Robert Sheppard: The sonnets I write

My acquaintanceship with the innovative sonnet is a long one. I am represented in Jeff Hilson’s anthology Reality Street Book of Sonnets (2008), which puts an excerpt from Warrant Error (2009), my book of 100 innovative sonnets concerned, as the title suggests, with the so-called ‘War on Terror’ of the early twenty-first century, alongside many others, from Ted Berrigan and Tom Raworth, through to my contemporaries Tim Atkins and Adrian Clarke. But my use of innovative sonnet forms, which usually means sonnet aspirant, sonnet approximate and sonnet deviant forms, poems that would not qualify as sonnets under the usual normative ‘classroom’ description, harks back to earlier work.

I write about the innovative sonnet in The Meaning of Form, in a chapter that is a much revised version of the 14 part rambling Hay-on-Wye lecture on the (Petrarchan) sonnet that I posted here via a sonnet frame of links!

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/innovative-sonnet-sequence-one-of-14.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/innovative-sonnet-sequence-two-of-14.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/innovative-sonnet-sequence-three-of-14.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/innovative-sonnet-sequence-four-of-14.html

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/innovative-sonnet-sequence-five-of-14.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/innovative-sonnet-sequence-six-of-14.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/innovative-sonnet-sequence-seven-of-14.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/innovative-sonnet-sequence-eight-of-14.html

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/innovative-sonnet-sequence-nine-of-14.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/innovative-sonnet-sequence-ten-of-14.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/innovative-sonnet-sequence-eleven-of-14.html

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/innovative-sonnet-sequence-twelve-of-14.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/innovative-sonnet-sequence-thirteen-of.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/innovative-sonnet-sequence-fourteen-of.html

(The eighth 'line' above is an earlier account of the sonnets I have written.)

Indeed, my long network TwentiethCentury Blues (2008) contains many 14 line poems and I even invented a new form, the 100 word sonnet (a two word ‘title’ is followed by 14 lines of 7 words each, centre margined, as in my example, below), which hailed from noticing this structure in one of Adrian Clarke’s isoverbalist poems of the 1990s, which he had not recognised as such, and adapting it for my poems and sequences. Coincidentally, I have returned to this form this summer, one dictated by a lack of punctuation and caesura and that develops a rhythmic celerity amid linguistic mix, in writing some poems that brood upon the disastrous vote of Britain to ‘Brexit’ the European Union, the Turkish coup, post-truth politics, and the self-immolation of the Labour Party. All that stuff.

In my journal I note of these: ‘The impaction suits the claustrophobia of political oppression, and make a wonderful contrast to ‘It’s Nothing’ (my 14 domestic-realist sonnets: 'Last Look', appeared in The International Times: here). A largely rhythmic celerity and linguistic mix, with occasional passages of normative discourse, though dictated by context (place in the flow and the effects of enjambement). That’s the poetics. It’s a poetics that gestures and doesn’t gesture at the same time, interruption and connectivity balanced. The frame of the sonnet also now and again becomes not just a ‘frame’, but it pivotal for dividing the flow into semantically organisable stretches, whether normative or – as is more normal – not.’

Here is one of the ones from the 1990s, one that didn’t get into History or Sleep, my selected poems, here, though it’s still available in TwentiethCentury Blues.

Small Voice 2

for Tim Woods

Twentieth Century Blues 39

For Scott Thurston 3

Hundred 3.10

Turns 8

lightness blooms

do not interrogate the taillamps’s eradicated drone

voice within vision musicates, released ears entune

its captive turn, the others no longer

fixed in the totality of permanent waste

this pleasure animates a knot of rapturous

ruptures mass graces follow me dirt from

itself: erotic or aesthetic it prises each

permission without distinction tinkles in shivered delight

We don’t live in Utopia but glimpsed

it for one moment: the daily catastrophe

anchors an epic ethos in liminal illumination,

audial; orchestration of things covered by

a grating the ‘utensils’ remain compound;

windows spring black roses in en-

visaged articulation

June-July 1997

Indeed, an essay I’m writing at the moment, ‘Era il giorno ch’al sol si scoloraro’: A derivative dérive into/out of Petrarch’s Sonnet 3, is in some senses a poetics for my on-going project of making a sequence of innovative sonnet sequences, including Petrarch 3 (the poet and publisher Richard Parker, who has taken on Petrarch 3, declared this to be a ‘corona of coronas’ when we were talking about it). It’s what I was toying calling Song Nets but I decided against it. (See here and here about Petrarch 3). 

