleen McPhilemy, Robin Walter, Michael Henry, Elizabeth Parker, Alice Tarbuck, Joanna Nissel, Sarah Watkinson, Mandy Pannett, Charles Wilkinson, Valerie Bridge, Jane Wheeler, Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana Naoise Gale, and me!

I’ve got two (unrelated) poems there and now my copies have arrived (why does everybody else seem to be tweeting about the issue before I even receive mine; it's the same with Jazzwise too, so it's not to do with the journal itself?) I want to introduce them. 

One is one of the latest ‘Empty Diary’ poems. This is a sequence that formed the backbone of Twentieth Century Blues – and kept on growing after the blues, as it were (as well as appearing in its earlier stages as the Stride book Empty Diaries). Books in print are featured here: Pages: Robert Sheppard: seeing what's in print and what's not! So it runs from 1901-2022 (so far). 

This one is ‘Empty Diary 2021’ , ‘Squeezing the spray’!

Empty Diary 2022 will appear in a masculinity anthology from Broken Sleep early next year. You can find others here:

 Pages: Robert Sheppard: The last two Empty Diary poems are published on Stride

I don’t mean ‘last’, of course, but ‘latest’. The ‘diaries’ for 2019 and 2020. I read both of them on video, and link to the texts (on Stride). I write about the sequence in some detail there and won’t repeat that here, but you can have a look. Additionally, there are further links to ‘Empty Diary’ poems of various kinds.

I am thinking about one for this year. I think I might take on anti-vax piss-drinkers.

The second poem is ‘Turns Return’, which is a poem for Scott Thurston. It’s a nudge for him to make the next move in our ‘collaboration’ Turns – but he hasn’t taken the hint/bait yet. Watch out soon for his Selected Poems from Shearsman.

I say the two poems are unrelated, and they are at the level of content, but they are connected by having been written at the same time, and they are two of a number of poems (the others are oddly in two editions of Junction Box) where I deny myself capital letters at the start of lines and any punctuation at the end of lines. I adopted this convention for a couple of months, I'm not sure why, which I'm sure is why I discontinued it!

I want to thank David Caddy again for publishing poems in Tears in the Fence this year (and in others).

I was last in issue 75 (video here too):

Pages: Two more sonnets from British Standards (from Keats) in Tears in the Fence 75 (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 Before that in issue 73 (video again):

Pages: Two new poems from British Standards published in Tears in the Fence 73 (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 And 68 (a poem in memory of Roy Fisher)

Pages: Robert Sheppard: 'Between' a poem for Roy Fisher published in Tears in the Fence

And 3 poems to the memory of Lee Harwood (now collected in The English Strain; see here: Pages: Search results for The English Strain (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)) :

Pages: Robet Sheppard: 3 poems to the memory of Lee Harwood in Tears in the Fence (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

There are loads of reviews too in issue 78. It’s time to read it now. Feet up: new glasses on, and away we go!

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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

 

Two more sonnets from British Standards (from Keats) in Tears in the Fence 75

 I am pleased to say that I have a couple of poems in the latest Tears in the Fence, astonishingly their 75^th issue!

The two poems are from the ‘Weird Syrup’ section of my probably finished sonnet project ‘British Standards’. They are versions (overdubs, transpositions, I’ve several names for them) taken from the sonnets of John Keats. They were both written in November 2020, and comment on the politics of that time (it seems already distant).  

Tears in the Fence 75 is now available at https://tearsinthefence.com/pay-it-forward.

 Here are two videos of me reading drafts of the poems (slightly different from the final texts) on the days they were written. I appear to have made play with Keats’ life mask.

 

My overdub of Keats' 'Why Did I Laugh Tonight'.

My overdub of Keats' 'Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art'. 

There are three more Keats versions (with more videos) online at Pamenar here: Robert Sheppard (pamenarpress.com)

I wrote about all 14 of my Keats variations here.

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/11/weird-syrup-final-keats-variation.html

Pages: Weird Syrup: The final Keats variation: a (premature) farewell to satire as a strand in British Standards (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 

These Keats poems come from a manuscript called ‘British Standards’. It is best described here:

Pages: Transpositions of Hartley Coleridge: the end of British Standards (and of The English Strain project) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 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.

‘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 Pages: Robert Sheppard: the Petrarch sonnet project finished with poem 100

Book Two, Bad Idea, is talked about here: Pages: On Bad Idea (and reference to earlier parts of The English Strain, and to prospective parts) (hub post) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Previously I've published poems from this project in Tears in the Fence 73: see here: Pages: Two new poems from British Standards published in Tears in the Fence 73 (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Both volumes of the 'English Strain' are reviewed by Clark Allison on the Tears in the Fence website here: Pages: A second review of The English Strain and Bad Idea by Clark Allison appears on the Tears on the Fence website (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Tears in the Fence 75 also features poetry, prose poetry, translations, fiction, flash fiction and creative nonfiction by Mandy Pannett, Greg Bright, Penny Hope, David Sahner, Stephen Paul Wren, Alexandra Fössinger, Mark Russell, Maurice Scully, Gavin Selerie, Mandy Haggith, Lynne Cameron, Sarah Watkinson, Jeremy Hilton, Gerald Killingworth, Lesley Burt, Nic Stringer, Sam Wilson-Fletcher, Lilian Pizzichini, Paul Kareem Tayyar, Beth Davyson, Rethabile Masilo, Tracy Turley, Olivia Tuck, Elisabeth Bletsoe and Chris Torrance’s Thirteen Moon Renga, Wei Congyi Translated by Kevin Nolan, Basil King, Lucy Ingrams, John Freeman, Mélisande Fitzsimons, Deborah Harvey, David Harmer, David Ball, Rupert M. Loydell, Jeremy Reed, Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, Sian Thomas, Chaucer Cameron, Huw Gwynn-Jones and Simon Collings.

 The critical section consists of editorial, essays, articles and critical reviews by David Caddy, Elisabeth Bletsoe Remembering Chris Torrance, Jeremy Reed on The Letters of Thom Gunn, Simon Collings’ ecocritical perspective of Rae Armantrout, Isobel Armstrong on Peter Larkin, Barbara Bridger on Barbara Guest, Andrew Duncan on Elisabeth Bletsoe & Portland Tryptich, Frances Presley on Harriet Tarlo,  Simon Jenner on Geoffrey Hill, Steve Spence on Sarah Crewe, Mandy Pannett on Charles Wilkinson, Clark Allison on Ken Edwards, Guy Russell on Paul Vangelisti, Norman Jope on Ariana Reines, Lyndon Davies on Elena Rivera and Scott Thurston, Harriet Tarlo on Carol Watts, Morag Kiziewicz’s Electric Blue 10. See here: Tears in the Fence 75 is out! | Tears in the Fence

It's good to see Chris Torrance being remembered, in this issue.

Very handsome it all looks too. Thanks as ever to David Caddy and his industrious team.

A second review of The English Strain and Bad Idea by Clark Allison appears on the Tears on the Fence website

I have a second review of the more or less simultaneously appearing two first books of my ‘English Strain’ project, The English Strain and Bad Idea on the Tears in the Fence website.

It is by Clark Allison.

Among other things, Clark says: ‘I’d say what we find is a considerable amount of libidinal energy and direction hewn according to the formal model of the sonnet form, so we get a fascinating mixture of the eruptive and the contained coterminously. There’s also a good amount not just of Westminster politics here but also gender relational controversies, which might be particularly fitting given the sonnet’s role as a mode for finding courtly favour. And a mite unlike Boccaccio, Petrarch was often studious and exacting, that is that the form must have it to the end. It is as if Sheppard is addressing this language by testing how suitable and appropriate it is to our times, which indeed it remains so, or not far off, perhaps more Machiavelli than Dante, however. It is a very effective trawl through history. But Sheppard throughout is agile, not easily pinned down.’

 Read it all HERE: https://tearsinthefence.com/2021/04/27/the-english-strain-shearsman-books-by-robert-sheppard-bad-idea-kfs-press-by-robert-sheppard/

References to some of my many and much appreciated appearances in Tears in the Fence as a poet may be found here, including my most recent, in the current issue, which appropriately features two poems from British Standard (the recently completed third part of ‘The English Strain’ project): Pages: Two new poems from British Standards published in Tears in the Fence 73 (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 

Clark Allison has followed the public temporary appearances of sonnets from this ‘strain’ on Pages for a number of years now. To not receive an email about a recent post made me wonder if he was unwell! My periodicity (my temporary posting, which I've not done before) has actually been referred to in a piece in relation to the temporal progression of Brexit here, by Jamie Toy, in Versopolis: https://www.versopolis.com/arts/to-read/792/moving-but-also-staying-the-same

See also my reaction to that:  https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/06/jamie-toys-versopolis-essay-moving-but.html

