a blogzine of investigative, exploratory, avant-garde, innovative poetry and poetics edited by Robert Sheppard
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Tears in the Fence 84 is out and I have a review of The Literary Business by Peter Finch (Parthian, 2025) in it. More of that in a moment. This issue is shot through with the elegiac: the lives of JH Prynne, Jeremy Hooker, and Ric Hool are remembered. A review of Frances Presley recalls her recalling (re-calling) of Gavin Selerie and Anthony Mellors. Another review of Frances' work is offered in…
You may know that my new poetry book, Holme Fell: a sample of landscapes , a collaboration with the photographer Trev Eales, is now published. (There are lots of posts here.) This hardback volume consists of many colour photographs and texts, beautifully presented to enhance the double reading and viewing experience. The images and texts exist in a loose symbiosis, with parallel truths and…
It is June 1976. The famously hot summer had yet to peak in all its scorching glory, and the university year was drawing to a close. (The suntan I acquired, Norman Talbot’s shorts and a memory of Judy Gascoyne trying to cool herself in the lecture theatre, testify to the rising heat). I was at the end of my second year at the University of East Anglia, and I had been a student on Eric Homberger’s…
I am pleased to say that I have made another appearance in the excellent The Long Poem Magazine , a periodical I enjoy reading very much. It is interesting to see writers (of quite different kinds) who do something so unpopular as writing poems committing acts that create something even less popular: writing long poems. This time it is the first half of a poem called ‘The Palisaded Ditch’ and it…
I’m pleased to say my new book is available. Holme Fell: a sample of landscapes , a collaboration with the photographer Trev Eales, is the most sumptuous and well-designed book of which I have been a part. Hats off to Alec Newman of Knives Forks and Spoons Press for his design and publishing skills. And to Trev for his photographs, of course. It consists of many colour photographs and texts,…
Holme Fell: A Sample of Landscapes is the collaboration between myself and Trev Eales, based on, coming out of, springboarding from, his photographs of the Lake District: Holme Fell in particular, and Hodge Close, an old quarry, as its central node or focus. (A poem within the poem, as it is a quarry within a fell). I am pleased to say that the book will be published on June 1st. Publication…
I have been posting excerpts (poems and photographs) from my next collaborative book, Holme Fell: a Sample of Landscapes , developing descriptions of the book as I go. Here, for example, is the most recent post, which features a prose passage from the work: Pages: Trev Eales and Robert Sheppard: HOLME FELL: A Sample of Landscapes Number Four . This post, for variety, is somewhat different. I do…
Holme Fell: A Sample of Landscapes is the title of a new collaboration between myself and Trev Eales, based on, coming out of, springboarding from, his photographs of the Lake District: Holme Fell in particular, and Hodge Close, an old quarry, as its central node or focus. I am going to blog one poem and photograph (and maybe more) as the project progresses and draws towards its completion and its…
I am pleased to say that I have a poem in this compact anthology Ten Poets Do Their Bit for the Secret Service. Unusually for me I saw the call for submissions (on Bluesky) and responded quickly, writing a poem specifically for the project. (I did cannibalize an unpublished short story for it, partly.) For a number of reasons spying is quite important for me. I’ve tackled the subject before, in…
Holme Fell, the place, is one of Alfred Wainwright’s two hundred plus Lake District fells, located a few miles north of Coniston, Cumbria. The lower slopes, cloaked in woodland, mask an industrial heritage: reservoirs re-wilded, the yawning chasm of Hodge Close, an archaeology of slate quarrying. Ascending the fell, trees give way to open hillside topped by rocky outcrops, and a panoramic vista is…
