Robert Sheppard: Thoughts on Collaboration 2

(Thoughts on Collaboration 1 may be read here:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/01/robert-sheppard-thughts-on.html

This post will also operate as the hubpost for this strand as it grows)

Collaborating with someone (when it is not a matter of setting in music or illustration in image) is truly experimental, and can feel more so when one does not possess the language of that other medium. (That might be code for: one does not know what one is doing.)



The language I (think) I understand most is music. I have occasionally added my own music to performances. You can still view my 2008 re-enactment of a late 1990s version of my ‘mythology of the blues’, ‘Smokestack Lightning’ here.

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2011/11/robert-sheppard-at-bluecoat-2008.html



And here is a photograph of me not publicly eating a hamburger but playing the harmonica and singing one of my ‘Petrarch 3’ variations (one not in print, incidentally, since I see it as a performance piece only, a ‘song’ actually).

But working with musicians is rare. I’ve read part of the text with The Blind Lemons too, but that was an impromptu (though Tony Parsons did used to read the passage himself at some gigs.) (See here.) https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2006/12/smokestack-lightning.html


 But that wasn’t quite what I mean and isn’t listed on the ‘Collaborations’ page of my website, which is the best guide to what I have achieved collaboratively. See here: https://robertsheppard.weebly.com/collaborations.html



As you will see from that page the only straight music was work with Peter F. Stacey and our Ship’s Orchestra group, circa 1980. He and Stevie Wishart did set some poems to music, and we had a piece by Christopher Fox written for us. (He was not then a well-known composer.) We had a go at a piece Bob Cobbing had given me: ‘Mind Axe-Ting’ I think it’s called. But it’s all a bit vague now, and nothing was recorded. I wanted to cassette record us but Peter kept saying we’d get into the UEA studio one day – but we never did. (I also sang briefly in a folk band with them!)



Working with musicians is something I’d like to attempt again. (I mean apart from being in a band as a singer, something I’ve kept quite distinct from this kind of collaboration. And no, I don’t write generally write songs.)



Bob Cobbing and I did perform Blatant Blather/Virulent Whoops – and I believe that was filmed. There are flights of sound poetry in it, using the visual score that I introduced. (Bob wanted the text to be purely lexical (The text may be read here..) Patricia Farrell and I have revived the piece a number of times in homage to Bob. I’ll come back to the text of that exchange in a later post.



(See video here: https://otherroom.org/videos/or-35-bob-cobbing-a-celebration/



 By contrast, my ‘Collaborations’ page details (at least in gig terms) the works I wrote for (and with) Jo Blowers. ‘Shutters’, was ‘with’ because she identified passages in a draft of the poem that she liked and I developed only those. In general terms, I don’t think I ever understood the language of movement in performance, although I think I wrote great pieces for her and other dancers to use (in many different ways, it should be said). We are both living locally and occasionally works are revived. See Here and here. https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2016/02/robert-sheppards-shutters-at-prelude-to.html

My longest collaborations have been with Patricia Farrell. That was amply demonstrated at the Edge Hill Ship of Fools exhibition that accompanied the Robert Sheppard Symposium in 2017. Collaboration methods varied from – occasionally – illustration of a pre-existing text (our New Year’s cards are usually a rushed version of this). Even some of the best might be thought of as ‘illustrations’, Mesopotamia, Fucking Time, for instance, but the default collaboration method seems to be for us both to look at the same thing and to produce two semi-autonomous sets of works which we then present together. ‘Looking North’: we took photographs together of North London in 1987 and then produced the works and combined them. ‘The Blickensderfer Punch’: ditto with the typewriters in the Ship and Mitre around 2001. Fandango Loops: ditto with images of Copenhagen (although I did use the shapes of Patricia’s abstract images to determine the shape of the unconventional quennets that were produced): 2012ish. On my part it is to be classed as ekphrasis (but only in the twisted way I approach it, which I explain here. Open Eye.) Writing this account gets me thinking we should do another collaboration soon! To do so I suspect we would identify a focus and then photograph it or work from images of it. (Patricia has also taken part as a collaborator in performance with me, not just as in the Cobbing piece, but as a second voice in various contexts. She often provides covers for my books, but again they aren’t quite collaborations, although they come from a collaborative life, as it were.)

with Patricia Farrell cover

You can get a sense of all this from the grainy photos of the Ship of Fools exhibition. Here are lots of photographs of that accessible through another loaded hub post

here. 

I shall later return to deal with the two literary collaborations we have produced. (You can also see what Patricia is up to solo via her website:  https://patriciafarrell.weebly.com/

 )
This is her own page on ‘Collaborations’ too: https://patriciafarrell.weebly.com/collaborations.html



 

Reading at the exhibition (Pete's works behind)

For a far shorter period I have been collaborating with the painter and print-maker Pete Clarke. He has had along practice of using text in images as a kind of secondary signifier. Patricia, by contrast, would not combine the two languages, although she both paints and writes. (She has also written a perceptive piece on the collaborations with Pete in The Robert Sheppard Companion. See here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-robert-sheppard-companion-ed-byrne.html



.) Our first batch of collaborations was exhibited in full at the 2013 Edge Hill exhibition (see here:  http://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2013/04/manifest-exhibition-at-edge-hill.html



). The most recent have thus far only been seen as the cover of last year’s Micro Event Space which contains the ‘Arena Area’ text written after our walk around the docks of Liverpool. He has dozens of small canvases with (parts of) my minimal text upon it. Take the first poem:

parked in the park forever

a darkness that darkens the lungs

concentrated pitch

See how that appears on the cover of the book:



 Cover Micro Event Space:

Here are some links. Read more about the book (including links to its micro-launches, other reviews and how to purchase it) HERE! 

More here: Pages: Pete Clarke's new catalogue and our on-going collaborations (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Working with Pete is a slow burner but there will be future opportunities, I’m sure, simply to show some of the work and possibly to read some of it.



