Robert Sheppard has given this book over to his own invention, the
fictional Belgian poet Rene Van Valckenborch. Apparently writing in
both Flemish and Walloon, and translated and edited by entities as
shadowy (and dodgy) as himself, Van Valckenborch's split oeuvre
derives from the linguistic and cultural divide within contemporary
Belgium. By the time Van Valckenborch disappears into poetic
silence he seems an enigma of his own making, a comic figure with
tragic attributes, a mystery to all swept up in his apparition.
When his story is finished he leaves behind the deliberately
discontinuous evidence of a dual poetic adventure - one half siding
with history and opting for a breathlessly recurring triplet verse,
the other obsessing over place and space and restlessly and
increasingly playing with experimental forms. Behind and within
them all, Sheppard is extending his formal and referential range:
from homages to film-makers to Twitterodes, from accounts of tribal
masks to cuboid quennets, and poems about Belgium of course. Above
all, he is exploring the limits of the author-function. This is an
imaginary collection with real poems in it.
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