Read the first review of these two conjoined books, by Alan Baker, in Litter here: Review - "The English Strain" and "Bad Idea" by Robert Sheppard | Litter (littermagazine.com)

Read the third review, by Steve Hanon, in the Manchester Review of Books, here:

Pages: BAD IDEA reviewed by Steve Hanson in The Manchester Review of Books (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Read about ‘The English Strain’ Book One, The English Strain here , and about Book Two, Bad Idea here . I write about finishing Book Three (with links to its constituent parts) here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2021/04/transpositions-of-hartley-coleridge-end.html

 

Book One, The English Strain, is available from Shearsman:

 

https://www.shearsman.com/store/Sheppard-Robert-c28271934?offset=6

 

Book Two, Bad Idea, is available from Knives Forks and Spoons:  https://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/product-page/bad-idea-by-robert-sheppard-102-pages

In addition to the print version of Tears in the Fence publishing my work, the online version has reviewed my work, whether it be of my critical work The Meaning of Form  https://tearsinthefence.com/2016/10/21/the-meaning-of-form-in-contemporary-innovative-poetry-palgrave-macmillan/

 or my selected poems History or Sleep:

https://tearsinthefence.com/2015/11/23/history-or-sleep-by-robert-sheppard-shearsman-books/

My various thanks to David Caddy and crew. 

Two new poems from British Standards published in Tears in the Fence 73

 My copy of Tears in the Fence 73 has arrived. 

Copies are now available at https://tearsinthefence.com/pay-it-forward . I have a couple of related poems published here. Thanks to David Caddy for selecting and thereby juxtaposing them for this outing. 

They are both from (different parts) of British Standards, the third book of ‘The English Strain project. One is my re-writing of Shelley’s canonical ‘Ozymandias’. You may read about my lengthy encounters with this text here: Pages: My occasional transposition of Shelley' s 'Ozymandias' appears and disappears (hub post) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com). Such encounters pre-date our contemporary engagements with public statuary and their unsavoury pasts, but my transposition of one of Southey’s poems about slavery brings us closer to home, not to Southey’s slavery-rich Bristol, but to contemporary (or lockdown one) Liverpool. Just so you know, Bold was a slaver, as was Tarleton. One Tarleton family member appears in ‘Tabitha and Thunderer’: see here Pages: My Transpositions of Mary Robinson's sonnets 'Tabitha and Thunderer' are now complete (hub post) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com) though this poem comes from the stylistically various set ’14 Standards’, which I write about here: Pages: Robert Sheppard: 14 Standards from British Strandards is complete as one sonnet appears at the virtual WOW Festival 2020 (hub post).  

 

Me reading 'Poem on the Slave Trade' the day it was written. Around that time I posted this: Pages: My latest Liverpool-Brexit-Virus-Slavery British Standard transposition (of Robert Southey) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

You can connect to all the news about the project as a whole, here: Pages: My THE ENGLISH STRAIN is published today by Shearsman (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 

Tears in the Fence 73 (73! imagine!) features poetry, prose poetry, multlilingual poetry, translations, flash fiction and fiction from: Mark Russell, Neha Maqsood, Penny Hope, Mandy Pannett, John Freeman, Sandra Galton, Wioletta Greg translated by Maria Jastrzębska and Anna Blasiak, Peter Dent, Alison Lock, Caitlin Stobie, Jeffrey Graessley, Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani, L. Kiew, Mohammad Razai, Alex Barr, Michael Farrell, Olivia Tuck, Paul Rossiter, John Goodby, Maurice Scully, Tim Allen, Lucy Maxwell Scott, Anna-May Laugher, Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, Mélisande Fitzsimons, Marcia Hindson, Oliver Dixon, Gwen Sayers, Beth Davyson, Steve Spence, Valerie Bridge, S.J. Litherland, Karen Downs-Barton, Frances Presley, Mark Dickinson, Alison Brackenbury, Phil Williams, Rhea Seren Phillips, Oliver Southall, Sarah Salway and Sarah Watkinson.

 

The critical section consists of Louise Buchler’s Editorial, Jeremy Hilton on Hart Crane, Jeremy Reed on Denise Riley, Mandy Pannett on Sascha A. Akhtar, Geraldine Clarkson, Robert Hampson on Jeanne Heuving, Andrew Duncan on Molly Vogel, Clark Allison on Robin Fulton Macpherson, Walter Perrie, A.L. Kennedy, Guy Russell on Lesley Harrison, Alejandra Pizarnik, Mark Prendergast on Mercè Rodoreda, Siân Thomas on Susie Campbell, Steve Spence on the Plymouth Poetry Scene, David Caddy on Stephanie Burt’s Callimachus, Richard Scholar’s Émigrés, Ric Hool on Mélisande Fitzsimons, and Morag Kiziewicz’s Electric Blue 8.