Thomas Ingmire is an American calligrapher and we have ‘collaborated’ on a couple of pieces, I think. I put collaborated in inverted commas because he doesn’t think that that is what we have been doing. ‘Interactive’ would be the word. The first piece he worked on was a calligraphic version of a poem from Warrant Error called ‘Afghanistan’ (the poem itself was produced from photos). I don’t recall the process. But I write about it here. https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2014/04/robert-sheppard-and-thomas-ingmire.html

 

Afghanistan

The most recent piece, ‘Synovial Joints’, was for Thomas’ 2018-19 exhibition at the Jewett Gallery in San Francisco, ‘Visual Poetry: A Lyrical Twist’. (See here for more information, images and a video: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/01/robert-sheppard-and-thomas-ingmire-with.html



). He sent me images and I had to choose which ones I liked. I think: which ones reflected either the music I was interested in, or the poem. My poem was an outtake of the ‘overdubs’ I produced from the sonnets of Milton. It combined phrases from Milton’s sonnet for musician Henry Lawes and an interview with Steve Coleman, the jazz sax player, whose album provided the title. At some point I was also responding to a recording of solo sax by a friend of Thomas, Clifford Burke. I think it was an interpretation of his calligraphy for the first poem. Anyway, whatever the case, the process involved interactive decisions on my part that fed into, possibly determined, parts of the final work. Unlike Patricia and Pete, the artist and his studio are not near at hand, so this is how it has to be. I dearly want to write a poem for him, perhaps interacting with his calligraphy. Certainly the theme of music has been flagged up for future use.



Image of poster

part of the calligraphy for 'Synovial Joints' at the top

Talking of music, my most immediate collaboration is concerned with music – and this time the non-literary art is photography. I’ve used photography a lot in my writing and in some of my collaborations (and I talk about that here, along with (rejected) earlier plans for the work I now am describing.) My friend Trev Eales was always keen on rock (and some folk, less jazz) music and we met in October 1974 at a Thin Lizzy concert at UEA, and we’ve been friends since. In later years he took to photographing at rock and world music festivals, eventually working for organisers and online review magazines (I think). I looked at his website (see here: http://www.trev-eales.co.uk) and was astonished by some of the photos (both the rock festival commissions and his landscape work). He lives in Barrow-in-Furness and over the last ten years we’ve been meeting in Lancaster during the day now and then, in all weathers. One sunny day, at a pub by the river, I posited the notion that I might write a few poems to go with a few of his photos – and maybe they could be exhibited. This couldn’t be a simultaneous co-composition. I wasn’t with him at the concerts. It was therefore his job to arrange the images in what we called ‘galleries’, groups often of three images. Some were of bands (The Rolling Stones, Blur), some of music types (reggae artists, senior women), some in relation to their physical stances, some were even based around musical instruments (bass players). Kamasi Washington was all on his lonesome as a jazz saxophone player. In the poem for him I refer to bumping into him in the street with another friend, the poet James Byrne. Otherwise I am absent from the poems as I was absent from the festivals. Halfway through the process, though, we did attend the ill-fated Hope and Glory Festival in Liverpool together (I liked the VIP lanyard!) , and although none of Trev’s photos from that day were used in the final work, it was important for me to see him at work, crushed in the press pit, leaping up during a performance at a decisive moment. However, we did see Badly Drawn Boy (not to be confused with my son, Badly Overdrawn Boy, another collaboration with Patricia!) and I recall the sudden change in acoustic – but mostly the sense of menace I felt about the failure of crowd control. Nobody misbehaved but we were crushed in by crowds in narrow passages, and nobody from Liverpool in that crush could not have not thought of Hillsborough. (Not a day goes by in Liverpool without a thought of Hillsborough.) Here’s the poem:


Badly Drawn Boy

After the belly-rumble bass, the
diaphragm-rattling beat, these
domed thoughts come pure and raw,
acoustic bliss. Framed, projected,
he could dwarf his own performance.

We stand well back and watch
the crowd washing over a wall.

Crushed in a funnel of shuffles,
the pressure at our backs compels.
Lost, we cease to listen. Uncrowded

notes float
into the Victorian Liverpool sky.

Selection was as much its artifice as collaboration. Trev’s selection and combination of images. Then my selection of galleries to write through. My problem was trying to minimize the prevalence of male artists and guitar-players. I think we achieved a balance (more or less: depends how you count: people in the photos, the ‘star’ of the band, the faces in the crowd?)… Of course, photos from the press pit (the photographers are allowed in for the first three numbers only) have a uniform angle, so it was good to see Damon Albarn from above, the Jessie J band face on, Arcade Fire from a long way away. There was a lot of to and fro-ing on email and also one meeting at The Sun in Lancaster with Trev’s laptop. 

Originally the poems were going to be short, and relatively accessible. We were thinking of an exhibition only, but that’s not likely now. In fact, we had a book lined up, but that was unavoidably pulled. As of now (I'm updating this post on 14th July 2020) we are not sure where the project will go, if anywhere. There is a series of poems of course, but not all of them will see the light of day. 

That brings it up to date. There are some future plans. Pete and I will doubtless carry on. Thomas has gestured towards more. Trev has his bucolic side to consider. Patricia and I ought to attempt another work (a text and image work) soon.


The keywords that emerge are: collaboration: interaction: selection: arrangement. The one thing that hasn’t happened is simultaneity, actually writing while music, drawing, painting, printing, calligraphy, or photography is happening. Pete collaborates with the Koln artist Georg Gartz and they literally paint on the same surface at the same time. Must be fun. (My one use of simultaneity is among my literary collaborations, the one with Ian McMillan.) 

