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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Short Fiction Collection

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

Critical Books

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

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

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

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

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

 

Edited Books

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

For Me/On Me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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

Robert Sheppard The Anti-Orpheus (pdf available online)

I have just discovered that a poetics piece of mine, The Anti-Orpheus, is still online on the Shearsman site. It was written in 2001, and originally published by Tony Frazer in 2004 as a booklet and pdf. I think there were only a few hard copies, but I was always pleased to see that the pdf  downloadable version remained online. I thought it had been removed in one of the revamps of the Shearsman site – but I was wrong. Possibly I’d missed it because I don’t often provide a link to the general page for my books and tend to copy links to pages with details of particular volumes.

Here's that general page (you can see all of my Shearsman books here too): Sheppard, Robert (shearsman.com)

There is a link to The Anti-Orpheus there (if the one below doesn’t work for you).

Here’s a direct link to the piece: https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/12e499a6/files/uploaded/Sheppard_anti-orpheus.pdf

What is this piece, The Anti-Orpheus? It’s best to just read it (at least some of it) to get a fix on it, since it is multifaceted, and summary is difficult. Recently, I’d wondered whether I might collect it in a volume of poetics. I decided against it, since it seems too diffuse, needs its own space (or none). It enacts rather than argues. I wrote freely and ‘The Anti-Orpheus’ is the result. There may still be much to discover there; there may not. It was a machine for getting me away from Twentieth Century Blues and towards the other, later books that are represented on this Shearsman page, to that desired ‘else’ of its opening passage. There are fragments of daily writings, bits of poems, snippets of speculative poetics, enactments of an ethics of writing, and quotes from others. In fact, only one POEM from this strange, tidied-up notebook found its way into later books. The poem ‘A Voice Without’ is reprinted in Berlin Bursts and History or Sleep – a kind a teasing Levinasian riff on the saying and the said, which I do like. If I remember correctly, it was written straight out (a rare event for me!). 

 

To say and not say at

the same time, or

 

at a different time to not

say and yet say –

 

eversaying, yes-

saying, gainsaying,

 

truthsaying, lying,

neversaying so that it

 

closes into what has been

said… (I read it all on the video below) -

 

I like other parts of it too, but perhaps of what remains, only the haiku about Auschwitz could be published separately. I have just re-read the piece and found it suggestive and (I'd forgotten) fun and (in parts) funny! There is one useful part about enjambement ('creasing syntax with a (metrical) limit, decreasing sense in sound') and ceasura ('punctuating the metrics with a space for thought'). That could have come in handy in my recent post about free verse metrics: Here: Pages: Re:Pulse – on pulse and Richard Andrews’ A Prosody of Free Verse: Explorations in Rhythm (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)  There are snippets of 'fiction', which I'd forgotten and the sinister epigram: 'Writing in ancient forms shits in the mouths of the dead'! Hmmm! The ethics of signature is a big theme. I like the central and final prose passages about Orpheus too; again it is a Levinasian reading of the myth (in terms of the saying and the said), and reflects the fact that I was writing my critical book The Poetry of Saying at the same time. 

However, I wasn’t simply trying to cast the theory of that book (which may be accessed here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2015/09/robert- sheppard-poetry-of-saying-point.html, the ‘ethics’ part of the book, anyway) but was, as I said, trying to find a new poetics after having finished writing Twentieth Century Blues (whose own poetics might be thought to be expressed here ; another, 'Linking the Unlinkable', poetics of Twentieth Century Blues, may read here. (‘Linking the Unlinkable’ ends up in The Poetry of Saying too.)

I find that I have considered and introduced this piece before, in one of the earliest posts on this blog, by quoting the text I used to introduce a reading of it (at Great Writing 2005, the University of Portsmouth): Pages: Robert Sheppard: The Anti-Orpheus/Rattling the Bones. Before publication, I'd read it at the Edge Hill Research Forum and had read parts of it as part of a contribution to the Talks series, curated by Robert Hampson at Birkbeck College, London, both in 2001.

