Robert Sheppard

Robert Sheppard is British poet and critic. He is at the forefront of the movement sometimes called "linguistically innovative poetry".^[1]

Life

Robert Sheppard was born in 1955. He attended the University of East Anglia in the 1970s. In 1996 he moved from London to Liverpool to teach at the University of Edge Hill, where he is currently Professor of Poetry and Poetics and Programme Leader of the MA in Creative Writing.^[2]

Poetry and Criticism

Sheppard's magnum opus is his long-running work "Twentieth Century Blues". This was composed over many years, and published piece-meal before Salt Publishing brought out the complete work in 2008. "Hymns to the God in which My Typewriter Believes", published in 2006, illustrates Sheppard's view of poetry as one art among many, as it alludes to and builds on other artforms. Sheppard's sonnet sequence, "Warrant Error" was published by Shearsman Books in 2009. According to Sean Colletti, Sheppard is a major talent, whose use of form includes precise use of the couplet,^[3] while Alan Baker calls his work "political poetry of the first order."^[4]

Sheppard has edited important studies of poets Roy Fisher and Lee Harwood, and is editor of the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry" and the blogzine "Pages".

Published works

Poetry:

• Returns
• Daylight Robbery
• The Flashlight Sonata
• Empty Diaries
• The Lores
• The Anti-Orpheus: A Notebook
• Tin Pan Arcadia
• Hymns to the God in which My Typewriter Believes
• Complete Twentieth Century Blues

As Editor:

• Floating Capital: New Poets from London
• News for the Ear: Homage to Roy Fisher
• The Salt Companion to Lee Harwood
• The Door of Taldire: Selected Pomes of Paul Evans

Criticism:

• For Language: Poetics and Linguistically Innovative Poetry 1978-1997
• The Poetry of Saying: British Poetry and its Discontents (Liverpool University Press, 2005)
• Iain Sinclair (Northcote House, 2007)

References

External links

• Official blog