Why do it? I’ve just mentioned fun, and that can be there, certainly. If it isn’t fun, as Robert Creeley wrote, don’t do it! Fellowship with another artist is important. With someone you respect and trust. Then you can afford to experiment, to make mistakes as well as takes. There is give and take, which is rare for a writer (unless you write for the theatre). You’re suddenly not alone. Dialogue. Community. But mostly it must be for the challenge of change. It will change you, it will change the work, not just the unprecedented and unpredictable work that is produced from interaction and collaboration, but the practice that lies outside of that. It involves an act-event that abandons poetics in the service of changing poetics. And you hope in some sense it is that for the other party (or parties) too. There is the added strangeness of working across media, in situations one doesn’t completely control or understand, but I think these reasons for participating in collaboration are generally the same for working within the same medium. That’s a surprise.  

And the subject of my next forthcoming post... Part three, is here.

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/01/robert-sheppard-thughts-on.html

This post above will also serve as the hubpost for all the posts in this strand

Robert Sheppard: Thughts on Collaboration 1: Introduction

[Links to later posts in this 'collaboration' strand are at the bottom of this post.]

I am writing an article on the theme of ‘collaboration’ in contemporary British poetry. I see collaboration as being quite vital to many poets’ operations today. It seems like a good subject, and I could attack the issue academically quite well, I hope. However, as in most aspects I concentrate on in my criticism (ethics, history, form) they have a spin off into my creative practice, though the creative practice also has ‘themes’ that I do not investigate (ekphrasis, gender, Brexit) in my critical practice. Which I think is a good thing. Floating between the two is the discourse of poetics, of course. This is a subject about which I have written a great deal. (See my ‘Necessity of Poetics’ work HERE: http://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2016/04/robert-sheppard-necessity-of-poetics-1.html


I may well call the piece I am writing ‘From Dialogue Out: Modes of Literary Collaboration in Innovative Contemporary British Poetry’. By literary collaboration, I mean to delimit the exercise, so I will be excluding multimedia from the discussion (just as well because another contributor to the collection will be covering that area). I want to consider, as a way of easing myself into the discussion, and as a way of thinking back on what I have collaborated upon, both literary and extra-literary collaboration. There is a difference between writing words together with someone and mixing words with image, sound, movement. I think I will consider what I have attempted in the last category first, because it is vitally important to me (but less so for the work directly in hand). Some of that is ongoing; some it is historical (another distinction). Actually, some of it may concern the future. One of the possible futures for the ‘fictional poet’ project, (see weebly https://euoia.weebly.com/
) weighs heavily upon me, though that might be a case of ‘fictional’ collaboration. (Don’t worry about that, just yet.) The pause in my ‘English Strain’ project (see here https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/09/on-bad-idea-and-reference-to-earlier.html


or more fully, here:


https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/12/my-last-ideas-mirror-post-election-poem.html

), creates a vacuum into which all these ideas fall, abhorrently or otherwise.


Before I turn to those possibilities (the past neatly summarised on my website site on the page, notably called ‘Collaborations’, the plural suggesting the specificity of reference) I perhaps need to consider the term collaboration itself. https://robertsheppard.weebly.com/collaborations.html

 

Afghanistan by Thomas Ingmire (text mine)

I know one of my collaborators, Thomas Ingmire, doesn’t think that’s what we are doing, and others, of course, don’t like the term for its political implications. ‘Collaborators’ with the Nazis were served severely by the French people after the Second World War. Boris Johnson called people from other parties ‘collaborators’ if they communicated with the EU, though they legitimately should have, in my opinion. After all, ‘Here’s his better world that’s pure idea, unseen: / ‘collaborators’ distract us from its flames’, as I put it in ‘Bad Idea LVII’, written last August. Part of me argues that to say that you’ve ‘executed’ a plan doesn’t mean you support capital punishment (Brexecutions are the aim of Brexit, I’ve always said, by the way, but I’ve not used that term (yet)). But … but … the connotations do remain. But … but … we have to use a word for it. Co-created? That’s not too bad, and it’s one I’ve used.

'Tangled Scree' by Pete Clarke (runner up for Adrian Henri Prize 2013)

In 2013, to accompany the exhibition at Edge Hill of work by Pete Clarke (with many of our collaborations included) see here:  http://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2013/04/manifest-exhibition-at-edge-hill.html

I hastily convened a free symposium on ‘Collaboration’ at which I’m sure this issue was discussed. Though what I remember is the ‘show and tell’ aspect of it: Andrew McMillan on the poets’ nude calendar, Scott Thurston and Steve Boyland demonstrating voice collaboration… It was a great success but none of it was documented on this blog. (Did somebody write a report of it for the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry , of which I was an editor at that time? Yes: Tom Jenks did. But I won’t search out the report just now. I’ve also lost a book, photocopies of pages from, ‘Laird, 2000, Female Co-Authors (reference incomplete)’, which also has some theorizing of the subject. Well, I've just (4/2/20) recovered the line up for the Symposium. Here:


Literary Collaboration – a symposium hosted by the Edge Hill University Poetry and Poetics Research Group (English and History Department)

23rd April 2013 1pm-9pm E1 (afternoon) & Hub 2 (evening)

E1 is in the Education Block beyond the lake. Hub 2 is upstairs in the Hub.

