"The Given" by Robert Sheppard

“The Given” by Robert Sheppard (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 40pp, ISBN: 978-1-907812-07-1 £5.00)

I recently reviewed the "Smartarse" anthology from Knives Forks and Spoons, which I thought was an example of what a good anthology should do, and one of my favourite current pamphlets is this one, "The Given" by Robert Sheppard. Like most KS&F productions, this pamphlet has a workmanlike feel to it, which seems appropriate for the contents, as we get the feeling that Sheppard has moulded his raw materials - the linguistic productions of his earlier life - into a rough-and-ready artefact. The work consists of four prose pieces, totalling forty pages. Section III ends with the following:

"Adrian Clark chalks on the board: 'MATERIALS (the given) + PROCEDURE ="

So 'the given' are the words, the blocks of language taken from old journals and notebooks. The procedure is summarised on the back cover by Scott Thurston:

"Part I attends to what writing has remembered that the writer has not ('I don't remember when I started writing poetry'); part II turns diary entries into questions ('How can he argue that feeling is structural?'); part III revisits the new sentences of Sheppard's 1985 'Letter from Blackstock Road' to process material from that period, whilst part IV alphabetises journal material written only in May, reprising Sheppard's Mayday texts and 'Report on Seaport' in his 'Twentieth Century Blues'".

To read the full review, click here.

‘Warrant Error’ by Robert Sheppard, pub. Shearsman. 118pp, £8.95 / $16. ISBN 9781848610187

Here's the opening sonnet of 'Warrant Error':

Immensities blade rushes the wind and
grieves a full deck of bad luck.

A managed democracy dances in tune
to a spread-cleft litany, as the Queen's English
warbler, toned to death, unstrews his truth

The blind justice hangs his slogan. Stop.
Burgeon a burden for the chat laureate
entuning and consuming his own genius. The comedy
terrorist brags his mince as roast beef

No peace fries up on a multiple mind grill,
dithering states in desperate times; the sandy
trap-door promise of paradise rusted by frost.
The biggest part of self weakens its softest
option: its cast out old alibi song

This poem shows a mastery and a thorough understanding of the sonnet form; a tension between compression and expansive discursion, sudden switches of meaning, and a lyricism resulting from close-knit sound and expression. It reminds me of Geoffrey Hill in its tightness and allusiveness (a comparison Sheppard would probably be uncomfortable with); but the crucial difference is that, with Sheppard, there's no patriarchal persona running the show; instead, the borrowings and appropriated texts speak for themselves.

Read the full review here.

New Work on Litter

Andrew Duncan certainly is one of our more astute (and entertaining) commentators and critics. But he also, of course, excels as a poet, and lately I've been enjoying his Shearsman collection 'Savage Survivals Amid Modern Suavity'. There's a good review of it here. It's not especially experimental or disjunctive poetry, but its language is alive and stimulating. The range of its concerns and interests is immense. It's a collection I'd recommend to anyone, so I'm very pleased that Andrew has agreed to publish a sequence from it on Litter. Read and enjoy.

While Andrew Duncan is evolving into a senior figure (aren't we all), the other new arrival on Litter is a young poet, Simon Turner, who I think is one to watch. His first collection, reviewed by C.J. Allen, is a series of forays into different poetic styles, and I'll be interested to what direction he settles on. The new sequence on Litter may be a pointer.

Finally, I'm excited to be in receipt of some new work from Robert Sheppard which will be appearing soon. Sheppard is also one of our major figures, with his Twentieth Century Blues being a landmark publication. His Pages magazine is well worth a visit. See below on his recent reading in London.