My predilection for the sonnet may be found even earlier, as I say in the Hay-on-Wye lecture. The opening poem of my first non-self-published booklet, Dedicated to you but you weren’t listening (1979) is also a sonnet of sorts. Using titles from recordings by the seminal British band Soft Machine as the start of each line (the book’s title is also one of their compositions) the poem claims, in its subtitle, to be ‘influenced’ by the sonnets of Raymond Queneau and Jacques Bens, two members of Oulipo. In fact, in 1978 when I wrote the poems, like most Britons, I knew little of the Oulipo, other than what I had picked up via the fortuitous possession of Simon Watson Taylor’s French Writing Today, which anthologised both poets. Detailed knowledge of the Oulipo evaded me until the mid-1980s, but the construction of innovative sonnets is obviously rooted deep in my practice, and the memory of my first brush with three of Queneau’s ‘Thousand Billion Sonnets’, for example, and Bens’ mathematical use of pi as a determinant of rhyme-schemes, must have lain dormant.

'Petrarch 3' is now in print, see here and here.

So I have a number of sonnet-like forms (including several not listed here) and I am amassing a collection. The English Strain.

I read some at Raygun Gramophone at the Everyman Bistro on September 15^th. I read the new 100 word sonnets and ended with some from Warrant Error. See here for set list. 

Note: See another recent sonnet in International Times here:

http://internationaltimes.it/avenge

(‘Avenge’, another sonnet, a contrafact on Milton’s ‘Avenge O Lord…’, and featuring elements concerning the (female) Yasidi resistance to IS, is not from 'It's Nothing', but belongs to a connected sequence, 'Overdubs'.)

 See three of Thomas Wyatt here. And there:

 

http://www.manifold.group.shef.ac.uk/issue20/RobertSheppardBM20.html

These come from  Hap:Understudies of Thomas Wyatt’s Petrarch (though the first, introductory, poem ‘Perhaps a Mishap’ is not a version of Wyatt’s versions of Petrarch). All part of The English Strain.

Robert Sheppard: new (and EU topical) poem in International Times

I have a new poem (the first published poem with the word 'Brexit' in it? Maybe), 'Last Look', up at The International Times: here.

Thanks to the poetry editor, Rupet Loydell. And to the illustrator Claire Palmer.

This sonnet comes from a series of 14 called 'It's Nothing', which I had thought of as part of a 14X14 sonnet work, but currently I'm not convinced of that structure (though I'm pretty happy with the resultant 'rows': 'Wiped Weblogs', 'Petrarch 3', 'Microbius' and this sequence). 

See my previous sonnet in International Times here:

http://internationaltimes.it/avenge

(‘Avenge’, another sonnet, a contrafact on Milton’s ‘Avenge O Lord…’)

And the one before that here:

http://internationaltimes.it/workless-washday-burnt-journal-1952

(‘Workless Washday’, a birthday poem for Frances Presley).

Robert Sheppard: Poem in International Times: 'Avenge'

 A poem of mine, ‘Avenge’ has just been published in International Times (March 2016) illustrated by Nick Victor.
 

Read it here. (My previous contribution, 'Workless Washday: Burnt Journal 1952' for Frances Presley, was also illustrated by him. See here.)

Both poems are from my ongoing sonnets project, 'Avenge' from a sequence of 14 sonnets, which are what some musicians would call a 'contrafact' upon sonnets by Milton (guess which one from the title); the other is from a sequence of 'Twelves', mainly birthday poems and 'excitations' for friends.   

All my 'Overdubs' (as I eventually called them) from Milton are online and may be accessed here.

MINA LOY event/reading at the Bluecoat, Liverpool (Parmar, Skoulding, Sheppard, Crangle, Ashcroft, Gordon) set list

Myths of the Modern Woman Sat, 30 Jan 2016 4.00 PM - 6.00 PM

Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool

Myths of the Modern Woman - an afternoon of readings and discussion curated by Sandeep Parmar, academic, poet and author of The Reading Mina Loy's Autobiographies: Myth of the Modern Woman. The event featured contributions from poets Zoe Skoulding, Sara Crangle, Joanne Ashcroft, Robert Sheppard and artist Melissa Gordon. Read an interview with Sandeep Parmar on Loy here.

Parmar programmed Myths of the Modern Women in response to Loy's writing and to Melissa Gordon's enduring fascination with Loy's play 'Collision' (1916). Gordon's exhibition Fallible Space, an installation determined by the script of 'Collision', provided the backdrop for the afternoon.  The event was introduced by Sandeep Parmar followed by poetry readings by Skoulding, Crangle, Ashcroft and Sheppard. The readings were followed by a round table discussion. 

Mina Loy (1882-1966) is recognised today as one of the most innovative modernist poets and artists, numbering Gertrude Stein, Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Cornell, Djuna Barnes and T.S. Eliot amongst her admirers.

Everybody read special sets assembled (and written) for the afternoon, four carefully crafted performances. Melissa then joined the poets to talk about Loy, experts rubbing shoulders with enthusiasts.