To accompany the exhibition of image and text MANIFEST by Pete Clarke and Robert Sheppard in the Edge Hill Arts Centre, Ormskirk, between April 8th – 26th

Schedule with 20 minute papers

1.30: 135: welcome

1.35-2.50: Session A: Processes, Texts and Artists (3 speakers)

Chair:

Speakers: Andrew Taylor ( Nottingham Trent/Edge Hill): ‘Two Poets, Two Artists, and a Person who Makes Things’. 
Richard Barrett (Salford) ‘processual work might always be considered collaborative’ 
Joanne Ashcroft (Edge Hill) Collaborating with Mina Loy

Break

3.00-4.00: Session B: Voice Text and Music  

Chair: Patricia Farrell
Judy Kendall (Salford) ‘The use of music and text in Seaming To's 'Songs for My Grandmother'
Andrew McMillan (JMU/Edge Hill) Collaborations with photographers: a 'third' voice emerges

4.00-5.10: Session C: Interdisciplinary Collaboration  

Chair:

Speakers: Rebecca Sharp: Synaesthetic Poetics: interdisciplinary collaboration in three works– ‘Unmapped’ (poems + paintings, with Anna King); 
‘The Ballad of Juniper Davy and Sonny Lumiere’ (poetry in performance, with Elizabeth Willow); and ‘Rules of the Moon’ (text + sound, with Philip Jeck). 
Eleanor Rees (Exeter): 'Arne's Progress', A Contemporary Broadside': collaborating with Desdemona McCannon

Including Pete Clarke (UCLAN) in the exhibition space, The Arts Centre.

5.30 break

Evening:

6.30-6.35: welcome

6.35-7.50: Session D: Image Text, the Graphic Novel, Collaborative Dramatic Writing  

Chair: Ailsa Cox

Patricia Farrell (Edge Hill) will speak on the collaborations of Clarke and Sheppard
Rodge Glass (Edge Hill) on writing a graphic novel
Kim Wiltshire (Edge Hill) Playwright collaborations in the Theatre

7.50-8.40: Session E: The Interface and Other Voices

Tom Jenks (Edge Hill) will speak on the human-machine interface

Steve Boyland and Scott Thurston (Salford) will speaking about voice-text-movement collaborations (30 mins max)

Final discussion until around 9.00

Post-Symposium Drink in Ormskirk

TEAM: Robert Sheppard - Joanne Ashcroft - Tom Jenks

I am currently reading Juha Virtanen’s Poetry and Performance During the British Poetry Revival 1960-1980: Event and Effect in which collaboration is discussed. What I am impressed with so far is his ‘conception of performances as events of intersubjective authorship and cacophonous collectivity’, (p. 21) which suggests (and I agree) that all literary events (he takes the term from Whitehead, I would go to Attridge) are kinds of collaborations.


I talk about act-events here: http://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2015/05/robert-sheppard-meaning-of-form-and.html ) There will be more about that elsewhere. So far, I’ve only read chapter one, which is about The Royal Albert Hall Poetry Incarnation in 1965. Something I write about here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2014/09/robert-sheppard-return-to-british.html


This is also a hub post for the 'Thoughts on Collaboration' strand

This introductory part one, above, flags up the themes and surveys the territory, here:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/01/robert-sheppard-thughts-on.html

In part two, I talk about ways I've collaborated across media here:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/01/robert-sheppard-thoughts-on.html


Part three, is here. I talk more about literary collaboration, but I also try to account for my own transformative practices (in 'The English Strain' project) that are not collaborations, not translations, but are transpositions.

Part four, on some of my literary collaborations, is here.

Part five is about SJ Fowler's 'Enemies' collaborative project, in general, and my part in them (with videos). It may be accessed here.

(Here is an example of a collaboration between Tom Jenks and SJ Fowler. It is an hilariously funny guide to life after Brexit using the images from the 1980s 'Protect and Survive' booklet. It's less part of my 'Thoughts on Collaboration', and more of an interlude. I witnessed this performance.) 

Part six is a round up of my own literary collaborations in Twitters for a Lark; poetry of the European Union of Imaginary Authors (the EUOIA) here.

Part seven considers some of the ways female coauthors have operated and whether the term 'coauthors' isn't a better term to use to describe what's going on here. Here.

Part eight consists of two parts: my considerations of the past collaborations of Kelvin Corcoran and Alan Halsey here. The second part is the linked review of their co-authored Winterreisen on Alan Baker’s excellent online journal Litter HERE (if you want to go straight to it). 

Part nine contains some thoughts on SJ Fowler’s Nemeses: Selected Collaborations of SJ Fowler, 2014-2019. HTVN Press, 2019 : here:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/04/robert-sheppard-thoughts-on.html


There are also links there to the review I have written of Fowler’s book.  That may be read on Stride  HERE. 

Part 10 is an account of Fowler’s poetics of collaboration. Here:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/04/robert-sheppard-thoughts-on_3.html

Part 11 is an account of Fowler's collaboration with Camilla Nelson (as it reads on the page), here.

Part 12 continues to analyse Fowler's collaboration with Nelson, but it takes account of the extraordinary dynamics of its 'Enemies' performance (which was filmed), here.

Part 13 reviews most of Juha Virtanen, Poetry and Performance During the British Poetry Revival 1960-1980: Event and Effect. Here.

Part 14 contains links to all parts and off-shoots of this collaboration strand, in preparation for the writing of an article on that subject, here. 

SJ Folwer comments on all 14 of these posts, here: http://www.stevenjfowler.com/blog/sheppardoncollaboration

'Prison Camp Violin, Riga' anthologised in Carol Rumens' 'Guardian Poem' book Smart Devices

I am very pleased to say that I have had my ‘Poem of the Week’ Guardian poem, ‘Prison Camp Violin, Riga’ anthologised by Carol Rumens in her Smart Devices: 52 poems from The Guardian, which is published by Carcanet, and may be ordered here:

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784107796

Carol Rumens has been contributing ‘Poem of the Week’ to the Guardian for more than a dozen years: that’s more than 624 blogs! She’s a poet-reader, not an academic. She is fascinated by the new, but her interest is instructed by the classic poems she has read. They make her ear demanding: when it hears that something, it perks up. She perks up. This is a book of the poems with her commentaries.

‘A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words.’ Rumens partly agrees with William Carlos Williams in her fine introduction, but she develops the conceit, seeing each poem ‘as a more flexible instrument, a miniature neo-cortex, that super-connective, super-layered smartest device of the mammalian brain’. I think I agree. We are beyond mechanical or organic metaphors now and are safely in a cybernetic connecting nexus.

