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).
*
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!
