At one level, the poems in British Standards are transpositions of Romantic era sonnets that pay homage to the exuberance and variety of that tradition, whether through examples of well-known poets, from Wordsworth to Clare, or through those of lesser-known practitioners, Mary Robinson to Hartley Coleridge. At another level, these transpositions chart the recent national banana-skin slippage from the hubris of Brexit to the mismanagement of Covid (including the privations and solitudes of lockdown). At both levels, they are satirical and funny, whether British Standard dogging sites are introduced as the sole Brexit benefit, or ‘our’ hapless prime minister stumbles from indiscretion to disgrace. Between the levels, they vibrate with implication, rock with savage laughter.

Comments on earlier parts of ‘The English Strain’ project:

‘Among contemporary poets, only Sheppard could have achieved this unlikely synthesis; his poetry is learned, scholarly, satirical, outrageous and innovative as well as – most importantly – political.’ —Alan Baker, Litter

‘This book is the sound a man of enlightenment and renaissance makes as he sees the long rich curve of knowledge – our real ‘heritage’ – being flushed clean down a political shitter… It is utterly brilliant.’ —Steve Hanson, Manchester Review of Books

‘Sheppard is able to form activist responses to the times through which we live without sacrificing his linguistic range.’ —James Byrne, The Robert Sheppard Companion