Her mode, though, is not to operate at this level of generality. Her close readings pick at the particularities of the poem (though she does offer some context, where necessary).

There are 52 poets in the book and they are roughly arranged to take us through the year, so I may well read the book that way. I am looking forward to re-encountering work by Fred D’Aguiar, Denise Riley, John Ashbery, Elaine Feinstein, RF Langley, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Ian Gregson, WS Graham, Billy Mills, John Kinsella, Yves Bonnefoy, Anne Stevenson, and all the others whose work I don’t know very well, or who are, indeed, new names to me. 


You can still locate all the poems and commentaries online (not just the 52). 


You can still read my poem and Carol’s commentary in The Guardian here.

I read it here:

I also say a little more here about the poem and about where it has been published. (It has a ‘twin’ poem too.)


Carol was born in Forest Hill, South London, in 1944. She has held various literary posts, including the Northern Art Fellowship, and poetry residencies located at Queen’s University Belfast, University College Cork, Stockholm University and the Harvard Centre for Hellenic Studies, Nafplio. Rumens has published twenty poetry collections, the latest of which is The Mixed Urn (Sheep Meadow Press, 2019). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Bangor, Gwynedd. This is where I met her (only the once, so far, unfortunately, when I was also ‘visiting’, as external examiner in Creative Writing). I’d like to thank her once for choosing the poem for The Guardian and even more so for selecting it for this fascinating book. 

Carol Rumens lecturing

Robert Sheppard: links to all SIX Bad Idea poems (Drayton versions) on Stride (with Drayton's originals)

A sequential run of six sonnets from Bad Idea appeared on Stride as posts in early January 2020. Below you can follow links to them. But first, a little about the sequence.

Bad Idea is a collection of 79 poems. It can be described formally and in terms of content in two ways. Firstly, they are versions, or ‘overdubs’, of the sonnets of Michael Drayton, particularly of his 63 poem book Idea (1619), which is a Petrarchan sequence in the Elizabethan mode of Sidney, Spenser or Daniel. Only one of the originals, ‘Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part’, is regularly anthologised, but it is often compared favourably to Shakespeare. My versions often stray from, but return to, a syllabic count. The versioning is often, but not exclusively, comic, satirical. One possible way of publishing the poems would be with the originals, but I am not wedded to that idea. At least one Drayton should be on show.


In terms of content (and title) Bad Idea focusses upon the attempt by British governments to execute Brexit. Whether fortuitous or not, the sequence featured Boris Johnson (Bo) quite early on, and developed themes that accumulated during the writing (e.g., that Britain, falling back on its own meagre resources, will transform into a freeport dogging site after Brexit.) On the other hand, a little of Drayton’s own life, spent vainly trying for patronage, with one indecent incident reported to the courts, enters the poems. As in Drayton’s sequence, Idea emerges as the unattainable ‘muse’. I was writing the pieces one a week, tracking events, but also only allowing the poems to emerge from my close readings of the Drayton sonnets. I feel the dates of composition are integral to the poems’ meanings. Almost built out of the comedy of the protracted Parliamentary stalemates, I ran out of sonnets and decided (after a brief re-write of Shelley’s ‘England in 1819’, why not?) to select some of the sonnets excluded from Drayton’s 1619 volume. (I proceeded to write 14 ‘Idea’s Mirror’ sonnets to trace the election period and to write in Idea’s voice. After the election I felt everything had changed (although that is too premature a judgement to be historical, as it were), and that the work was complete.) 


I believe that, at the formal level of versioning of Drayton, it is arguably successful; in terms of its content, I believe it reflects the Brexit process. (These levels merge with reference to Drayton’s masterwork, Poly Olbion, an epic attempt to capture the ‘Matter of Britain’.) Although the narrator is clearly critical of the Brexit decision, he (it’s not a she) fears a second referendum and finds most political parties lacking, although he is not cynical. Conventionally speaking, he must be forlorn and love-struck. Idea is represented in both sequences as a fervent European (she seems to have been reading Rosi Braidotti’s work) and there is a certain utopian streak in her thinking that stops her simply fulfilling the role of a Remoaner. 

Brexit is obviously the most important political event of the moment (climate change is not an event, but a process), but it is clearly going to be playing out over many years to come. I believe these poems could become quite popular in a climate that will have readers eventually reflecting upon this part of British history. (At the moment I detect exhaustion, but curiosity in the era will revive.)

This a general link to the blog: https://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/

Here are specific links to the six poems, and a few words about each. Below the links lie Drayton's original 1619 poems in order. 

‘Bad Idea’ XXII: To Folly: State of the Union Address’ is (perhaps) a Christmas poem: ‘Theresa May wasn’t born yesterday, but re-born’, we are told:

 
http://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/2020/01/from-bad-idea-overdubs-of-michael.html

‘Bad Idea’ XXIII  is rather rude about Corbyn (before it became popular or routine). It says ‘He’ll be plodding with delegates’/ consent as fleet desire melts into micro-fascism.’ Which reads prophetically:


http://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/2020/01/from-bad-idea-overdubs-of-michael_3.html

‘Bad Idea’ XXIV, called 'May Albion Never Learn', a satirical quote from a piece by Dickens, tells us of Brexite(e)rs: ‘their private dreams could be /our public nightmare.’ There is another version of this poem (I mean, of the Drayton original, below), 'To the Reader of these Sonnets', which appeared in Shearsman recently. (See here.) Like the previous posting, this feels prophetic:


http://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/2020/01/from-bad-idea-overdubs-of-michael_5.html

‘Bad Idea’ XXV is dedicated to the virtually-vanished Karen Bradley, who was appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, but had no idea (not even a bad one) about sectarian voting patterns or life in NI. Drayton’s poem that is transposed here amused me because, in a poem that praised the English language, he used many loan words (and words that had not been loaned, but stolen). I use one of with a surprising meaning:  

Hear me keen on your Brexit county boundary,

Hailing your stiff-necked loyalist with healing song,

Disarming with lyric the slaughtering gallōglāch!

