Via Scott Thurston:

Two Edge Hill University lecturers have published four books and two pamphlets of poetry between them in the last few months.

‘To celebrate this we will be launching them with two short readings, a Q and A and a chance to buy the books!’

Daniele Pantano and Robert Sheppard

Reading on Thursday 5th May 2011

at 5.30 in B005 (ground floor Business Centre, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk campus)

Senior Lecturer Daniele Pantano, who is Programme Leader for the BA Creative Writing, has published The Oldest Hands in the World, a new book of poems about exile, translingualism and writing one’s way home, as well as The Possible Is Monstrous, a collection of poems in English translation by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, who is seen not only as the most prominent Swiss novelist, playwright and essayist of the twentieth century but as one of the most influential authors of modern literature.

Both books are published by Black Lawrence Press/Dzanc Books, New York.

Professor Robert Sheppard, who is Programme Leader of the MA Creative Writing, has published a new book of poems, Berlin Bursts. Themes covered include the troubled history of Berlin, Riga and other places ravaged by history. There are poems about poems and a sequence about the doomed attempt to create a hologram poet. His critical book When Bad Times Made for Good Poetry is a history of alternative British poetry and deals with major figures like Iain Sinclair, Tom Raworth and Maggie O’Sullivan. Both books are published by Shearsman Books.

They both have pamphlets out from the enterprising local Knives Forks and Spoons Press–one of our Creative Writing students is currently serving as an intern there. Robert’s book, The Given, is an anti-autobiography, telling his life via events in his diary he cannot remember and others that he’d rather forget. Daniele’s book, Mass Graves (XIX-XXII), is an excerpt from a new collection of poems he’s currently writing that examines the lives, events and connections between an unknown Swiss poet and the savage murder of one of Egon Schiele’s young girls.

Daniele and Robert work together to teach Creative Writing within the English and History Department at Edge Hill.

Book details and links:

1.    Robert Sheppard

Berlin Bursts (poems)

http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/catalog/2011/sheppardBB.html

When Bad Times Made for Good Poetry (criticism)

http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/catalog/2011/sheppardWBT.html

The Given (anti-autobiography)

www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk

2.    Daniele Pantano

The Oldest Hands in the World  (Black Lawrence Press/Dzanc Books)

The Possible Is Monstrous: Selected Poems by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (Black Lawrence Press/Dzanc Books) both at:

www.blacklawrence.com/pantano.html

Mass Graves (XIX-XXII) (The Knives, Forks and Spoons Press)

www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk