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Thirteen Nocturnes
Combining lush Gothic lyricism with postmodern experimentation, Oliver Sheppard's second collection of verse, Thirteen Nocturnes, presents a nightmare vision of a world in the grip of apocalypse and shadow—a world where "a nighttime of years never-ending" becomes "a darkness severe and unbending," and where life is relentlessly "gathered up against the towering shadow of decay." Taking cues from the dark Romanticism of Poe, the decadent Symbolism of Baudelaire, and the apocalyptic tradition of William Blake—as well as the existential doominess of 20th-century cosmic horror—Oliver Sheppard's Thirteen Nocturnes presents a verse vision of collapse, announcing a cold poetics of disintegration in the new dark age of the Anthropocene.
Thirteen Nocturnes was a Finalist for the 2020 Elgin Award for Best Full-Length Poetry Collection. In 2018, Thirteen Nocturnes earned a spot on the Bram Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection, securing a place on the Bram Stoker Awards Recommended Reading List. Four poems from Thirteen Nocturnes were accorded "Recommended" status in Ellen Datlow's BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR, Vol. 11 (2019).
Reviews
"Oliver Sheppard is a major new voice in the genre of macabre poetry. Sheppard is also an impeccable craftsman. [ Thirteen Nocturnes contains] many poems of uniformly high craftsmanship, not to mention creativity. These are very dark poems indeed, and very inventive in their celebration of darkness and the macabre. As expressed on the back cover, this volume does in fact announce a 'cold poetics of the macabre in the new dark age of the Anthropocene,' emphasis on that ' po ,' if not Poe himself."
—Donald Sidney-Fryer, Spectral Realms (June, 2021)
" Thirteen Nocturnes is an excellent collection of mostly gothic poetry, illustrated with appropriately moody photography and art."
—Ellen Datlow, editor, Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 11 (2019) " Thirteen Nocturnes is gothic in every sense of the word; from the writing style, the themes, to Oliver’s own influences. Without a doubt, this bountiful collection raises the bar for contemporary gothic poetry. It’s so rare in this day and age to find poetry written in such a sophisticated and profound manner. Sheppard combines a down-to-earth modernism with an old school style which makes for a fanciful and unique experience for the reader."
—Sar Blackthorn, CVLT Nation (2018)
"What I appreciated most in Thirteen Nocturnes was Sheppard’s ability to evoke feelings associated with night, darkness, and solitude. They also evoked memories. I appreciate any form of art that can tap into my thoughts and feelings and Sheppard obviously has that ability.”
—Kurt Morris, Razorcake (Dec., 2018)
"Reading Sheppard's poetry is a little like listening to a conversation between Nietzsche and William Blake during a showing of Peckinpah's Cross of Iron. Using a wide range of forms and cultural references, Sheppard illustrates the human condition in ways that take as much account of its absence as its presence... Given the chance, Sheppard will lead you down dark and unfamiliar paths, to moments of weird beauty."
— from the foreword by John Foster
Thirteen Nocturnes was a Finalist for the 2020 Elgin Award for Best Full-Length Poetry Collection. In 2018, Thirteen Nocturnes earned a spot on the Bram Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection, securing a place on the Bram Stoker Awards Recommended Reading List. Four poems from Thirteen Nocturnes were accorded "Recommended" status in Ellen Datlow's BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR, Vol. 11 (2019).
Reviews
"Oliver Sheppard is a major new voice in the genre of macabre poetry. Sheppard is also an impeccable craftsman. [ Thirteen Nocturnes contains] many poems of uniformly high craftsmanship, not to mention creativity. These are very dark poems indeed, and very inventive in their celebration of darkness and the macabre. As expressed on the back cover, this volume does in fact announce a 'cold poetics of the macabre in the new dark age of the Anthropocene,' emphasis on that ' po ,' if not Poe himself."
—Donald Sidney-Fryer, Spectral Realms (June, 2021)
" Thirteen Nocturnes is an excellent collection of mostly gothic poetry, illustrated with appropriately moody photography and art."
—Ellen Datlow, editor, Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 11 (2019) " Thirteen Nocturnes is gothic in every sense of the word; from the writing style, the themes, to Oliver’s own influences. Without a doubt, this bountiful collection raises the bar for contemporary gothic poetry. It’s so rare in this day and age to find poetry written in such a sophisticated and profound manner. Sheppard combines a down-to-earth modernism with an old school style which makes for a fanciful and unique experience for the reader."
