Oliver Sheppard's Blog

Check out my Substack here to see the first poem in my new collection, The Funeral Colony. The poem is titled "The Certain Knowledge of Final Things and The Motive Force of Fire" and it's the first of 84 poems in the collection.

My Substack is the better place to go, in fact, if you want to keep up with blog posts from me. Check out https://substack.com/@oliversheppard.

And, of course, THE FUNERAL COLONY can be ordered here, at TheFuneralColony.com.

--Oliver S.

Just got this advance copy in. Will be sending out copies within the next two weeks to anyone who helped out.

Excited to announce the publication of THE FUNERAL COLONY.

It’s my first collection of poetry since THIRTEEN NOCTURNES. It’s taken several years to write, but after abortive first and second (and third, and fourth…) attempts, and years of revision, and going back to the drawing board more than a few times—it’s here.

The Funeral Colony contains 83 poems across 330 pages. It’ll be offered in two editions with different covers. (See below.)

I’ll have copies on hand to sell by Friday, July 25. It’s done at the printers and en route. I’ll post more details here by next Friday.


See:
The Funeral Colony

Hey all.




I've started a Substack. Most of the content is free. It's at: https://dammerung.substack.com

Right now it's mainly devoted to the poetry of German Expressionism, and especially the chief anthology of German and Austrian Expressionist poetry that was published in 1919 the movement's heyday, TWILIGHT OF HUMANITY ("Menschheitsdämmerung").

As the "About" section there says:

Twilight of Humanity—a journey through the poetry of German Expressionism in English, named for 1919's monumental Menschheitsdämmerung anthology of the movement's greatest poets. Besides poetry, we post & discuss Expressionist cinema & art, Weimar, &c.

Of course, the focus is on the dark poetry of Gottfried Benn, Georg Trakl, and Georg Heym, some of my personal favorites. Come along and give it a try!

I've started a second journal there that's more of a vehicle for my own personal writing experiments, too. That's called "Nine Burning Visions," but that hasn't become very active yet. Still, you can subscribe to that (for free) at: https://nineburningvisions.substack.com/

My post-Thirteen Nocturnes collection of poetry, THE FUNERAL COLONY, is coming along, slowly but surely. More updates on that later.

Talk soon,

Oliver Sheppard
Texas
June 20, 2024

"The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding, and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly, as if they were about some vast construction work that involved the whole order of the universe and would take all time to complete. No one was paying any attention to the sky."


-Flannery O'Connor, WISE BLOOD, Chapter III

I picked this up at a Half-Price Books in Oklahoma City: an edition of the poems of William Blake selected by, and with an introduction by, OG NYC punk Patti Smith (punk’s “poet laureate,” as some have said). I’m curious about her take on Blake’s poetry.

Why was I in OKC? A long-ish story I may relate in a subsequent post – essentially, finishing up business related to a deceased (step-)relative’s estate (such as it was). It’s a distant relative I didn’t know that well, but the process has been emotionally and physically exhausting nonetheless, and I seemed to be the only one in the family willing or able to do what was needed to bring closure to the tangled mess of bank accounts, storage units, property, etc., that were left in the wake of the death. More on that later. 😓

-Oliver s.