Robert Sheppard

Robert Sheppard: a preview

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Robert Sheppard will read at the next Other Room on Wednesday, 4th December 2013, 7 PM start. Entry free at The Castle Hotel, 66 Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LE. The other readers will be Sandeep Parmar and Gareth Twose. The clip above shows Robert reading with Patricia Farrell at the Other Room celebration of Bob Cobbing in October 2012, performing Blatant blather/virulent whoops.

Bio.:

Robert Sheppard invented René Van Valckenborch, though sometimes during the writing of the poems in A Translated Man it felt like the other way round. The poems are safely published in a book of that title, published by Shearsman in 2013. Shearsman also published Warrant Error and Berlin Bursts, poems, as well a critical work When Bad Times Made for Good Poetry. Knives Forks and Spoons have published his prose, both fiction, The Only Life and The Given, an ‘autrebiography’, and they will be bringing out an expanded version of the latter in 2014. Robert has recently collaborated with the painter Pete Clarke and the dancer Jo Blowers (after a near 20 year break). He teaches at Edge Hill University.

Some links:

Pages, a blogzine of investigative, exploratory, avant-garde, innovative poetry and poetics.
Robert’s own website.
A Translated Man at Shearsman.

Robert Sheppard: A Translated Man

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Robert Sheppard has given this book over to his own invention, the fictional Belgian poet René Van Valckenborch. Apparently writing in both Flemish and Walloon, and translated and edited by entities as shadowy (and dodgy) as himself, Van Valckenborch’s split oeuvre derives from the linguistic and cultural divide within contemporary Belgium. By the time Van Valckenborch disappears into poetic silence he seems an enigma of his own making, a comic figure with tragic attributes, a mystery to all swept up in his apparition. When his story is finished he leaves behind the deliberately discontinuous evidence of a dual poetic adventure – one half siding with history and opting for a breathlessly recurring triplet verse, the other obsessing over place and space and restlessly and increasingly playing with experimental forms. Behind and within them all, Sheppard is extending his formal and referential range: from homages to film-makers to Twitterodes, from accounts of tribal masks to cuboid quennets, and poems about Belgium of course. Above all, he is exploring the limits of the author-function. This is an imaginary collection with real poems in them. Out now from Shearsman.

 

Literary Collaboration at Edge Hill

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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)

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 2013 (Private View April 16th 5.30 – 7.30).

We are living through an intense period of collaboration between writers and practitioners in other media – as well as between writers, either on the page, live, on the wall, or in new media. This symposium hopes to bring together practitioners and theorists to collaborate in a discussion of the issues raised by these often one-off encounters between artists.

Topics may include but need not be limited to:

  • Literary collaboration – poets, novelists and others
  • The theory of collaboration in the arts
  • The practice of collaboration
  • Multiple collaborations
  • Collaborations between humans and intelligent machines
  • Procedural and conceptual writing and collaboration
  • New methods of collaboration

We are looking for formal papers, demonstrations (but not ‘straight’ readings) that will last for 20 minutes (or less time if you desire).

Confirmed speakers so far:

  • Joanne Ashcroft (Edge Hill) on collaborating with Mina Loy
  • Pete Clarke (UCLAN) on artistic collaboration
  • Patricia Farrell (Edge Hill) will speak on the collaborations of Clarke and Sheppard
  • SJ Fowler
  • Rodge Glass (Edge Hill) on writing a graphic novel
  • Tom Jenks (Edge Hill) will speak on the human-machine interface
  • Nathan Jones (Mercy)
  • Andrew McMillan (JMU) on collaborations with photographers: a ‘third’ voice emerges.
  • Des McCannon (MMU) and Eleanor Rees (Exeter)

We are now looking for other speakers and presences.

Please send abstracts and proposals to shepparr@edgehill.ac.uk by March 18th, clearly marking the email ‘Literary Collaboration Proposal’.

If you wish to attend send you name to shepparr@edgehill.ac.uk . Attendees and delegates will be limited to 50 places.

There will be two sessions, the afternoon (1.30-5.30) and the evening (6.30-9.00). They can be booked together or separately. Please state whether : Afternoon: Evening or All day is desired.  Clearly entitle the email ‘Literary Collaboration Places’.

This event is free but limited to 50 speakers and delegates. Campus facilities will be open for refreshments and dining. This is a zero budget symposium.