—Sar Blackthorn, CVLT Nation (2018)
"What I appreciated most in Thirteen Nocturnes was Sheppard’s ability to evoke feelings associated with night, darkness, and solitude. They also evoked memories. I appreciate any form of art that can tap into my thoughts and feelings and Sheppard obviously has that ability.”
—Kurt Morris, Razorcake (Dec., 2018)
"Reading Sheppard's poetry is a little like listening to a conversation between Nietzsche and William Blake during a showing of Peckinpah's Cross of Iron. Using a wide range of forms and cultural references, Sheppard illustrates the human condition in ways that take as much account of its absence as its presence... Given the chance, Sheppard will lead you down dark and unfamiliar paths, to moments of weird beauty."
— from the foreword by John Foster
258 pages, Paperback
Published July 3, 2018
2 people are currently reading
139 people want to read
About the author
Oliver Sheppard
6 books159 followersOliver Sheppard was born in Nashville, Tennessee and currently writes and lives in Texas.
Sheppard's Thirteen Nocturnes collection of poetry, published in 2018, was a Finalist for the 2020 Elgin Award for Best Full-Length Poetry Collection. Thirteen Nocturnes was also long-listed for the 2018 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection and secured a place on the Bram Stoker Awards Recommended Reading List. Four poems from Thirteen Nocturnes were accorded "Recommended" status in Ellen Datlow's BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR, Vol. 11 (2019), and in that volume Ms. Datlow singled out Thirteen Nocturnes for praise as "an excellent collection of mostly Gothic poetry."
Sheppard has been cited as "a major new voice in the genre of macabre poetry," "an impeccable craftsman" who writes "poems of uniformly high craftsmanship," by Arkham House editor and veteran poet and literary critic Donald Sidney-Freyer (Spectral Realms, June 2021).
Sheppard recently completed his third poetry collection, The Funeral Colony , which was published in July 2025.
Sheppard's poetic approach is heavily informed by what he's referred to as a diplopiatic strategy: Keeping one eye on the formalist traditions of Western poetry while keeping the other trained on how 20th- and 21st-century poetry has evolved. This includes outsider poetry, the avant-garde, and experimental language-art thriving at the margins. It's a dual-vision approach that aims to formulate new strategies for clearing out new paths to advance the Ars Poetica toward fresh and undiscovered places. Interfusion, hybridization, and synthesis of the old and new are essential elements in this approach.
At his "Twilight of Humanity" Substack, Sheppard translates and comments on the oft-overlooked and untranslated poetry of early 20th-century German Expressionism—a movement known for its horror movie classics but less known for the dark poetry it also produced. Sheppard's work with German Expressionist verse can be found at his Substack at Dammerung.substack.com.
Other biographical details: Ailurophile. Bibliomaniac. Irish-American. Admirer of James Connolly and Gerry Adams. (Tiocfaidh ár lá.) Loves too many varieties of music to list, too many writers, and too many poets. Life's too short; there's too much to read; and even more to learn—a sad existential fact and an even sadder perturbation, but altogether better than the alternative.
Information about Oliver Sheppard may also be found at TheFuneralColony.com & OliverSheppard.com.
Sheppard's Thirteen Nocturnes collection of poetry, published in 2018, was a Finalist for the 2020 Elgin Award for Best Full-Length Poetry Collection. Thirteen Nocturnes was also long-listed for the 2018 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection and secured a place on the Bram Stoker Awards Recommended Reading List. Four poems from Thirteen Nocturnes were accorded "Recommended" status in Ellen Datlow's BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR, Vol. 11 (2019), and in that volume Ms. Datlow singled out Thirteen Nocturnes for praise as "an excellent collection of mostly Gothic poetry."
Sheppard has been cited as "a major new voice in the genre of macabre poetry," "an impeccable craftsman" who writes "poems of uniformly high craftsmanship," by Arkham House editor and veteran poet and literary critic Donald Sidney-Freyer (Spectral Realms, June 2021).
Sheppard recently completed his third poetry collection, The Funeral Colony , which was published in July 2025.