 Tears in the Fence | an independent, international literary magazine

I've appeared in Tears in the Fence a lot over the last 25 (?) years, and here are some of my other appearances and/or responses to the issues: 

Pages: Robert Sheppard: 'Between' a poem for Roy Fisher published in Tears in the Fence

 Pages: Robert Sheppard and Anamaria Crowe Serrano (Jaroslav Bialy and update on my EUOIA collaborative project) Tears in the Fence

Pages: Robert Sheppard sonnets from Bad Idea published in Tears in the Fence 70

Pages: Robet Sheppard: 3 poems to the memory of Lee Harwood in Tears in the Fence (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Robet Sheppard: 3 poems to the memory of Lee Harwood in Tears in the Fence

I'm pleased to report that my three sonnets to the memory of Lee Harwood are published together in Tears in the Fence - on the first two pages, in fact. 

I searched everywhere for your letter

that I know says something like You’ve

got a special language for poetry,

Robert, and I haven’t.

I haven't read all of issue 65 yet but it looks a bumper one, but I did espy this oddity from  Andrew Duncan, reviewing Nathan Thompson, but writing about Harwood, in a way that touches on the opening of poem 3 quoted above: 'Lee always seemed to be wiping holes in a narrative he hadn't established, so that my attention wasn't seized and I didn't find an experience inside the poems, which were too nebulous. What he had, was a weak ego.' What on earth does that last sentence, with its rhetorical comma, mean? 

Better William Rowe's remarks about ‘the use of speech materials in rhythmic units that fall outside of prosody ... In Harwood’s early work, it is a question … of how to let the plasticity of speech, its subtle rhythmic and tonal variations, build the poem, without subordination to other orders: i.e. speech as present event … rather than speech imitated ... For this, various conditions are necessary: incompletion, especially syntactic, but also semantic; and also a unit of rhythm that is both variable and shorter than the line.’  
 
Issue 65 has a sea themed cover (see below; great image: could be the pier at Brighton referred to in one of my three sonnets) and is designed by Westow Cooper. We have poetry, prose poetry, fiction and flash fiction from Ian Seed, Michael Farrell, Louise Buchler, Joseph Minden, Kat Addis, Catherine Woodward, Lisa Kelly, Colin Sutherill, Anne Gorrick, David Harmer, John Seed, Valerie Bridge, Ann Matthews Martin Keaveney, Sarah Leavesley in Conversation with Mark Goodwin, Matt Bryden, Ingrid Jendrzejewski – Flash Fiction 1st Prize winner, Niamh MacCabe Flash Fiction 2nd Prize, Jackie Sullivan Flash Fiction 3rd Prize, James Bell, 
Laura Tansley, Anna Backman Rogers, Reuben Woolley, Peter J. King, Charles Wilkinson, Morag Kiziewicz, Dorothy Lehane, Sally Douglas, Rowan Evans, Jill Jones, Seán Street, Paul Matthews Vivian O’Shaughnessy, Lesley Burt, Sascha Akhtar, Carrie Etter, Kate Noakes, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Lucy Hamilton, Norman Jope, Annie Wright, Susie Campbell, Aidan Semmens, Simon Collings, Steve Spence, Vasiliki Albedo. And me.

The critical section features Alison Winch on Melissa Lee-Houghton, Kat Peddie – Claims on Spaces, Louise Buchler on Hera Lindsay Bird, Jeremy Reed on John Ashbery, Steve Spence on Denise Riley
, John Freeman on Henry Lyman
, Andrew Duncan on Nathan Thompson, Mark Goodwin
, Mandy Pannett on Cora Greenhill, Seán Street
, Joseph Persad on Sophie Seita
, Duncan Mackay on J.H. Prynne’s Kazoo Dreamboats
, Paul Matthews on Diamond Cutters, eds Andrew Harvey & Jay Ramsay, Peter Hughes on Simon Marsh
, Colin Winborn on John Martone
, Richard Foreman on Andrew Darlington
, Morag Kiziewicz – Electric Blue, Notes on Contributors
 and David Caddy’s Afterword.

See here.