A first collection by Lila Matsumoto, published by Shearsman, is touring near you very soon. All events are free –
If the right poets for the times don’t exist, then they have to be invented.
Twitters for a Lark: The Poetry of the European Union of Imaginary Authors
is published by Shearsman Books at £9.99 and in available here:
Working in collaboration with a team of real writers, Robert Sheppard has created a lively and entertaining anthology of fictional European poets. There is no resultant ‘Europoem’, but a variety of styles that reflects the collaborative nature of the poems’ production, the richness of a continent. The works range from the comedic to the political, from the imaginatively sincere to the faux-autobiographical, from traditional lyricism to the experimental. Accompanied by biographical notes, the poets grow in vividness until they seem to possess lives of their own.
This collection marks a continuation of the work Sheppard ventriloquised through his creation, the fictional bilingual Belgian poet René Van Valckenborch, in A Translated Man (also available from Shearsman here: http://www.shearsman.com/ws-shop/product/4328-robert-sheppard-a-translated-man )
Although devised before the neologism ‘Brexit’ was spat across the bitter political divide, this sample of 28 poets of the EUOIA (European Union of Imaginary Authors) takes on new meanings in our contemporary world that is far from fictive, ‘fake news’ or not.
The collaborators are: Joanne Ashcroft, Alan Baker, James Byrne, Alys Conran, Kelvin Corcoran, Anamaría Crowe Serrano, Patricia Farrell, Allen Fisher, S. J. Fowler, Robert Hampson, Jeff Hilson, Tom Jenks, Frances Kruk, Rupert Loydell, Steve McCaffery, Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, Sandeep Parmar, Simon Perril, Jèssica Pujol i Duran, Zoë Skoulding, Damir Šodan, Philip Terry, Scott Thurston.
“Twitters for a Lark heralds a new movement: the European Poetry Revival. It is a book that arrives like a new channel forged by collaborative poets, with all past ideals of state rolled up in an old five pound note. This illuminated sect of future Rimbauds lightens the island’s burden, the lights on their vessels burning like the tips of duty free cigarettes.” Chris McCabe
7th November at 19:30, The Swedenborg Society, 20-21 Bloomsbury Way, London, WC1A 2TH. More information here.
Building on his debut collection Radio Mast Horizon (Shearsman Books, 2013) Andrew Taylor takes the reader on a journey through landscapes and places such as the Welsh hills, the West Coast Mainline and the north docks of Liverpool.
Travel is a recurring theme throughout these poems, alongside music and the seasons and the shifts they bring. From having coffee in quiet city-centre cafés to travelling around complete rail networks, Taylor invites the reader into a world that is both personal and universal. Out now on Shearsman.
The book will be launched on 28th September at Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham, with readings also by Rory Waterman and Kathryn Daskiewicz. Details of that here.
Shearsman book launches. Tuesday 11 April, 2017, 7:30pm. Swedenborg Hall, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH. Launch of John Hall’s As a said place and SJ Fowler’s The Guide to Being Bear Aware. More details at the Shearsman site.
A new poetry collection by SJ Fowler from Shearsman Books. More info on the book here and here. The book will be launched in London on April Tuesday 11th, 7.30pm, at Swedenborg Housein Bloomsbury, with further launches in York, Bristol and Kingston.
You’re invited to the launch on Wednesday 19 October at 7.00 pm of Black Book: An Assemblage of the Fragmentary (Shearsman Books), by Robert Vas Dias, in collaboration with the artist Julia Farrer, to take place at St. James’s Church, 197 Piccadilly, London W1J 9LL. Author and artist will be present to sign copies of the book, and refreshments will be served. Admission is free.
Black Book is the first major collaboration between a poet and artist reacting to the worst humanitarian crisis of our times since the second world war. This stunningly produced book “confronts us with what has become our common world since the initiation of the ‘war on terror’… and is as up-to-date as this morning’s news,” writes Robert Hampson.
Mel Gooding writes: “Vas Dias is an experimental poet whose language is always simple and direct, who does not beat around the bush, except to flush out a startling truth, transform the familiar to a strangeness. Farrer is an artist for whom the abstract is a means to the controlled expression of the deepest and most sharp feelings, to a refinement of poignancy, a stoic poise.”
And the Revd. Lucy Winkett: “Listen to this black book bringing cruel comfort to a world as it is.
And still dreaming of how it could be.”
Late Modernist Poetry in London in the 1970s, with contributions from: Gilbert Adair, Peter Barry, Clive Bush, Paula
Claire, Ken Edwards, P.C. Fencott, Paul A. Green, Robert Hampson, Anthony Howell, Tony Lopez, David Miller, John Muckle, Frances Presley, Elaine Randell, Will Rowe, Gavin Selerie, Robert Sheppard, Iain Sinclair, Valerie Soar, Lawrence Upton, Robert Vas Dias, Stephen Watts, John Welch. Out now on Shearsman.
The prose poems in Identity Papers seek to construct a living bridge between the self and its shadow, between the self and other, and between present and past. They do so with a vulnerable faith, working with Heidegger’s dictum that all things must be allowed their time in darkness. Along the way, their narrators meet a series of disturbing, irresistible strangers. Identity Papers follows on from Makers of Empty Dreams (Shearsman, 2014). It is the second volume in a trilogy of prose poem collections. Out now on Shearsman.
Tuesday 12 January, 7:30pm
Sascha Aurora Akhtar & Robert Sheppard
Swedenborg Hall, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH. Free entry. More details on the Shearsman site.
Robert Sheppard’s selection draws on every book of his poetry since Returns (1985) through to Words Out of Time (2015), and is designed to sample both the recurring and developing themes of his work and their restlessly changing forms. Out now on Shearsman.
The Messier Objects are a catalogue of astronomical bodies discovered and published by Charles Messier in 1771. In this new collection of poems, Michael Zand re-frames these objects as totemic symbols that celebrate the creative and social diversity of the human experience. The Messier Objects are thus meditations on the colour and complexity of the universe, and a rejection of a perceived drift towards cultural polarisation, simplification and standardisation. Out now on Shearsman.
A launch will be held at Swedenborg Hall, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH on Monday 12th October at 7.30pm. The event itself is part of the Shearsman series, and Michael will be reading with Abdulkareem Kasid (with John Welch) and Anthony Caleshu. The readings are free to attend and there will be drinks.
David Miller, Reassembling Still: Collected Poems, Bristol: Shearsman Books, 2014. ISBN 978-1-84681-331-7. 316pp. £14.95.
London launch of A Translated Man (Robert Sheppard) and The Zechstein Sea (Patricia Farrell) Shearsman Readings. Tuesday 5 November 2013, 7.30 pm start. Swedenborg Hall, Swedenborg House, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH. Free.
Tuesday 4 June 2013 at 7:30pm, to launch By the North Sea. An anthology of Suffolk poetry.
Swedenborg Hall, Swedenborg House, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London, WC1A 2TH.
Out now on Shearsman.
otherroom.org 