These days, I like to make poetics compressed like an old lemon: See ‘Shifting an Imaginary’: Pages: Playing my Part in the New Defences of Poetry project (the poetics of British Standards: Shifting an Imaginary: Poetics in Anticipation (robertsheppard.blogspot.com) 

The quote from Derek Attridge towards the beginning of The Anti-Orpheus shows that my subsequent critical work on form, and the formal turn in my poetry, were entangled into the piece early on. The quote is from an article Attridge gave me at a conference in Salford around the turn of the century. The impress of that meeting may be felt on most things I’ve done since, The Meaning of Form especially, and a post such as this piece from 2015: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2015/05/robert-sheppard-meaning-of-form-and.html

Enough! I’ll let possible readers find what they will in it. I know Sandeep Parmar used to use it with her students at Liverpool University at one time. Indeed, may it be of use still.

Nearly all of the posts about poetics as an anticipatory discourse, including definitions of it, may be accessed via this recent hub-post:  Pages: SHOP TALK (TO) POETICS: about the forms of writing - presentation to MA Creative Writing, Edge Hill University (robertsheppard.blogspot.com) 

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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

 

 

Eighteen Years of Blogging today!

Blogging is more than a publicity exercise for me. Although this blog started out as the extension of an earlier magazine, it is an instrument for thinking (and writing, as I explain below in relation to the sonnets I have now finished). It is even therapeutic in some strange way: I lose myself in the process and within the labyrinthine linkages it makes. (It took me a long time to realise this aspect matched the strands and links of my Twentieth Century Blues project. (See Pages: Twentieth Century Blues published ten years ago! (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)) It is, clearly, a mode of publishing (which reflects its beginning as a blogzine). 

This year has been an odd one, not least of all for having radiotherapy in the summer and on-going hormone treatment for prostate cancer (get it checked, old lads out there, that's the most serious message of this post, believe me. I've never had a symptom. And here's the most important link today: Prostate Cancer UK | Prostate Cancer UK ). It hasn’t made much difference to my blogging (though I timed my annual summer break for those 20 radiotherapy sessions at the wonderful Clatterbridge in Aintree). 

I’m going to select 10 ‘areas’ with links for this year (but there's really 11!):

 1 The great work of the year was the co-editing of New Collected Poems by Lee Harwood. Here’s one post, about the launch, with a link to other links (there’s lots about Lee on the blog!)   Pages: Lee Harwood New Collected Poems launched and on sale now (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 

2 It was great to participate in the Cliff Yates @ 70 tribute and I write about that (and have links to the tribute, for which I wrote the introduction and submitted a specially-written poem) here: Pages: Cliff Yates at 70 : my parts in this celebration of his poetry and poetics (links to it) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com). Andy and Alan did him proud - as we all should. 

 3 Good also to be asked by Lyndon Davies to provide poem and essay to the John James/Chris Torrance issue of Junction Box, here: Pages: The John James/Chris Torrance issue of Junction Box - plus my poem for, essay on, James (robertsheppard.blogspot.com). I wrote for and about James, but I did have a fruitful suggestion for the Torrance part (that is, to reprint an interview with Torrance I read waiting for one of those radiotherapy appointments). 

 4 It’s grim to announce the deaths of friends (whether they are artists are not). But we lost two extremely creative friends in the last year and they are remembered here:

Philip Jeck: Pages: Philip Jeck 2022 (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Alan Halsey: Pages: I.M. Alan Halsey: some thoughts, links, and a poem dedicated to him. (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 5 I continued publishing excerpts from British Standards (my transpositions of romantic sonnets) in magazines over this year and I provide links to them, BUT I also include on this blog short videos of those poems too. So here is a piece on transposing Wordsworth, which is also a homage to the brilliant work Phil Davenport is doing with homeless people using Wordsworth’s poems in a parallel way to me. (No, I am using them in a parallel way to him.) See: Pages: Robert Sheppard: Wordsworth’s Sonnets Transposed for the 21st Century appears on Zwiebelfish!

6 Keats got a similar treatment, and here are four posts, with videos, of work that appeared from the 14 sonnets I’ve tackled (or mangled, depending on your view of the project):

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

 Pages: A version of a Keats sonnet published on STRIDE today (links and video and context) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 Pages: Four more Keats' overdubs published online in LITTER (and videos here) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 Pages: THREE new sonnets from British Standards (overdubs of John Keats) appear in Shearsman 131 and 132 (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 You’ll notice on the video I wear my Keats (life mask) with pride.