Me reading with Melissa'a piece visible behind

Robert's set (see his website here)


I wrote a new poem for the event, referencing Loy, the previous Saturday, in the Performance Space, inside and around Melissa's installation (which we'd seen assembled as part of a performance of Loy's 'Collision' the evening before; so did Joanne: see her photo here). It's one of a series of poems in which I am trying to be anecdotal to some aesthetic effect. So I began with that:

1. 'Useless Landscape' Partly about the Tom Jobim I was listening to - 'its title floats free' - 'one of Loy's mad bums' spotted in Church Street, and the installation itself: 'A sharp shard in suspense'. Unpublished.
2. 'Only the Eyes are Left, for Mina Loy' (in Hymns to the God and History or Sleep; see here)
3 'A Scapel of Light Slicing through a Smile, for Charlotte Saloman'. (from Hymns)
4 'Leeds' (unpublished exploration of modernism)
5 'Empty Diary 1920' (see below) from Empty Diaries and Twentieth Century Blues (see here)
6 'Empty Diary 2009: Hellstew Microblog' (unpublished, from 'Wiped Weblogs', a row of Song Nets)     

Empty Diary 1920

Grippe Espagnole

                        Split in a

mirror, gloves or fingers in

their meadow of scarf lines, with

its censure, like a man’s. I’ve

shelves of those Everyman books,

a chair in front of the fire.

Light up, read Goldman, bloomers

under the wet umbrella.

                        Whenever

I’m photographed in front of

my portrait, self-vigilant,

a seismic oscillation

of bone, cruel beauty dances

for a field of fogged lenses.

Only a master could paint

the crumple of rich dresses;

                        my nest of

hair for marble eyes to steal

a home, crystal beads trembling

under those hot sick fans. Such

tyranny behind men’s masks

breeds: Poisons sprayed onto bus

seats, nestling between the hard

joints, sticky with the flu’s beads.

 

MERRY XMAS 2015/Petrarch 3/Happy New Year

Petrarch's original poem 3 is an Easter poem , of course, but one of my 14 variations of it, soon to be published in full by Crater Press as Petrarch 3, is a Liverpool Christmas poem, and set on 'Black Friday' which in Liverpool is not the consumer day in November, but the last Friday before Christmas, when the city goes mad and taxi drivers, in particular, call it by its dark sobriquet (though 'Mad Friday' is gaining popularity). This year, of course, it doesn't coincide with the Shortest Day, as it must have when I wrote it. What's not to like about a talking dog? My 'translation' of Petrarch; my trans-translation follows:

Era il giorno ch’al sol si scoloraro

That pitiful morning when the light of Heaven

Was hidden for our mourning maker’s sake,
I saw you first that day, My Lady, but
Was captured, disarmed, then bound to your stake. 

It didn’t seem the time for shields and armour
Against Love’s arrows, his batters and blows;
So, unsuspecting, I wept with the world,
But that day my heartbreaks began, my woes.

Love stalked me, found me, unarmed and weak,

And opened my eyes, portals of tears, through which
Sorrow flowed from the passage of my heart.

But feeble was Love’s triumph to triumph

With his arrow over one so enfeebled,
And to not even dare to flash you his dart.

Pet

Up at dawn (though it was the Shortest Day),

He was nursing a Black Friday hangover,

But took me on walkies to Seffie. He took a selfie

By the Palm House. Tied to the gate I first saw you.

It was Brass Monkeys, believe me. Licking my bollocks

Was like snuffling dropped ice cream dollops;

The men in their flashing Santa hats looked lugubrious

But the depth of my despair exceeded their Christmas Blues!

Your wet nose sniffled my arse and I growled and howled

Like a stud-dog. I slobbered and chaffed at my chains.

He kicked me and my jaws locked on my bilious yelp.

You lifted your tail like a poodle, fluffy tart,

Tripping past my flailing mass of muscle and lust.

He didn’t even notice, phone in hand, boot in my nuts.

 Please also see my notes on Petrarch variations by Peter Hughes and Tim Atkins here, which is how my project began its life. It's the most looked at page on this blog. There are now 4 more, the 'symboliste' poems, on Card Alpha 1, here. And you can watch me read some of my 'Petrarch' variations here.

'Petrarch 3' is now in print, see here and here.

Robert Sheppard (Storm and Golden Sky November 2015: set list)

Storm and Golden Sky at the Caledonia

FRIDAY 27th November 2015

Sandeep Parmar and Robert Sheppard and Adam Hampton

After an afternoon teaching John James - reducing the pleasure of that work to gobbets of reference - how can you not 'get' the pleasure? - to Liverpool in the rain, to Storm for a very packed - the most packed yet - reading by Adam Hampton, me, and Sandeep Parmar, in that order. Sandeep was cool and relaxed, read really well, great work; I was the usual headless chicken; I read well, and people enjoyed it, I think. I was unusually nervous and afterwards exhausted. (It was a nervy experience reading to a 'home crowd', as Elly Rees understood, having done so herself a couple of months ago). Set list:

I was launching both Words Out of Time and History or Sleep:

From Words Out of Time: 

from 'The Given' part one ('David's bottled fish ... Empson had wind'.)

From History or Sleep:

'The Hungry Years' 

(these first two both in memory of Lee Harwood, who is mentioned in the first and is the dedicatee of the poem, and co-dedicatee of the book itself, with Scott Thurston)

'Internal Exile 1 and 3'

'Smokestack Lightning'

from 'Empty Diaries': 1946, 1954, 1955 (read here), 1967, 1968.

'Only the Eyes are Left' (for Sandeep, who is a Loy scholar)

from 'Warrant Error': the first poem, 'He breaks off', 'Black night', 'The foreign secretary', Her breath'. ('Black night' 'happened' just round the corner from the Cal, see below)

From Words Out of Time:

the first 'Arrival' poem. 

'The Evening Star' (a poem written the night before, i.m.  Lee Harwood).  

Black night stiffens the resolve of the window.

Wipe-out rain, a bad sound effect of rain, white-

noises your voices out, rustles up a simpler sound

of God’s brass neck talking through His hat

Your ruffled reflection raises the ethical question

as you paste words like ‘author’ and ‘authority’

on the board beyond this screen of your becoming

Wind, though outside, sheers your breath away.

On a traffic island in Hardman St., a kneeler torches the night

in Guantánamo orange, grizzled by a protestant cloud.

Police rush on in yellow. Fleshing blue lights on cars

parked as barriers breed darkness in the dark

Smack a lip or two, ruddied up, roughed up for a smile.

Tonight, Condoleezza Rice is being entertained

(She was being entertained by Tacky Jacky Straw at the Philharmonic Halls.)

New Book: Words Out of Time: Autrebiographies and unwritings:

http://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/wordsoutoftime.html

Newer Book: History or Sleep: Selected Poems:

http://www.shearsman.com/ws-shop/category/797-british-titles/product/5743-robert-sheppard---history-or-sleep---selected-poems

Websites:

European Union of Imaginary Authors:  http://euoia.weebly.com

http://robertsheppard.weebly.com

robert sheppard & life is short at bluecoat 15th november (set list)

robert sheppard: the tweets of microbius: life is short at bluecoat, liverpool (november 15th 2015):

part of being human: a festival of the humanities

curated by professor ailsa cox

this was a celebration of all things small and perfectly formed, from the hadron to the haiku, the boson to the butterfly. activities include talks, exhibitions and hands-on workshops on how we perceive and capture moments in time; on miniature objects and microscopic creatures; and on the short form in the arts and literature. 

i read the 'tweets of microbius', twittersonnets. the tweet versions of these twittersonnets may be found on microbius’ twitterfeed: https://twitter.com/microbius.

the form was invented by the invented rene van valckenborch and all of his twitterodes (the originals) may be read here. or click onto 2010 to the right of this post and you'll betaken to them all, AND individual posts with photos. worth a look. read them in my (or his) the translated man (shearsman 2013). see here.

this is the last tweet, complete with images! 

micrographia

hooke's flea

flee from

the flea u

nder the g

lass: furr

y legs and

tufted tu

sks; preci

se menace/

look at ho

oke’s full

stop: scuf

fed flares

, a furred

black sun

hooke's fullstop

Who would have thought they'd end up illuminated at blackpool: see here.

November 14th 1955; 'Tombland: How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth'

Tombland: How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth

‘Wet, golden-leaved pathways. Past
the Agency, the pub, the coinshops, the new
community bookshop… Poet, on his twenty-
fourth birthday, shelters in yards and doorways

to write:
Past Talbot’s Cafe, where men play dominoes,
set before repeat afternoon television. Passing
the old man headed there – his tartan hat beacon

of you-know-what – as he says to all passers,
paralytic fingers twitching, “Are you now all right?”
Answer yes to his eyes, nothing to nothing. On;

to the watery Back-of-the-Inns, and round past
Tombland at early dusk, late-autumn afternoon,
wet leaves stuck to cobbles under homing feet.’

Milton Sonnet VII: 1632/November 14th 1979/2007/Remode 2014

For more on this metamorphosed birthday poem, see here. (And, yes, it's my birthday. This doesn't seem like ten years ago, but it was!) What's he laughing about, below? See here for what's in the birthday present, and here.

And for all the poems de-selected from my new 'selected poems', History or Sleep, see here.