Monday, January 23, 2017

Robert Sheppard: More Wiped Weblogs (Empty Diaries) in Blackbox Manifold 17

The final six 'Wiped Weblogs' (2009-2014) have appeared in a wonderful edition of Blackbox Manifold. See here. Thanks for publishing them, Adam.

'Wiped Weblogs' is a sequence dealing with sexual politics, generally narrated from the point of view of a woman. These recent ones use a lot of internet flarf and detritus, combined with references to the first recorded uses of various technologies (and their jargons, like ‘selfies’) and first uses of various sexual practices (and their jargons, e.g., ‘pegging’). I see them as a sort of egregious Tom and Jerry sequence with several characters (like Fuckeye and Stonehead) running through them. (The cat Gruntcakes and the dog Gruffnuts never made it into the final mix.) Everything gets excessive, even the line-lengths. They are continuations of the 'Empty Diary' strand that ran through Twentieth Century Blues, 1901-2000). The first eight 'Wiped Weblogs' appeared in The Literateur. Find them here or here.

The rest of the Winter 2016 issue 17 of Blackbox Manifold contains other work by Linda Anderson, Tom Betteridge, Adam Burbage, Stephen Burt, James Byrne, Sophie Collins, Joey Connolly, Adam Flint, Jane Goldman, Thomas Kelly, Chris Kerr, Eric Langley, Dorothy Lehane, Tan Lin, Jaki McCarrick, Gail McConnell, Joseph Minden, Ian Patterson, Ronnie Sirmans, Oliver Southall, Matthew Sweeney, Charles Tarlton, Ken Taylor, Jonty Tiplady, Samuel Tongue. John Tamplin interviews Keston Sutherland, Peter Larkin reviews Peter Riley, and Adam Piette reviews the new Eliot, Denise Riley, Charlotte Newman, and essays on J.H. Prynne. Lots of good stuff:

http://www.manifold.group.shef.ac.uk

 A general piece on my sonnet-writing may be read here.