 7 John Clare got the same treatment in British Standards and here are the two posts about the publication of some of the resultant poems (again with videos): here:

Pages: My transposition of a sonnet by John Clare, from British Standards, is published on Beir Bua (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Pages: Robert Sheppard: Four new versions of John Clare published in Talking About Strawberries (plus videos and links)

 

Here's my accidental 'poem-film', or is it 'film-poem' of one of those Clare transpositions.

These sonnets were all temporarily posted on this blog so blogging became part of the process of their becoming. (And, therefore, as I say above, of me.)

8 Talking of performing or reading, I did a reading (and would love to do more, if there are any organisers left after Covid!) at MMU’s English Futures conference in July 2022. Here’s my set list: Pages: My reading at the English Futures Saturday 9th July 2022 (set list) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com). It’s more of the Wordsworth transformations. I read a whole block to make absolutely clear what I was doing. 

9 I wrote about Fictional Poets (looking back at the two volumes I published of such work), beginning with a post here: Pages: Reflections on Fictional Poetry and Fictional Poets (1 and hubpost for the sequence) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com) and with links to the rest. I was also thinking through (even writing) a third part. I am quietly announcing here for the first time that a cleaned-up version of these posts will form parts of a book called Doubly Stolen Fire which will be published later this year.

10 Even before the eighteenth year of blogging began I was posting posts about having FINISHED the ‘English Strain’ project with its serial ‘final’ poems. It didn’t turn out that easy: these posts quite amusingly trace the process of closure, as I debate HOW and WHEN to end it. The final post here even contemplates starting it all up again, but decides against it (it is also the least consulted post of the four). Since the whole project was published and discussed on the blog (unlike other projects you won’t know about from reading these pages) it seems appropriate to cluster them together. I think they make interesting reading:

 Pages: Another 'final' poem of the English Strain sonnet project: looking eastwards and to the Ukraine (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Pages: Goodbye to Bo through the Medium of Jake Thackray’s masterpiece (not a book review) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Pages: Robert Sheppard: A final final poem for British Standards!

Pages: The Horrible Thought that Bo mioght be back: only The Bard could save me now! (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

I’m saying goodbye to the sequence but I’m also saying goodbye to Bo (and to the sonnet: I’ll never return to the form! (He sez.))

One other thing (this isn’t point 11, believe me): I’ve also started this last year adding a set of addresses to every post (if I remember to do it!) That’s to make sure people can contact me. The other way of putting this is: don’t use my edgehill email address! I can’t access it. So:  

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

The little block of four raw links below will take you to the posts I made after merely 10 years of blogging, trying to make lists of 1, the best posts, 2, my favourite posts (one for each year), 3, the most neglected posts, and, 4, my blogging plans for the (then) future. It was all quite fun, quite a lot of work, and is still interesting (even informative) to look at now. 

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/ten-years-of-pages-best-bits.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/ten-years-of-pages-one-post-year.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/ten-years-of-pages-ten-posts-nothing-or.htmlhttp://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/ten-years-of-pages-plans-for-future.html

 My annual accounts of blogging all link (up). In fact, they are a sort of guide to that year’s ‘best’ posts (though it’s only in my estimate). Here’s 14, 15,16 and 17 years…

Pages: Robert Sheppard: My 14 years of blogging

Pages: Fifteen Years of Blogging (A hubpost to all the hubposts and other goodies) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Pages: Sixteen Years of Blogging! (links to the best of the blog) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Pages: Seventeen Years of Blogging. A look back and the best of the last year (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

The pre-history of this blog, as a print magazine, may be read here, on what was my first post (even though I moved it later). I also outlined the complete run of the second series of Pages before it became a blogzine, and finally this blog. However, the first run of the print magazine is now online, at Jacket2 where it is hosted here. 

