Monday 8 June 2009

... sometimes i pretend to be a writer by Ben Shepard

Today I managed to buy the above book, at last. Ben Shepard was at Uni with me but sadly died suddenly in the second year. He was much missed from the course. This book was launched at Norwich Arts Centre in May but unfortunately I did not find out about the date until too late as was unable to attend. His sister has put together some of his writings and had them published.

I always like Ben, I felt that he was very much an individual and not afraid to voice his opinions. I felt he had lots of interesting things to say and was a good student to work alongside. We were not friends and I only had a couple of conversations with him during the time he was a Uni but I greatly respected him as both a fellow student and as a writer. I also like some of his Visual Art work, especially the Jelly full of fag ends and other assorted items. For me it worked.

Anyway I managed to get his book from Waterstones today and have started reading it and have been hugely impressed. I recognise some of the subjects he has written about from projects we completed as part of the course and yet realised I rarely heard him read them out in class or post them on the notice board.

I thought I would post one here for others to read as I feel his work should reach an audience.

I have become detached

I have become detached
An observer through the lens
Of an microscope
Familiar faces have become
Wriggling bacteria
In a Petri dish
Soon I will begin
My experiment


By Ben Shepard

1 comment:

Luna Lenny said...

Hi Di, I'd completely overlooked this message before (in my haste, no doubt) but I think I'll get myself a copy. It seems such a great thing to have done for Ben.