Committee

Robert Sheppard

Joanne Ashcroft

Tom Jenks

Andrew Taylor: Radio Mast Horizon

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This collection, the author’s first full-length book, gathers poems written over the past decade. The poems, some gathered from previous pamphlets, are concerned with place, love, identity and mortality. Nature is never far away and neither are the watchful eyes of the cities of Liverpool and New York, their tidal rivers and connections.

Radio Mast Horizon travels well. Read it on the train, in a hotel room, at the bus stop sheltering from the rain. Andrew Taylor’s absorbing, tender poems see clearly. By turns playful and moving, tender and taut, they make absence tangible. A generous collection that still leaves you, in the best sense, hungry for more. —Cliff Yates

Andrew Taylor is a poet who engages with the world—in all its affects and aspects—and says what he sees with both compassion and wry wit. These poems have a linguistic clarity and invention and observational flair which open us, his readers, into a series of vital encounters with the here and now. Taylor shows us where we live too. —Patricia Farrell

With a voice fresh and responsive, these poems’ chiselled lyricism is firmly located in terms of time and space (and often place). They speak to us from those locations, about love, about absence, about abundance. Their moods shift from the elegiac to the ecstatic and we move with them as we read. Everything is in them, it seems. Including us. At last Taylor’s impressive oeuvre is amassed for the audience it deserves: that’s us too. —Robert Sheppard.

More at the Shearsman site.

London Small Publishers Fair

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Friday 16th and Saturday 17th November 2012. Open 11am to 7pm admission free. Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL

The international fair celebrating books by contemporary artists, poets, writers, composers, book designers, and their publishers, The programme of readings and talks includes Sean Pemberton, Giles Goodland, Johan de Wit and Robert Sheppard reading for Reality Street on Saturday 16th at 4PM. More about the fair here.

The Other Room ensemble: ABC in Sound

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Last night’s spectacular celebration of Bob Cobbing included an ensemble performance of his ABC in Sound, featuring Tim Allen, Joanne Ashcroft, Richard Barrett, Leanne Bridgewater, Matt Dalby, Phil Davenport, James Davies, Ollie Evans, Patricia Farrell, Clive Fencott, Alan Halsey, Michael Haslam, Tom Jenks, Angela Keaton, Geraldine Monk, Maggie O’Sullivan, Holly Pester, Robert Sheppard, Adrian Slatcher, Scott Thurston, Gareth Twose, Steven Waling, Steve Willey and Nigel Wood. You can watch the film above.

Films of the first half readings by Clive Fencott and Robert Sheppard and Patricia Farrell will follow soon.

The ABC in Sound Ensemble for The Other Room 35: Bob Cobbing A Celebration

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THE ENSEMBLE: Tim Allen, Joanne Ashcroft, Richard Barrett, Leanne Bridgewater, Matt Dalby, Phil Davenport, James Davies, Ollie Evans, Patricia Farrell, Clive Fencott, Alan Halsey, Michael Haslam, Tom Jenks, Angela Keaton, Geraldine Monk, Maggie O’Sullivan, Holly Pester, Robert Sheppard, Adrian Slatcher, Chris Stephenson, Scott Thurston, Gareth Twose, Steven Waling, Steve Willey and Nigel Wood.

Visit Ubu at the LINK to hear letters d, p and t of the ABC in Sound.

The Other Room 35 takes place at The Castle Hotel, Oldham Street, Manchester, M2 4PD. Tuesday 23rd October 2012, 7.00 pm. FREE

Preview of The Other Room 35 reader Robert Sheppard

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Preview of October 23rd reader Robert Sheppard who will read alongside Patricia Farrell, Clive Fencott and the ABC in Sound ensemble next week.

Blogging at Pages

Reading back in June 2008 The Other Room 2

Tuesday 23rd October 2012, 7.00 pm.

A celebration of Bob Cobbing. Patricia Farrell, Clive Fencott, Robert Sheppard and an ensemble performance of ABC in Sound. The Castle Hotel, Oldham Street, Manchester, M2 4PD. FREE

Robert Sheppard on René Van Valckenborch

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The ‘whole’ oeuvre of René Van Valckenborch is surrounded by mystery, perhaps of his own making. Published in fugitive publications in places as far apart as Cape Town and Montreal over the last decade, the poems of this Belgian are composed in Flemish and Walloon, and the stylistic divide between the two sets seems to reflect the societal linguistic divide of his troubled nation (although he never refers to this fact). These poems are translations from the Walloon of his ‘versions’ of Ovid, both from the unfashionable Tristia and the apocryphal ‘new’ Amores. 

More at Holdfire Press.