Re:Pulse – on pulse and Richard Andrews’ A Prosody of Free Verse: Explorations in Rhythm

Re:Pulse – on pulse and Richard Andrews’ A Prosody of Free Verse: Explorations in Rhythm (New York, Oxford: Routledge, 2017). More about the author here: Richard Andrews

Re-pulse. I’ve not thought a lot formally about rhythm since writing ‘Pulse’. (This is a ‘treatise on metre’, or rather, on rhythm, and I write about it here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/04/robert-sheppard-pulse-all-rhythm.htmland an excerpt appears in Tentacular here: https://www.tentacularmag.com/issue-5a/robert-sheppard) (I am hoping that someone will publish the whole of ‘Pulse’ at some point.)

Richard Andrews’ A Prosody of Free Verse brought me back to the subject, but didn’t convince me that I was wrong. It didn’t convince me that he was wrong, either, though I wasn’t convinced by his attempts to draw in several other ‘rhythmic’ disciplines, though he does consider ‘groove’ by the end (but not in the way Tiger Roholt managed it; my ‘Pulse’ is a writing-through of Roholt’s book Groove, an odd method, I know). The more specific he becomes, the less useful it seems. He elaborates elaborate schema for parsing rhythmic contours, and then suggests there’s little point in extensively using them. (He often gestures to areas of ‘further study’, indeed, there's a later book.) He seems to be describing a kind of well-behaved free verse very different from my own (or Lee Harwood’s, or Roy Fisher’s, or Maurice Scully’s, etc.).

 

To fill it an allograph

 

Of utter utterance

Caught through the aperture

 

Of belonging longing

To think a moon

 

Pressing close to kiss the earth

 

Rhythm, as in free verse, is additive, he tells us, which is fundamental to his thesis.

 

… event-sized shapes, both men in front,

loose ties around hot necks, the next clouds’

 

black rims fringed with greying and blueing,

she slows to light her cigarette, laconic,

 

steps to a kerb, leather bag over her

shoulder, it slaps her thigh, reminds her,

 

somewhere inside this body I’m happy, yes, she

walks across the ceiling with her red hair …

 

‘The opening line or lines of a free verse poem can set the template via which subsequent lines position themselves, both aurally and/or visually … one line provides the ground for the next, one strophe for the next, and so on…’ (a ‘so on’ that can include the super-cadences (my term, made up on the spot) of whole books, Pound, Whitman…) – ‘with the reverse operation that subsequent lines reflect back on the opening lines or strophes’. (68) Another good thing about this attempt is its refusal of traditional metrics to account for any of the rhythmic effects of what really happens in a free verse poem.

 

walks across the ceiling with her red hair,

 

negotiating reefs of felt under window clouds,

climbs the ringed bark

 

into a sky of river,

cools her wrinkled feet

 

Andrews writes of ‘pulse’ slightly differently from me: ‘Pulses are crucial in that they provide periodic markers; they establish anticipation and predictability’. (68) I’ve used Abrahams’ phenomenological readings of ‘anticipatory’ consciousness a little like this. (See page 3 of the online excerpt: https://www.tentacularmag.com/issue-5a/robert-sheppard) Pulse ‘has a foundational and often unheard or invisible function in free verse’. (69) Pulses ‘are not the same as beats’. (68) (I need to consider this distinction more. Andrews uses the plural often.)

 

There’s no end to it line-

Break its little one

 

The dead their own deity it’s

Best to offer tactile thanks

 

Twitching under

Fingerprinting pulse

 

‘Turns’, what I call (above) ‘line-/Break(s)’, ‘are more literal than in formal, metrical, verse. (104). They are ‘part of the form’ (104), ‘the turn is more significant because the articulation required is multifunctional. It joins two rhythmic phrases together (they are ‘articulated’) and also signals a shift that is, at the same time, rhythmic and syntactic’. (104)

 

– To think with particular and

Articular interruptions

 

Never to unthink skinned-in

Ecstasies in the poem that

 

Sees the world as well

As itself

 

I find his use of ‘turns’ suggestive, but we mustn’t think of this too closely as actual ‘turns’ (whether we relate it to dance, as Andrews does, or not).

