Twitters for a Lark: Poetry of the European Union of Imaginary Authors

The EUOIA is the brainchild of Belgian poet Rene Van Valckenborch. For his last project before his disappearance around 2010, Van Valckenborch supposedly asked one poet from each of the EU states to write him a poem. Of course, he wrote them himself ... Each poem was then supposedly translated into Flemish (or occasionally French) via robot (online) translators and the resultant poem `finalised' by Van Valckenborch before presentation on this website. The poems that follow are best thought of as collaborations between Van Valckenborch and the 25 imaginary poets and the robot translator. (As the EU expanded so did the Union: there are now 27 `members'.) We have, as usual, been accused of making these translations ourselves, or even of making the poets up (many of them might take exception, a few might be rather tickled by that suggestion). Firstly our expertise does not extend to all the languages encountered. Secondly, our professional pride as translators would have prohibited the use of electronic translation devices and we have only been forced to enter into a secondary relationship with this medium by Van Valckenborch's engagement with it, which we rather regret. -Annemie and Martin Krol-Dupuis (Brussels).

About the Author :
Born in 1955, Robert Sheppard was educated at the University of East Anglia. Apart from the publications listed below he was editor of three magazines, 1983, which, despite its name, existed in the 1970s as a cassette-tape magazine of recorded poetry; Rock Drill; and Pages, the latter of which still exists as a blogzine. He has read his work at dozens of venues and has worked in collaborative performance with dancers and musicians. He was an active part of the alternative poetry scene in London during the 1980s and 1990s, before moving to Liverpool to take up a post teaching English and Creative Writing at Edge Hill University, where he is currently Professor of Poetry and Poetics. Between 1989 and 2000 he wrote a long work (or 'net/(k)not/- work(s)' as he called it) entitled Twentieth Century Blues, which was published in a complete edition in 2008. (Its poetics is described in 'Poetic Sequencing and the New', available at Jacket.) Hymns to the God in which My Typewriter Believes, published in 2006, features 'texts and commentaries', works which specifically feed off other works of art. He has also published two critical studies, The Poetry of Saying: British Poetry and its Discontents (2005), and When Bad Times Made for Good Poetry (2011), a monograph, Iain Sinclair (2007), and an edited volume, The Salt Companion to Lee Harwood (2007). He has also edited the Selected Poems of Paul Evans for Shearsman. Further collections from Shearsman include Warrant Error, Berlin Bursts, A Translated Man and History or Sleep - Selected Poems.