Read the rest:


http://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/2020/01/from-bad-idea-overdubs-of-michael_7.html

‘Bad Idea XXVI Despair’ (Drayton’s title too) was the first poem in the sequence, possibly the only one until we reach the sequel Idea’s Mirror, that is not funny. It is an elegy to Jo Cox, though situated in the Parliamentary debates of January 2019. A year ago… In 2016 I posted about Jo Cox' murder here: at that time I was relating it not to these sonnets in 'The English Strain' but to my fictional poet 'European project', the EUOIA (see that last link for more). Read here:

  
http://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/2020/01/from-bad-idea-overdubs-of-michael_9.html

‘Bad Idea’ XXVII: This sonnet muses over the Parliamentary debates on ‘deals’, but ends by considering the proposed post-Brexit arrangements. In a humorous way. It’s a good way to end of slab of these bad ideas! Read it here:


http://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/2020/01/from-bad-idea-overdubs-of-michael_11.html

Here are the original Drayton poems, from Idea (1619). Enjoy comparing. It's probably the best way of reading them.


XXII.

To Folly

WITH fools and children good discretion bears ;
Then, honest people, bear with Love and me,
Nor older yet, nor wiser made by years,
Amongst the rest of fools and children be ;
Love, still a baby, plays with gauds and toys,
And, like a wanton, sports with every feather,
And idiots still are running after boys,
Then fools and children fitt'st to go together.
He still as young as when he first was born,
No wiser I than when as young as he ;
You that behold us laugh us not to scorn,
Give Nature thanks you are not such as we.
    Yet fools and children sometimes tell in play
    Some, wise in show, more fools indeed than they.

---

90

XXIII.

LOVE, banished Heaven, on Earth was held in scorn,
Wandering abroad in need and beggary,
And wanting friends, though of a Goddess born,
Yet craved the alms of such as passèd by.
I, like a man devout and charitable,
Clothèd the naked, lodged this wandering guest,
With sighs and tears still furnishing his table
With what might make the miserable blest.
But this ungrateful, for my good desert,
Enticed my thoughts against me to conspire,
Who gave consent to steal away my heart,
And set my breast, his lodging, on a fire.
    Well, well, my friends, when beggars grow thus bold,
    No marvel then though charity grow cold.

---

91

XXIV.

I HEAR some say, “This man is not in love.”
“ What ?  can he love ?  a likely thing !” they say ;
“ Read but his verse, and it will easily prove.”
O judge not rashly, gentle Sir, I pray !
Because I trifle loosely in this sort,
As one that fain his sorrows would beguile.
You now suppose me all this time in sport,
And please yourself with this conceit the while.
Ye shallow censors, sometime see ye not
In greatest perils some men pleasant be ?
Where fame by death is only to be got,
They resolute ?   So stands the case with me.
    Where other men in depth of passion cry,
    I laugh at Fortune, as in jest to die.

---

92

XXV.

O WHY should Nature niggardly restrain
That foreign nations relish not our tongue ?
Else should my lines glide on the waves of Rhene
And crown the Pyrens with my living song.
But, bounded thus, to Scotland get you forth,
Thence take you wing unto the Orcades ;
There let my verse get glory in the North,
Making my sighs to thaw the frozen seas ;
And let the Bards within that Irish isle,
To whom my Muse with fiery wing shall pass,
Call back the stiff-necked rebels from exile,
And mollify the slaughtering Gallowglass ;
    And when my flowing numbers they rehearse,
    Let wolves and bears be charmèd with my verse.

---

93

XXVI.

To Despair

I EVER love where never hope appears,
Yet hope draws on my never-hoping care,
And my life's hope would die, but for despair ;
My never-certain joy breeds ever-certain fears ;
Uncertain dread gives wings unto my hope,
Yet my hope's wings are laden so with fear,
As they cannot ascend to my hope's sphere ;
Though fear gives them more than a heavenly scope,
Yet this large room is bounded with despair ;
So my love is still fettered with vain hope,
And liberty deprives him of his scope,
And thus am I imprisoned in the air.
    Then, sweet despair, awhile hold up thy head,
    Or all my hope for sorrow will be dead.

---

94

XXVII.

IS not Love here as 'tis in other climes,
And differeth it, as do the several nations ?
Or hath it lost the virtue with the times,
Or in this island altereth with the fashions ?
Or have our passions lesser power than theirs,
Who had less art them lively to express ?
Is Nature grown less powerful in their heirs,
Or in our fathers did she more transgress ?
I am sure my sighs come from a heart as true
As any man's that memory can boast ;
And my respects and services to you
Equal with his that loves his mistress most.
    Or nature must be partial to my cause,
    Or only you do violate her laws.

[Update 2021: I’m delighted to announce that Bad Idea is available NOW from Alec Newman’s excellent press Knives Forks and Spoons, with a cover design by Patricia Farrell. You may get it HERE:  https://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/product-page/bad-idea-by-robert-sheppard-102-pages ]

Bad Idea is described fully (with links to other published poems from the work) here:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/09/on-bad-idea-and-reference-to-earlier.html

And you can look up another eight online poems from Bad Idea that may be accessed from this post:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/12/robert-sheppard-two-more-poems-from-bad.html

And another 5 poems from Bad Idea may be found here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/04/five-more-poems-from-bad-idea-published.html

Thanks to Rupert Loydell, Stride editor, for taking them all.

