Synopsis
This is a sequence of nineteen experimental odes. The sequence offers a documentation of the last year in the form of a fragmented, multi-perspectival 'public voice' poetry. With its roots in the socio-historical context of the pandemic - from stripped supermarket-shelves or clapping for the NHS workers through to the Trump presidency and the closure of Philip Green's Arcadia - the sequence opens onto post-apocalyptic, dystopian fantasies. The locations range from warehouses on the Essex estuary and deserted university campuses to barbecues in Portland and bush-fires in Australia, registering the new awareness of the fragility of supply chains and a larger awareness of climate catastrophe. At the same time, the sequence also explores the experience of lockdown through the evocation of a series of enclosed spaces as if the experience of Covid were a bunker, a submarine, a space-station, a colony on Mars, while also attending to the necessarily mediated experiences produced by lockdown and the corresponding reliance on the technologies of video-conferencing, Instagram, zoom.
About the Author
Robert Hampson was formerly Professor of Modern Literature in the Department of English at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is currently Professor Emeritus at Royal Holloway; Research Fellow at the Institute for English Studies, University of London; Visiting Professor at the University of Northumbria; and on the faculty of the New School of the Anthropocene. He has been involved in the field of contemporary innovative poetry since the 1970s as editor, critic and practitioner. During the 1970s he coedited the magazine Alembic with Peter Barry and Ken Edwards. He coedited (with Peter Barry) the pioneering volume New British poetries: The Scope of the Possible (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993); and, more recently, has co-edited (with Will Montgomery) Frank O’Hara Now (Liverpool UP, 2010); (with Ken Edwards) Clasp: late modernist poetry in London on the 1970s (Shearsman 2016); and (with cris cheek) The Allen Fisher Reader (Shearsman 2020). His own poetry has appeared in a range of magazines including Cid Corman’s Origin and Alan Davies 100 Posters in the 1970s. More recently, he has published poetry in The Café Review, Long Poem Magazine, Junctionbox, Molly Bloom, Mercurius, parmenar, The Wolf, tentacular magazine, and Rewilding: an ecopoetic anthology (2020). His early booklets included degrees of addiction (Share 1975); How Nell Scored (Poet and Peasant 1976); a necessary displacement (pushtika 1978); a feast of friends (Pig Press 1982); A City at War (Northern Lights 1985); Nevsky Prospekt (with David Miller) (hardPressed poetry 1988); a human measure (hardPressed poetry 1989); unicorns: 7 studies in velocity (pushtika 1989); dingo (with Gerlinde Roder-Bolton) (pushtika 1994); seaport: interim edition (pushtika 1995); a new hampshire sampler (with Gerlinde Roder- Bolton) (pushtika 1996); and the artist-book, C for Security (pushtika, 2001). Assembled Fugitives: selected poems 1973-1998 was published by Stride (2001). His best-known work is seaport (Shearsman, 2008). More recent publications include pentimento (pushtika 2005); an explanation of colours (Veer, 2010); the long view / wish you were here (artist-book with Leena Nammari) (2011); out of sight (Crater Press 2012; reworked disasters (Knives forks and spoons 2013); and Liverpool (hugs &) kisses (with Robert Sheppard) (ship of fools / pushtika 2015). He taught with Redell Olsen on the MA in Poetic Practice at Royal Holloway. For many years he ran the TALKS series that Bob Perelman set up in London, and has been co-running the Contemporary Innovative Poetry Research Seminar (which replaced it) ever since. John Vernon Lord (born 1939 in Derbyshire) is an author, illustrator and educator. He studied at Salford School of Art and at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. He has illustrated 40 books, his best-known works being The Giant Jam Sandwich (1972) and his award-winning edition of The Nonsense Verse of Edward Lear (1984), both published by Jonathan Cape and still in print. His children’s books have been translated into many languages. He has twice been the overall winner of the Victoria and Albert Museum Illustration Awards, with his Aesop’s Fables in 1990 and for his illustrations in James Joyce’s Ulysses in 2018, when he was awarded the Moira Gemmill Illustrator of the Year and the Best Illustrated Book prize. Lord’s illustrated edition of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake was published by the Folio Society in 2014. Two monographs on his work have been published – Drawing Upon Drawing (2007) and Drawn to Drawing (2014). Lord has illustrated the Folio Society’s Myths and Legends of the British Isles, Icelandic Sagas, and Epics of the Middle Ages. In addition he has illustrated several classics of children’s literature, including Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (2009), Through the Looking Glass (2011), and The Hunting of the Snark (2006), published by Artists’ Choice Editions. Among the 40 books he has illustrated, 15 of them are children’s books including 4 of his own stories. Lord has lectured on the art of illustration in the UK and internationally for the past 60 years. He was chair of the Graphic Design Board of the Council for Academic Awards during the 1980s, and he is Professor Emeritus at the University of Brighton, having been Professor of Illustration there from 1986 where he taught from 1961 to 1999. An Honorary DLitt was conferred upon him by the University of Brighton in 2000.
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