Thursday, January 11, 2018

Robert Sheppard: Petrarch 3 published a year ago

My Petrarch 3 was published a year ago today! It's still available too!
 

Petrarch 3 is Crater 36: buy here. Scroll down and find the publiscation.

The Complete Petrarchs of our time and poetics are splendid, but what happens if you dig down and realise version after version of just one sonnet (Petrarch’s third in this case), stuttering in repetition, re-staging it for voice and situation, from a Scouse dog at Christmas (see below) to Jimmy Savile beyond the grave; a twittersonnet or a lengthy semantic poetry translation; a French Symbolist version or a Middle English sonnet? This.

These poems came about writing a chapter on Peter Hughes’ and Tim Atkins’ Petrarch collecteds.See here (and read my notes on the Petrarch variations by Peter Hughes and Tim Atkins here, ).

Read the 'original' translation (if you see what I mean) and the doggie version here.
There’s even one in the style of Wayne Pratt here.

And you can watch me read some of my 'Petrarch' variations during a reading here.

BUT you’ll still need to buy the new unfolding/folding 'pamphlet' to access the additional delights of the BDSM Petrarch (see below), the mysterious 1401 sonnet (before Wyatt!), a semantic poetry translation in the style of Stefan Themerson, a twittersonnet, ‘Empty Diary 1327’, Jimmy Savile’s last love poem, a sonnet for a Babestation Babe, not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 French Symboliste versions, and even a National Poetry Day poem. Versioning gone mad.

At the point I wrote these I guess I had no idea I'd move onto Milton, Wyatt, and Surrey; (see three of the 'Wyatts' here.
takes you to what came next:  Hap:Understudies of Thomas Wyatt’s Petrarch (though the first, introductory, poem ‘Perhaps a Mishap’ is not a version of Wyatt’s versions of Petrarch).

Since it's been Charlotte Smith, the great Sussex miserablist sonneteer (see here).

The next step is possibly (since I've transitioned gender, textually speaking) EEB... 

Read the only review by Alan Baker here. And a response to the response (and a link to the response itself) of Martin Palmer here.

 
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to start this 'thing'
I have a post with some links about my sonnet writing here
I write about the completed 100 sonnets of The English Strain here
 

My 'English Strain' sonnets Hap:Understudies of Thomas Wyatt’s Petrarch is now published;

see here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2018/10/robert-sheppard-hap-understudies-of.html
and is available from Knives Forks and Spoons here:

https://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/product-page/hap-understudies-of-thomas-wyatt-s-petrarch-by-robert-sheppard-26-pages

https://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/new-titles

Taking only the sonnets Wyatt ‘translated’ from Petrarch, but adding a few of my own, I’ve merged the historical Wyatt with his hysterical contemporary analogue, a reluctant civil servant of a corrupt administration.