The most recent instalment of The English Strain Book One (Bad Idea is Book Two) to appear is Hap: Understudies of Thomas Wyatt’s Petrarch is available from Knives Forks and Spoons here:

https://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/product-page/hap-understudies-of-thomas-wyatt-s-petrarch-by-robert-sheppard-26-pages

https://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/new-titles

Robert Sheppard: the last of six poems from Bad Idea published on Stride

A sequential run of six sonnets from Bad Idea is to appeared on Stride on the 1,3,5,7,9th and today, on 11 January 2020. They are all versions of Michael Drayton’s sonnets from his Idea. (In short, my ‘bad’ idea is Brexit.)

Please check here for the latest: https://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/

‘Bad Idea’ XXVII: This sonnet muses over the Parliamentary debates on ‘deals’, but ends by considering the proposed post-Brexit arrangements. In a humorous way. It’s a good way to end of slab of these bad ideas! Interesting epigraph from John Clare (whose poetry I've been reading clsely in the last year or so). Here it is.

Bad Idea is described fully (with links to other poems from the work) here:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/09/on-bad-idea-and-reference-to-earlier.html

Or you can look up the eight online poems from Bad Idea that may be accessed from this post:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/12/robert-sheppard-two-more-poems-from-bad.html

Now all six have been posted I shall post a single post on Pages on 13^th January to guide readers directly to them all. And I shall include Drayton's originals for comparison.

Thanks to Rupert Loydell, Stride editor, for taking them all.

Robert Sheppard: another poem from Bad Idea appears on Stride: Despair: i.m. Jo Cox

A sequential run of six sonnets from Bad Idea appears on Stride on the 1,3,5,7,9,11 January 2020. They are all versions of Michael Drayton’s sonnets from his Idea. (In short, my ‘bad’ idea is Brexit.)

Please check here for the latest: https://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/

‘Bad Idea XXVI Despair’ (Drayton’s title too) was the first poem in the sequence, possibly the only one until we reach the sequel Idea’s Mirror, that is not funny. It is an elegy to Jo Cox, though situated in the Parliamentary debates of January 2019. A year ago…

Read it HERE.

Bad Idea is described fully (with links to other poems from the work) here:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/09/on-bad-idea-and-reference-to-earlier.html

Or you can look up the eight online poems from Bad Idea that may be accessed from this post:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/12/robert-sheppard-two-more-poems-from-bad.html

In 2016 I posted about Jo Cox' murder here: at that time I was relating it not to these sonnets in 'The English Strain' but to my other 'European project', the EUOIA (see the link for more).  

When all six have been posted I shall post a single post on Pages on 13^th January to guide readers directly to them all.

Thanks to Rupert Loydell, Stride editor, for taking them all.

A fourth poem from Bad Idea published on Stride (remember Karen Bradley?)

A sequential run of six sonnets from Bad Idea is to appear on Stride on the 1,3,5,7,9,11 January 2020. They are all versions of Michael Drayton’s sonnets from his Idea. (In short, my ‘bad’ idea is Brexit.)

Please check here for the latest: https://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/

‘Bad Idea’ XXV is dedicated to the virtually-vanished Karen Bradley who was appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, but had no idea (not even a bad one) about sectarian voting patterns or life in NI. Drayton’s poem that is transposed here amused me because in a poem that praised the English language, he used many loan words (and words that had not been loaned). I use one:  

Hear me keen on your Brexit county boundary,

Hailing your stiff-necked loyalist with healing song,

Disarming with lyric the slaughtering gallōglāch!

You may access the full poem directly here.

Bad Idea is described fully (with links to other poems from the work) here:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/09/on-bad-idea-and-reference-to-earlier.html

Or you can look up the eight online poems from Bad Idea that may be accessed from this post:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/12/robert-sheppard-two-more-poems-from-bad.html

When all six have been posted I shall post a single post on Pages on 13^th January to guide readers directly to them all.

Thanks to Rupert Loydell, Stride editor, for taking them all.

2 new long poems published in Blackbox Manifold 23

Alex Houen and Adam Piette are very pleased to announce the 23rd issue of Blackbox Manifold:


http://www.manifold.group.shef.ac.uk/ 


and I’m very pleased to see two long poems by me there. Straight to them here. 


These are ‘Hammer Glow’ and ‘The Listening Table’. With all my online activity over my various sonnet sequences, the series of these 4 line stanza poems from which these come have not been visible., though they are available online. Collectively they are called ‘Flight Risk’ (at the moment). Others in the sequence may be accessed from this link. 


https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2017/11/robert-sheppard-new-long-poem-accordion.html

And more appear in The Robert Sheppard Companion. See here.

 Blackbox Manifold 23 also contains work by:


Josh Allsop, Francesca Bratton, Patrick Cotter, Kristin Dimitrova (transl. Tom Phillips), Patricia Farrell (we didn't know we were going to appear together here!), Alec Finlay, Adam Flint, Michael Kindellan, Mark Lawlor, Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah, Otto & Gisel, David Punter, Ian Seed, Marcus Slease, Catherine Street, Iain Twiddy, Lydia Unsworth, G C Waldrep, Selena Wisnom, Adam Warne, Howard Wright, Alex Wylie, Ruth Valentine. 


It features a special section on sound curated by Linda Kemp, with work by Bryony Bates, Cloth, Nat Raha, Nathan Walker and yol, Steve Hanson’s interview with Andrew Shanks on his translations of Nelly Sachs, and Adam Piette’s review of John Wilkinson, Sean Bonney, Seedings issue 6 and Eleanor Wilner.


Thanks to Alex and Adam for another excellent issue. 

Robert Sheppard: A third Bad Idea poem appears on Stride

A sequential run of six sonnets from Bad Idea is to appear on Stride on the 1,3,5,7,9,11 January 2020. They are all versions of Michael Drayton’s sonnets from his Idea. (In short, my ‘bad’ idea is Brexit.)

Please check here for the latest: https://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/

‘Bad Idea’ XIV tells us of Brexite(e)rs: ‘their private dreams could be /our public nightmare.’ Like the day before yesterday’s posting, this feels prophetic. Here's a link straight to it. 

http://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/2020/01/from-bad-idea-overdubs-of-michael_5.html

6th January 2020: Sorry I didn't get to this yesterday. Patricia and I both suffering from food poisoning. I won't eat in Bread and Butter in Hope St again.

