{"id":8459,"date":"2023-10-27T11:06:19","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T11:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/?p=8459"},"modified":"2025-12-05T16:14:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T16:14:12","slug":"robert-sheppard-doubly-stolen-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/8459\/robert-sheppard-doubly-stolen-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Sheppard: Doubly Stolen Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“Mixing and matching hybrid modes \u2013 memoir, essay, creative non-fiction, fiction, fictional poems, psychogeographical d\u00e9rives, jokes, footnotes and poetics \u2013 Doubly Stolen Fire examines authorship, real, fictional, hoaxing, as well as the author\u2019s own, from multiple viewpoints. Whether a woman named Anonymous, or a mongoose called Gef, a fictional Austrian poet whose lockdown diary records her poeticizing mannequin, or some version of the author himself tracking the paths taken by novelist Malcolm Lowry, the book hosts a cast of unstable actors. They keep returning to the scene of their literary crimes, Liverpool mainly, though their guilty fictions float out to Berlin, the Isle of Man, Sussex and even Ern Malley\u2019s Australia. You can re-write the history of post-War British poetry if you listen to your mannequin, it seems. You can put in a call for \u2018creative literary history\u2019 and all manner of alternatives appear. All this in a volume bulging with Sheppard\u2019s mercurial humour and wily wit, and crawling with his creatures. <\/p>\n

Doubly Stolen Fire is a visionary glimpse into Robert Sheppard\u2019s \u2018inventory of the invented\u2019. To begin with he is King Hoax, trickster offspring of Pessoa and Enderby with a smatter of W.C. Fields and Alfred Jarry. Curator of a fugitive archive of writings by and about imaginary authors, Sheppard is shapeshifter, saloon huckster, cabaret comedian, laugh out loud funny. The second part is a Firminist investigation into the Malcom Lowry labyrinth \u2013psycho(somatic)geography, raw response, fragmented memory recovered. The work is imbued with loss, inky with fingerprints, words like haunted Kodaks.”<\/p>\n

Jeff Young, author of Ghost Town, A Liverpool Shadowplay<\/em> <\/p>\n

“Robert Sheppard\u2019s curiosity, brilliance and mischief are entwined as closely as ever in this gathering of poetry and prose. Continuing his excavations of poetry from perhaps-parallel universes, the first part explores the potentialities of fiction in and as poetry (or vice-versa), with the famous Ern Malley hoax as a touchstone for further inventions. In the context of this probing of authorial identities, the second part, with its focus on the apparently real Malcolm Lowry, shimmers with alternative possibilities. However, what holds the double construction of this book together is the character of Liverpool, its street names and gossip and half-heard stories haunting the fragmentary speculations that unfinish themselves, here and elsewhere at the same time. Behind the dissolving characters, there\u2019s a committed sociality in Sheppard\u2019s writing that makes it thoughtfully open to others as well as to language\u2019s scintillating play of otherness.”<\/p>\n

Zo\u00eb Skoulding, author of A Marginal Sea<\/em><\/p>\n

Published October 2023. Uk \u00a311.00<\/p>\n

Aquifer Books<\/p>\n

ISBN: 978-1-7393462-2-5<\/p>\n

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“Mixing and matching hybrid modes \u2013 memoir, essay, creative non-fiction, fiction, fictional poems, psychogeographical d\u00e9rives, jokes, footnotes and poetics \u2013 Doubly Stolen Fire examines authorship, real, fictional, hoaxing, as well as the author\u2019s own, from multiple viewpoints. Whether a woman named Anonymous, or a mongoose called Gef, a fictional Austrian poet whose lockdown diary records […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8471,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Doubly-Stolen-Fire-single-Cover-1-1-e1698060447455.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42xiC-2cr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8459"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8629,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8459\/revisions\/8629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}