 

To think through

The tune of the thing

 

Andrews’ use of Lanham’s ‘economics of attention’ – ‘it takes more attention to respond to free verse because the rhythmic framework is not “given”’ – is also suggestive (the telling adjective of my response). ‘If’ – note! – ‘the additive model is accepted … the reader or listener has to hold each line in isolation to those that follow and precede it’ etc (184). Thus the attention has to be greater, ‘getting to the heart of the creative compositional process’. (185)

 

To shiver with joy drive

Pattern against violence

 

The theory is ‘multimodal’, and the future is ‘to recognize how gesture, movement, choreography, music, sound and other modes are embodied in the ostensibly two-dimensional nature of the poem on the printed page … to show not only how the various modes (and their rhythmic impulses) inform the words on the page but how the words on the page evoke those very same modal dimensions.’ (186) Andrews looks as if he’s about to launch into speculations about hypertext but he brings it back to the page (or simple screen). (These final pages will bear some re-reading.)

 

Spectral email template

Pre-addressed to the dead one

 

One final plea: ‘A new prosody or multimodal notational system for rhythm can open up possibilities for poets, enabling them to see connections and affordances of which they were previously unaware.’ (192) It seems to me we should imagine such a system, assume the possibilities, and create connections and affordances that then may be seen – but possibly not measured. (I never use the term ‘free verse’ unless I can help it; ‘non-metrical’ verse at a pinch; ‘poem’ ordinarily of verse and (much) prose.)

Prosody as part of a poetics of anticipation (as we anticipate the next pulsation of sound and meaning). (Which is a summary of my Pulse, as well as of much of Andrews' work.)

A couple of times (I’ve lost the page references) Andrews writes of free verse ‘taking form’, which sounds like a gesture towards Derek Attridge’s sense of the literary (although Attridge only appears here as a prosodist). (I’m thinking of what I’ve written here https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2015/05/robert-sheppard-meaning-of-form-and.htmlAnd what I have long ago amassed here: http://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2014/06/robert-sheppard-meaning-of-form-forms.html). Form as a gestural thing, as an active mode of forming in both the acts-events of writing and of reading. And pulse or rhythm is part of that.

NB The excerpts from my poems which interposed themselves as I typed up my response to Andrews from my poetics journal come from ‘Six Poems Against Death’ in Berlin Bursts (and ‘Five Poems Against Death’ in History or Sleep: Selected Poems) See here for both books (and others) : https://www.shearsman.com/store/Sheppard-Robert-c28271934

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

Lee Harwood New Collected Poems launched and on sale now

The New Collected Poems of Lee Harwood is NOW available. HERE:  Lee Harwood - New Collected Poems (shearsman.com)

 

We launched it, a cast of thousands. Like all Shearsman launches, it was held in the Swedenborg Centre in Central London. In this case, on 10^th January, 2023…

Kelvin Corcoran invited a number of poets and publishers and poetry friends to read their favourite Harwood poem(s) – I was going to add ‘from the book’, though there are some poems in the book that nobody had seen!). (See here for more on that: Pages: Lee Harwood New Collected Poems (2023) Some of the new things we found to put in it (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)). Indeed, I told the audience about the new goodies we'd found as Kelvin and I edited the volume and the restoration of poems had Lee removed (at various points, as we discovered.)

It was a well-attended affair with lots of people I hadn't seen for years, even decades. Michael Zand (one of those I'd not seen for years) said it was the kind of event that people definitely will remember for a long time. Our readers were 

Andy Brown

Ian Davidson

Carrie Etter

Rafe Harwood

Ric Hool

Maria Jastrzębska 

Tony Lopez

John Muckle

Frances Presley (also reading a poem chosen by

Gavin Selerie who couldn't be present)

Elaine Randell

Peter Robinson

Iain Sinclair

Frank Skinner

Simon Smith (and)

Janet Sutherland

Each reader brought something unique to the poems. Iain Sinclair commented on the charm of the reading by Lee's son, Rafe, so it seems appropriate to represent the evening with a photo of him reading. (If you are wondering, the Frank Skinner is the comedian, but he is also a poetry podcaster, and read Lee's 'One, Two, Three' well.) Thank you, all of you. Your spirit of generosity was palpable.   