Sheppard's poetic approach is heavily informed by what he's referred to as a diplopiatic strategy: Keeping one eye on the formalist traditions of Western poetry while keeping the other trained on how 20th- and 21st-century poetry has evolved. This includes outsider poetry, the avant-garde, and experimental language-art thriving at the margins. It's a dual-vision approach that aims to formulate new strategies for clearing out new paths to advance the Ars Poetica toward fresh and undiscovered places. Interfusion, hybridization, and synthesis of the old and new are essential elements in this approach.
At his "Twilight of Humanity" Substack, Sheppard translates and comments on the oft-overlooked and untranslated poetry of early 20th-century German Expressionism—a movement known for its horror movie classics but less known for the dark poetry it also produced. Sheppard's work with German Expressionist verse can be found at his Substack at Dammerung.substack.com.
Other biographical details: Ailurophile. Bibliomaniac. Irish-American. Admirer of James Connolly and Gerry Adams. (Tiocfaidh ár lá.) Loves too many varieties of music to list, too many writers, and too many poets. Life's too short; there's too much to read; and even more to learn—a sad existential fact and an even sadder perturbation, but altogether better than the alternative.
Information about Oliver Sheppard may also be found at TheFuneralColony.com & OliverSheppard.com.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 2, 2019
I am one of those people who loves gothic, horror, deep and dark places and anything surrounding it. Always have been so this book spoke to me, I just loved the poetry and the way it made me feel. Sometimes it's hard to understand what they are talking about - but as a student of literature, that is exactly what poetry is supposed to do - confuse you, make you think and come to your own conclusion. It's always open to interpretation. One of my favorite quotes from this book is "the starry rose-petaled demon ran his fingers along my skin, slicing me open to the world. Red carnations fell from my veins". Now other people might see it differently, but to me that says that my inner demons got hold of me and they made me open up and all of the bad things inside me were falling out like blood - the red carnations were the blood. But others may think of something totally different. I am a very deep person, I am an empath and so for me that means that things get to me more than they would other people. So you have to read this book to find your own interpretation, but that was mine.
The book itself draws on all of the darkest pieces of existence, it quotes the greatest gothic authors ever, such as Dickinson, which is one that most people would think of as a canon poet, but not many people really know how gothic she could be. My second quote I loved from this was "The shadow of Life is Death; and Death evinces his jealousy of Life through the phenomenon of disease." So from the day we are born we are already dying, some disease will take us, even if it's just a natural death like old age. And Death is always waiting for us, watching us, jealous that we are able to live longer than maybe Death wants us to. So Death in turn gives us diseases to get us sooner than we should be dying. Make sense? Maybe not, but I think if you read this you will start to get it and you will reach your own conclusions about the book and how it can relate to your own life. I know that each of us has a dark part to our life, sometimes facing that darkness is cleansing for our souls.
Over and above all of that, the book is a great read - it's short, and it does have some wonderful poetry quotations, it reminded me somewhat of Poe's works. Everything has a deeper meaning, and that deeper meaning is different for everyone. Check this book out, it's wonderfully gothic!!!
**I received a free copy of this book to read**
The book itself draws on all of the darkest pieces of existence, it quotes the greatest gothic authors ever, such as Dickinson, which is one that most people would think of as a canon poet, but not many people really know how gothic she could be. My second quote I loved from this was "The shadow of Life is Death; and Death evinces his jealousy of Life through the phenomenon of disease." So from the day we are born we are already dying, some disease will take us, even if it's just a natural death like old age. And Death is always waiting for us, watching us, jealous that we are able to live longer than maybe Death wants us to. So Death in turn gives us diseases to get us sooner than we should be dying. Make sense? Maybe not, but I think if you read this you will start to get it and you will reach your own conclusions about the book and how it can relate to your own life. I know that each of us has a dark part to our life, sometimes facing that darkness is cleansing for our souls.
Over and above all of that, the book is a great read - it's short, and it does have some wonderful poetry quotations, it reminded me somewhat of Poe's works. Everything has a deeper meaning, and that deeper meaning is different for everyone. Check this book out, it's wonderfully gothic!!!
**I received a free copy of this book to read**
February 3, 2019
A breathtaking volume! Elegant, exquisite verse in the tradition of Lovecraft, Poe, and the Graveyard Poets.
June 30, 2021
This is a jewel of a book. A really dark dark jewel cover in blood and despair.
