From British Standards:
An overdub of The Dancing Girl by Letitia Elizabeth Landon
this is the darkest time though colour fields I
flex and shimmer in the retinal pool eyes don’t
shoot dance through thin surfaces this is want
a weary world flattened indoors into to
fresh-faced images of fresher faces seen just
(as they seem) less clearly for our lesser make
looking she takes the breath she slices moulds form
its feeling vibrations in creaking knees she the
lifts the line of poetry to shift the limbs plastic
we open the shutters to let in light hope
to sharpen all the hopes to harp-notes of
and unshackle the air and shape the ear she hope
stretches in crooked space to bend it itself
11th April 2020
Robert Sheppard is a poet who lives in Liverpool, England. His most recent publication is Charms and Glitter (with photographer Trev Eales), out from Knives Forks and Spoons; before that was Hap: Understudies of Thomas Wyatt’s Petrarch. This poem is part of a long project transposing sonnets entitled ‘The English Strain’, this part ‘British Standards’. His selected poems, History or Sleep, is available from Shearsman, which also publish The Robert Sheppard Companion, edited by James Byrne and Christopher Madden: this carries essays on his work. Co-editor of the Arc anthology Atlantic Drift with James Byrne, he is also a critic of contemporary poetry. The Meaning of Form is published by Palgrave, and he has published studies of Iain Sinclair and Lee Harwood. Emeritus Professor at Edge Hill University. Web: robertsheppard.weebly.com.
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