Iain also made an interesting remark. He said he keeps Lee's books in Hastings, because they read differently  - the poems themselves change, beside the sea. I so want this to be true, but is this possible?  

If you would like to hear Lee read his own poems, this link includes a load of Harwood audio/video for you to enjoy: Pages: Lee Harwood New Collected Poems: the best audio and video recordings (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Here's a Harwood hub-post, that links to the many Harwood materials on this blog, including a review of the 2004 Collected Poems which this new book replaces: Pages: Lee Harwood: 4 Poems (and a note on them) in Abandoned Playground, ahead of NEW COLLECTED POEMS edited Corcoran and Sheppard (robertsheppard.blogspot.com). 

A view of the book from the back! It's around 800 pages long by the way, a veritable brick of a volume.

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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

 

Cliff Yates at 70 : my parts in this celebration of his poetry and poetics (links to it)

It doesn’t seem possible that Cliff Yates is 70! All that tiggerish classroom energy, all that boundless enthusiasm for the moment of poetry, all that unquenchable curiosity for life, seem so much the possession of youth that I have to pause and count the years.

Alan Baker and Andrew Taylor have now edited this tribute to him, CLIFF YATES @ 70, (see their preface here: Preface | Cliff Yates @ 70 (cliffyatestribute.blogspot.com)

with many poets offering their praise and their best wishes, from Poetry and Poetics stalwarts from Edge Hill, like Andrew himself, to Scott Thurston, Matt Fallaize and Angela Keaton, through to the big wide world poets, like Nick Power, Matt Welton and Kelvin Corcoran, and other names, like Pam Thompson that are new to me. Even his children are here, both writers in their own rights. A lot of the poems address Cliff directly, which seems right. A lot of us have attempted to write what Ian McMillan, in his tribute, calls a ‘Yatesy’ poem. There's also a video of Cliff reading (that wasn't there when I first blogged this!) Have a look at the tributes here: https://cliffyatestribute.blogspot.com/

 

I was asked to contribute and I produced one of my birthday ‘Burnt Journal’ poems for him, one which I feel pretty pleased with: https://cliffyatestribute.blogspot.com/2022/12/robert-sheppard.html

I was also asked to write an introduction, which I did. I was pretty pleased with that too. I think I got it right (I won’t repeat my assessment of Cliff’s work, because you may read that here: 

https://cliffyatestribute.blogspot.com/2023/01/introduction-by-robert-sheppard_13.html

Introduction by Robert Sheppard | Cliff Yates @ 70 (cliffyatestribute.blogspot.com)

(These links keep changing as more posts are added, so if they don't work, use the one to the site : https://cliffyatestribute.blogspot.com/

Cliff was one of the first poetry people I met when Patricia and I moved up to the North West in 1996 (oh yes, she’s here too, or at least I think she is, she's written Cliff a poem as though she were a Bulgarian), and I had seen some of his poems in magazines. Little was I to know that he would become one of the important members of the original Poetry and Poetics Research Group at Edge Hill University, which sounds a dull body, but we gave readings (Tate Gallery no less) and made a CD and generally helped each other as writers to become more like themselves.

Of course, Cliff was also a famous teacher of poetry well before I met him. Read about that here:

A few choice words from the guru | English and creative writing | The Guardian

Keep up with Cliff’s news. There’s a new Selected and New Poems on the way, for starters! :  Cliff Yates – poet & tutor (wordpress.com)

He also appears on this blog a few times too, with regards to the PPRG here:

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

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

And with regard to his own poetry and poetics:

 https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2009/10/introducing-cliff-yates.html

Pages: 25 Edge Hill Poets: Cliff Yates (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

 He even reviewed my The Poetry of Saying

https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2009/06/cliff-yates-poetry-of-saying.html

AND he provided me with the word ‘provocation’ to focus my thoughts about writerly poetics, circa 2007.

Cliff and I are definitely due another meeting in Birmingham soon I hope.

I wrote that sentence this morning. This afternoon I came back from a walk to find an answerphone message for Patricia and me. From Cliff! He says he wants to say thanks and he wants to ‘catch up’. Yes, indeed, as Sy Oliver used to sing.

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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. Or you can phone me, like Cliff did.