Bad Idea is described fully (with links to other poems from the work) here:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/09/on-bad-idea-and-reference-to-earlier.html

Or you can look up the eight online poems from Bad Idea that may be accessed from this post:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/12/robert-sheppard-two-more-poems-from-bad.html

When all six have been posted I shall post a single post on Pages on 13^th January to guide readers directly to them all.

Thanks to Rupert Loydell, Stride editor, for taking them all.

Ian Seed's micro review of my Micro Event Space

A suitably micro review of my Micro Event Space by Ian Seed on the micro-blogging site, Twitter:


‘Subtly vivid miniatures that draw you back again and again in Robert Sheppard’s Micro Event Space from @theredceilings

Reading it I felt I was walking alone through a narrow, low gallery of tiny yet powerful, haunting etchings.’

Mike Fergusson also realised 'micro' is the way to review it: HERE.

Martin Palmer writes about the book here, and mentions Alan Baker's new twittersonnets too: HERE.


Read more about the book (including links to its micro-launches, other reviews and how to purchase it) HERE! 

One micro-launch...

Robert Sheppard: a second poem from Bad Idea is published on Stride

A sequential run of six sonnets from Bad Idea is to appear on Stride on the 1,3,5,7,9,11 January 2020. They are all versions of Michael Drayton’s sonnets from his Idea. (In short, my ‘bad’ idea is Brexit.)

Please check here for the latest: https://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/

‘Bad Idea’ XXIII  is rather rude about Corbyn (before it was popular). It says ‘He’ll be plodding with delegates’/ consent as fleet desire melts into micro-fascism.’ Which reads prophetically. It's directly here.

Bad Idea is described fully (with links to other poems from the work) here:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/09/on-bad-idea-and-reference-to-earlier.html

Or you can look up the eight online poems from Bad Idea that may be accessed from this post:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/12/robert-sheppard-two-more-poems-from-bad.html

When all six have been posted I shall post a single post on Pages on 13^th January to guide readers directly to them all.

Thanks to Rupert Loydell, Stride editor, for taking them all.

Saturday 3rd January 1970: last entry

Went to record-shop. Got South African Jazz E.P.

[This is the last entry in my 1969 diary which I have been blogging throughout 2019. You will be relieved (and so am I) that I am not blogging 1970. However, some might be interested to look back to the introduction to this posting project here . I still don't know quite why I did it, but I am amazed to find I have memories and artefacts, blues records, books, the diaries themselves, from half a century ago. They were parts of the raw materials for my 'autrebiography' Words Out of Time. But it was also the year of Student Power of 3A, which you may read about by scrolling back to November 2019/1969. I learned a lot from that experience.]

See here for details of Words Out of Time.

Not a poem by Robert Sheppard on Stride today but...

A sequential run of six sonnets from Bad Idea is to appear on Stride on the 1,3,5,7,9,11 January 2020. They are all versions of Michael Drayton’s sonnets from his Idea. (In short, my ‘bad’ idea is Brexit.)



Please check here for the latest: https://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/


The first, ‘Bad Idea’ XXII: To Folly: State of the Union Address’ is (perhaps) a Christmas poem: ‘Theresa May wasn’t born yesterday, but re-born’, we are told.



It's here.
http://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/2020/01/from-bad-idea-overdubs-of-michael.html

But today on Stride there is a poem by Andrew Taylor and Charlie Baylis that I seem to have a sit down part in, commemorating my customary calendar. The irony is: I haven’t bought the 2020 one yet (and might break the habit of a decade and a half)! The room is still blue. See here:

http://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/2020/01/rouge-allure.html



Bad Idea is described fully (with links to other poems from the work) here:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/09/on-bad-idea-and-reference-to-earlier.html



Or you can look up the eight online poems from Bad Idea that may be accessed from this post:



https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/12/robert-sheppard-two-more-poems-from-bad.html



When all six have been posted I shall post a single post on Pages on 13^th January to guide readers directly to them all.

Friday 2nd January 1970:

Mum went back to work. Saw John in the afternoon. He has bought The Story of the Blues L.P.

Robert Sheppard: Bad Idea XXII: To Folly published by Stride

A sequential run of six sonnets from Bad Idea is to appear on Stride on the 1,3,5,7,9,11 January 2020. They are all versions of Michael Drayton’s sonnets from his Idea. (In short, my ‘bad’ idea is Brexit.)

Please check here for the latest: https://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/

‘Bad Idea’ XXII: To Folly: State of the Union Address’ is (perhaps) a Christmas poem: ‘Theresa May wasn’t born yesterday, but re-born’, we are told.

It's here.
http://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/2020/01/from-bad-idea-overdubs-of-michael.html

Bad Idea is described fully (with links to other poems from the work) here:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/09/on-bad-idea-and-reference-to-earlier.html

Or you can look up the eight online poems from Bad Idea that may be accessed from this post:

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/12/robert-sheppard-two-more-poems-from-bad.html

When all six have been posted I shall post a single post on Pages on 13^th January to guide readers directly to them all. 

Thursday 1st January 1970:

Number One: Rolf Harris, Two Little Boys.

Felt slightly better. Did not see John.

[Elsewhere in the diary:] This has been an exciting year for me, as the notes opposite will prove. One of my ambitions was to be on the radio, and I did it, but not in the way I hoped. Still, I think I have a flare for broadcasting and writing (not spelling).

Wednesday 31st December 1969:

Felt ill more. Went to bed early. Will I be OK for school on Tuesday?

Tuesday 30th December 1969:

Did more recordings (double-tracked) with John.

Monday 29th December 1969:

Did not see John. Made new recordings for Zenith, my new ‘recording company’.