So as a warning up front. This is not a book for the faint of heart. Don't read this if you not in a mental health issues like depression. These poems go to some really dark places. War, death, despair, sobriety, ect. This book is classified as horror for a reason!
That being said, on to my thoughts on the work. First, this book's presentations is lovely. It hold some beautiful pieces of art, like the gorgeous piece of 'Death and the Maiden' by George Clark Stanton (1870), that used as the front cover image.
The poems where just as wonderful. Oliver Sheppard is quite a master with words. I enjoyed the different styles he used throughout the book, haiku, sonnet, canto, ect.
The subjects of the poems in this collection go into some dark places of the mind, spirituality, and take look at the cold and crueler side of human nature. Put so well into words by Sheppard:
"Dark and cruel, the devil's art-- Darker still, the human heart."
Especially the poems on WW2 left a impression on me. They reminded me of my grandmother's stories, (how survived WW2 as a child) on the horrible things (seen and unseen) she and her family went through.
I enjoyed all of the poems but a few stood up to me: Nocture No. 5 - The Martyrium of night, Nocture No. 13, The Dead Star Wheel, Canto of Astaroth, Canto of Samael, An Infinite Radius, The Trees That Make The Gallows, and Persephone's Descent.
The chapter called "The Dark Corridor to Heaven" was really interesting. It's set up as if you're walking through a gallery. You see the discriptions of paintings on the wall, but the art pieces themselves are missing.
So as your reading these discriptions your mind fills in the blanks for you. With leaves some beautiful and horrific images in one's mind. You could even meditation on some of this and see what information and insights you can get on your own mind.
Overall I loved this collection and will be picking up more of Oliver Sheppard works that have been released so far.
So as a warning up front. This is not a book for the faint of heart. Don't read this if you not in a mental health issues like depression. These poems go to some really dark places. War, death, despair, sobriety, ect. This book is classified as horror for a reason!
That being said, on to my thoughts on the work. First, this book's presentations is lovely. It hold some beautiful pieces of art, like the gorgeous piece of 'Death and the Maiden' by George Clark Stanton (1870), that used as the front cover image.
The poems where just as wonderful. Oliver Sheppard is quite a master with words. I enjoyed the different styles he used throughout the book, haiku, sonnet, canto, ect.
The subjects of the poems in this collection go into some dark places of the mind, spirituality, and take look at the cold and crueler side of human nature. Put so well into words by Sheppard:
"Dark and cruel, the devil's art-- Darker still, the human heart."
Especially the poems on WW2 left a impression on me. They reminded me of my grandmother's stories, (how survived WW2 as a child) on the horrible things (seen and unseen) she and her family went through.
I enjoyed all of the poems but a few stood up to me: Nocture No. 5 - The Martyrium of night, Nocture No. 13, The Dead Star Wheel, Canto of Astaroth, Canto of Samael, An Infinite Radius, The Trees That Make The Gallows, and Persephone's Descent.
The chapter called "The Dark Corridor to Heaven" was really interesting. It's set up as if you're walking through a gallery. You see the discriptions of paintings on the wall, but the art pieces themselves are missing.
So as your reading these discriptions your mind fills in the blanks for you. With leaves some beautiful and horrific images in one's mind. You could even meditation on some of this and see what information and insights you can get on your own mind.
Overall I loved this collection and will be picking up more of Oliver Sheppard works that have been released so far.
July 9, 2020
I have fallen in love with this work. Excellent poetry reflects the golden age of gothic literary pieces. I don't want to compare this to other well-known poets and writers as it is its own stand-alone piece because of the style of the poet himself. I have recommended this book to several others I knew enjoyed this kind of poetry. The poems were enlightening, intelligent, thoughtful, and even dark, which I appreciate. I highly recommend this book to anyone that might hesitate on purchasing, this book will not let you down and worth the cost.
January 12, 2019
An important poet who does not come from the stifling environs of academia. The dark and haunting poems have a timeless quality. They are at once modern and suited for today's more discerning readers, and firmly rooted in the traditions of yore. The best poems in this gathering are on the level of Blake and Dickinson.
May 17, 2023
I just realized I never wrote a review for this! I read it a few years ago and still think about it regularly. This poetry is such a beautiful blend of horror, sci-fi, philosophy, and stunning language. It's an all-time collection for me, and an inspiration when I dabble in my own poetry writing.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews