A note on : Ten years of 3am magazine poetry editorship

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I took over the role of poetry editor from Darran Anderson in July 2011.

In ten years, working with the brilliant Andrew Gallix and other remarkable colleagues, I have kept open submissions most of the time, at least 8 of the 10 years, and fielded often up to 5 submissions a day. Sometimes more.

It has been an immense privilege. It has actually started friendships for me, making contacts with poets kind enough to send their work, from around the world. It has been a way to discover what is happening now with people and places I wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to encounter. And I’ve had the chance to keep up a continual correspondence with many making their first submissions, helping them work up their work for publication.

Moreover, with the literary / experimental publications of 2011 to 2017, all listed here https://www.stevenjfowler.com/3ammagazine followed by the Poem Brut series https://www.poembrut.com/3am (both pages need updating) I believe I have created a recognisable aesthetic for my editorial choices, and attracted practitioners working in that style.

I also think, without being arrogant, it is a space like no other online magazine for poetry, that supports brilliant work that wouldn’t find a home elsewhere. Or something akin to that. Over 300 publications and 100 interviews. More than that even. From Jerome Rothenberg, Iain Sinclair and other established names, to I would estimate at least 80 first ever publications, it’s a list I’m proud of, and I have no plans to give up the mantle soon.

A sincere thanks to Andrew Gallix for making 3am magazine what it is. http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/

Published : Hotel, Phonica - why my work is pointless

I’m very lucky to be part of a new series published by Hotel magazine, edited by Dominic Jaeckle, about the Phonica event series, curated by Christodoulos Makris. I was asked to provide an article, reflection, response to a performance I did in Dublin for the series in early 2018. It just so happens that this performance was one of the most important for me, in developing my live work. At this link you can find my recollections along with video of the performance, paged artfully by Dominic https://partisanhotel.co.uk/Pointless-Work

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My performance at PHONICA on March 26th 2018 was a breakthrough. If there is ever a recounting of my ‘career’ in literary performance, one of the many terms I use that no one else really seems to use, then this would be a dramatic scene. Let’s be honest with ourselves. There will be no recounting. This evening in SMOCK ALLEY THEATRE, I wasn’t very well. It drew down my scant nerves, or better said, filters. Not towards antagonism, as had been the case in the past, but towards almost pure improvisation, as a mode towards a live, living poetry. The work I did on that night led me to think through liveness in a concrete way, it led to THIS—a nice juicy section on my website. I describe a TALKING performance thusly ... A SPECIFIC KIND OF PERFORMANCE WHICH EXPLORES TROPES OF PUBLIC SPEAKING, RECITATION, READING AND INTRODUCTION, WHICH USES DERIVATION, PROLIXITY, MENTAL ASSOCIATION AND SUBVERTED EXPECTATION TO MAKE OFTEN ENTIRELY IMPROVISED TALKING PERFORMANCES OR TALK-POEMS.

Published : 3 new poems on films on Berfrois

Representing the multi methodological poetry of my new collection COME AND SEE THE SONGS OF STRANGE DAYS (available for pre-order https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/sj-fowler-come-and-see-the-songs-of-strange-days) I’m happy to say 3 unpublished poems have been shared by Berfrois, thanks to editor Callie Michail

DOGTOOTH, MARGIN CALL, GUMMO https://www.berfrois.com/2021/02/margin-call-gummo-and-dogtooth-by-sj-fowler

Published : Four poems on the films of Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway’s work is hugely important to me - his austerity, his excess, his style, his unapologetic intellectual concerns, his irreverence, his obsession with language (which is poetry at times) and his exploration of writing, calligraphy and asemia. I’ve written poems about his films for the last few years, in a kind of suite or sequence, ranging in methodologies.

In my latest collection - COME AND SEE THE SONGS OF STRANGE DAYS - released in March with Broken Sleep books I have 6 poems dedicated to his works. 3 of them, plus a poem on a documentary made about him by his partner Saskia Boddeke, have been kindly published online by Partisan Hotel, edited by Dominic Jaeckle. They include a long literary poem about THE FALLS, then a hand-written documentary poem about DROWNING BY NUMBERS and an ASEMIC WATER POEM about PROSPERO’S BOOKS https://partisanhotel.co.uk/Fowler-for-Greenaway

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Published : Time of the Wolf in Poem Atlas' Refraction online exhibition

Very cool to be in this online exhibition which celebrates the Streetcake Magazine writing prize, of which I’m a patron and is hosted by Poem Atlas, which is doing great things with sculpture or 3d poetry. https://www.poematlas.com/refraction

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This poem-brut lo-fi concertina is a deliberately aberrant pop-up book page. It combines found material, abstract painting, stickers of three different origins, or packs, and is part of an ongoing exploration of the possibilities of collage and an experimental poetry of humour. It is taken from the book 'Come and See the Songs of Strange Days : poems on films' (Broken Sleep Books 2021)

A note on : The Maintenant series back on 3am magazine

I’ve decided to make the latest European Poetry Festival interviews, a big part of EPF 2020 digital, part of the Maintenant series, which I ran to 101 editions from 2010 to around 2012. This means the interviews go up on 3am magazine, which originally supported the series. For the history of Maintenant, please visit www.stevenjfowler.com/maintenant

To see the latest Maintenant interviews https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/index/poetry/maintenant/

A note on : Subverse on Hotel, features Great Apes and more

Excerpts of three books of mine, from BEASTINGS, I WILL SHOW YOU THE LIFE OF THE MIND (ON PRESCRIPTION DRUGS) & THE GREAT APES, have been remixed and mashed and edited by Diamanda Dramm for her new solo show, Subverse. Hotel magazine, edited by Dominic Jaeckle, have published the parts of the texts used alongside a video of Diamanda performing. https://partisanhotel.co.uk/Dramm This clip below is from my book The Great Apes, which is due from Pamenar press in 2021!

you know that life for a minute?
let’s pretend. we’re in the jungle.
the jungle, where ugly finds itself.
but you get used to it, because it is you, that smell
worried about things you can’t change

and while you were worried about your mother’s drinking
and what kind of poetry is going on, and AI
it was chimp who landed on your shoulders
and stuck his middle fingers into your ears
like a medieval helmet covered in oliver oil
and made two fists and ripped your ears off down
and as your hands came up to cup your lost ears
chimp grabbed your fingers in a flower bunch
like it was the brakes on your fancy city bicycle for the green future
and squished them together with strength you didn’t know
and then broke them back against themselves
and tried to pull them off
and partially succeeded
and put some of them in Chimp mouth
and chewed
and looked around and looked at you and waited and couldn’t tell
what species you were even ?

Published: Magma Poetry, feature in the collaboration issue

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I had a really grand time working with editor Alice Willitts on a feature for the latest, collaboration themed, edition of Magma magazine. We spoke quite a few times over many months, sharing ideas, and Alice really put her heart into this issue and I’ve a lot of admiration for her approach.

In the end, the issue features a large interview we did, discussing many things, including my selected collaborations NEMESES and my film THE ANIMAL DRUMS, all available to read online https://magmapoetry.com/archive/magma-78/articles/interview-with-sj-fowler/

The print issue also has a selection of my visual collaborative works, so worth getting a physical copy. The magazine has some brilliant poets in there, really an extraordinary list, including works I had the pleasure to commission, like Christodoulos Makris and Pierre Alferi, alongside many of those I admire https://magmapoetry.com/archive/magma-78/

Published : 3 new Crayon Poems in Sober magazine

A grand burst of publications around my latest Poem Brut book - CRAYON POEMS with penteract press (buy it here https://penteractpress.com/store/crayon-poems-sj-fowler ) that features works not found in the book. Three more have been published by Sober magazine here https://www.sober-magazine.com/#/new-page-35/

I added this note “There is a part of me that wants to be messy, dumb, clumsy, childish, ape-ish and impatient because I am quite naturally these things and these things are preferable to pretense. I never wish to be a child again, and will be granted this wish, but I’d rather be one than a fraught, bourgeois adult, and so robbing the techniques of infants seem a valuable, if petulant, path to safety. What better reason than childishness, amidst the recreations of mortality, animalisms, literacy and colourfulness, could there be for me to author and labour a book of poems made exclusively from the wax crayon?”

A note on: Dan Power reviews I Will Show You ... at SPAM magazine

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Very good of SPAM and Dan Power to offer this review of my book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Will-Show-Life-prescription-drugs/dp/B0849T1PRK/

A few excerpts from the review, which can be found in full https://www.spamzine.co.uk/post/review-i-will-show-you-the-life-of-the-mind-on-prescription-drugs-by-sj-fowler

> Using the second person throughout, Fowler directly implicates you, the reader, in the story. He speaks as your mind speaks to you. Considering this book opens by addressing the unknowability of the mind, what’s surprising is how relatable so much of this is. Is there a universality to even the most intimate experiences that we might prefer to ignore? Are everyone’s anxieties and anguishes the same under late capitalism? Are we wired up to process life in symmetrical ways, or do the drugs standardize our experiences in-house, making ideas digestible and easily transferable, while at the same time neutralizing them?

> It’s also a choose-your-own-adventure! So Fowler gives us a sense of control, the option to use our unique and free decision-making skills to try and steer ourselves back into the light. Of course, this also means that every terrible thing that happens to you is your own fault, the result of poor decision making, of failing to understand the thing that lives inside your skull. But at least you’re free to choose.

> When Gerard Manley Hopkins’ ‘The Wreck of Deutschland’ is filtered through a mind on citalopram, lines from the seed poem blossom into new poems in the sequence. 'lean over an old / and ask / remember? / can you raise / the dead?' (p.29) is almost the ghost of a thought, coming in blips like a distant transmission. But even when the connection is shaky, the consciousness is definitely streaming. Fowler illuminates the structures of the brain not only through the structuring of the book, but through the deconstruction of the text. Ideas spark up and fizzle away, lines bleed into one another. Like the mind, language is an internalized and navigable structure. when one breaks down so does the other. definitions shift across words, syntax dissolves letters drawn to their nearest partners like magnets. disjointed ideas meet / neurons collide at random when their paths are eroded. incoherence, fractured and erratic decision making. brain structure determines bodily action determines brain structure. We are trapped in constant orbit of ourselves.

> The book is also very funny (I should have spent more time saying how funny it is), it’s wry and sharp in a way that allows you to chuckle with the protagonist at their terrible situation, and without undercutting any of the effect. It’s an infectious humour that’s both sincere and playful, frenzied in a way that lets it emerge seamlessly from the ever-changing currents. It does the essential job of keeping the reader afloat through turbulent waters. This book goes to places which are unstable, alarming, vacuumous, but never beyond seeing in a comic, self-deprecating, self-affirming light. Fowler grins into an abyss of his own making. He shouts into the book and the book echoes back, circles itself, ideas like pages are turned and turned over long after it’s concluded. You feel your brain sloshing about in your skull. It does a backflip.

Published: Bubble comb up on Perverse

Chrissy Williams has recently started a brilliant and innovative new journal / e-mag endeavour entitled Perverse. It's a really engaged, open, direct, clever, complex way of sharing and reading poems, typical of Chrissy's work. I'm very happy to be in the latest issue, 1c, with some grand poets, and to feature a visual work which will be part of my last Poem Brut book, Memoirs of a Hypocrite, due out in November with Hesterglock press. Click the link or sign up below to comb my bubble.

"Perverse 1C - Nelson / Moore / Gross / Fowler / O’Loughlin

Welcome to issue 1C of Perverse! There's a slightly different type of perversity at work in some of these poems than we've seen in the others. I hope you enjoy them. As before, these poems are best read sideways on a phone, or else as usual on a computer screen. You can also save them as a single PDF here if you like. (You'll find the previous micro issues here.)

Contributor Note on ‘The Bubble Comb’:
“'The Bubble Comb' is part of a book of art poetry, Memoirs of a Hypocrite (Hesterglock Press), which is part of a series of publications entitled www.poembrut.com It is about the potential poetic possibilities of handwriting, material, colour and composition meeting the semantic meaning of the written word.”

Please forward this email on to anyone who might like it - they can use the link below to sign up for future issues and updates:
http://tinyletter.com/perverse

Website (with an archive of previous issues):
http://perversepoetry.tumblr.com

 

A note on : Poem Brut reviewed on Tentacular Magazine

Lovely to have this write up of my poem brut project appear on Tentacular Magazine, recounting some of the issues of the series on 3am magazine https://www.tentacularmag.com/elsewhere-blog/brut

The sparkling Poem Brut

Poem Brut is a colourful and stimulating celebration of what lies at the intersection of the poetic page and the artwork.  Curated by SJ Fowler, it’s a series of events, exhibitions, and publications – but here I’ll focus on some of the 29 works (so far) represented online in 3am magazine. 

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What’s impressive is the reach of the community that Fowler has assembled and is playing an important part in creating, from Tallinn to Toronto and Trinidad.  Trinidad is the source of Andre Bagoo’s compelling ‘Scarlet Ibis’, where the placing of bright red rectangles over what we might assume to be lines of experimental text seems such a simple act, but invests the page with an animate quality, a jauntiness and inscrutability that may or may not be features of Trinidad and Tobago’s national bird. The work compels a kind of double longing, both for the text beneath, and for the identity and energy of pure colour, in what may also be a metaphor for (resistance to) the blood and erasure of a colonial past.........."

A note on: latest poetry on 3am magazine

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It's been a good time to be getting submissions for 3am's poetry section. Seems what I've been trying to do over the years has stuck a little, and so much of the work I'm getting is brilliant. So more than usual has been published, and this is in no small part down to the Poem Brut and Duos series, being the only poetry I'm accepting at the mo. As ever there's a big backlog, so much more to come soon. Since September 2017...

A note on: my article on Home, in Dutch, published in Terras

very happy to have some of my journalism published in Dutch for the first time, featuring the latest issue of the respected Terras magazine. The magazine was founded by erik lindner and the article emerged from a commission for European Lliterature Night Amsterdam, thanks to the British council.

The full Dutch can be read here http://tijdschriftterras.nl/thuis-2/ and it was translated by Anne Tjerk Popkema

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"Het zijn onze vormende jaren op deze aarde die bepalen hoe we ‘thuis’ opvatten. Of het nu de plek is waar onze wieg toevallig stond, de plaats waar we opgroeiden of waar onze ouders vandaan komen: de omgeving van onze jeugdjaren vormt ons thuis. Althans, dat zeggen ze."

... and from the essay in English, an excerpt"I have always been distrustful of those who speak of home, actively, keenly, when they are young. Those who stay in the same town in which they were born. Home then becomes a word equivalent to repression, a soft claw coming up out of a bungalow, wrapping itself across my mouth.

London is my home, because I have no home. London is the world. As angry and lovely and populous as our world. As the population of our planet has doubled so London has become the biggest it has ever been, just recently catching the population of the pre-war era. I am one of these millions, delighted, against where I was raised, to be amongst the people of the world. I am home, briefly, with those I love, in a city which is not celebrated enough for being truly global, where I have never seen people in conflict because they are from different homes. Because everyone is from a different home here, almost no home is home when in London. So it is all of ours. Does this paradox qualify? Perhaps not, it cannot be a paradox if I say it is my home."

A note on: Duos & The Poem Brut - two new open calls on 3am magazine

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/submissions/

Poetry
Note: Poetry submissions are open only for the Duos and Poem Brut series. No other submissions will be read.

  • Duos: collaborative poems written / made by two poets. There is no criteria for the poems or process. Please send a single bio and single photo for both authors.
  • Poem Brut: poems exploring handwriting, abstraction, illustration, asemic and pansemic writing, visual poetry and material process, colour, scribbling, scrawlings, crossings out, ink, forgotten notes, found text, interaction between paper and pen, and pencil, geometric poems, inarticulate poems, minimalism, collage, toilet wall writing. No works produced on a computer.

A note on: Subcritical Tests, Cemetery poems & other recent happenings

Recent happenings from July 2017 : Two new publications, three great events in Kensal Green Cemetery, others at Ledbury Festival, National Poetry Library, Poetry Ireland & more.

Subcritical Tests: a new book from Gorse Editions
A pair of grand launches in a basement in Soho and a packed Poetry Ireland in Dublin for a book already making mushroom clouds on the Irish poetry scene. A beautiful thing Gorse have made, sharing Ailbhe Darcy and I's poems, three years in the writing. www.stevenjfowler.com/ireland

Landscape Learn : Growth & Decay
Part of my ongoing residency with award winning landscape architects J&L Gibbons, a day in Kensal Green Cemetery with speakers from Urban Mind, Museum of London and a debut screening for my collaborative film with Tereza Stehlikova. Follow Landscape Learn.www.stevenjfowler.com/gibbonsresidency

The Ecchoing Green
A reading with Chris McCabe and Tom Jeffreys in Kensal Green Cemetery Dissenter's Chapel, part of the Wood Wood residency, a discussion of changing London and its cemeteries www.stevenjfowler.com/wormwood

Worm Wood Old Oak
Short fiction published by Sampson Low, a publisher founded in 1793. A weird story about a property developer terraforming London, available here https://sampsonlow.co/2017/07/14/worm-wood-old-oak-sj-fowler/

Ledbury Poetry Festival
Performing and curating the 87th event of the 21st international poetry festival in Ledbury, presenting a new collaboration with Harry Man. More here

Poem Bruts : Hotel Magazine
New art poems published in the brilliant hotel. Taken from an upcoming artbook 'New Prim' with Hesterglock Press. http://partisanhotel.co.uk/S-J-Fowler-Poem-Brut-ii

Illuminations II: Erich Fried
A brilliant second instalment of the Illuminations series, surrounded by friends and family of Erich Fried, presenting new performative and literary responses to his life and works. www.theenemiesproject.com/illuminations

National Poetry Library Special Edition: celebrating Shearsman Books
A chance to read from my collection out this year 'The Guide to Being Bear Aware' alongside poets like Peter Riley, celebrating Shearsman who have been publishing for 35 years. www.stevenjfowler.com/bearaware

Interview with Jana Astanov A quick chat with the new york based Polish multidisciplinary artist about recent things. www.3ammagazine.com/3am/poetry-is-an-opportunity/

Some upcoming other stuff:
August 1st to 31st : An exhibition at Kensal Green Cemetery - Worm Wood, with Tereza Stehlikova
August 31st : Reverse Festival Copenhagen
September 3rd : Fiender - Swedish Enemies in Malmo
September 19th : WOW Festival South Korea
November 15th (to be confirmed) : Illuminations III - Peter Handke
November 22nd : The Poem Brut at Rich Mix - a new programme of events, exhibitions and talks begins, exploring art poems, pansemic writing, abstract portraiture - the intersections between brutalism, text, handwriting and abstract illustration.

Published: Three new poem bruts in Hotel Magazine

A really brilliant magazine is Hotel, and they've once again generously published some of my new art poems or poem bruts which will form the major output of my work over the next year or so, with a series of events at Rich Mix and four new limited edition books. These three works are taken from the book New Prim. 

http://partisanhotel.co.uk/S-J-Fowler-Poem-Brut-ii

A note on: an interview with Jana Astanov, published on 3am magazine

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/poetry-is-an-opportunity/ 

3:AM: I recently had the pleasure of reading your four collections of poetry: the latest “The Guide to Being Bear Aware”, Enthusiasm, published in 2015, The Rottweiler’s Guide to the Dog Owner, from 2014, and your first book, Red Museum, published in 2011. How is “The Guide to Being Bear Aware” different from your previous works?

SJ Fowler: Thank you. I’m sorry you had to slog through four of the, one is normally enough for people. As you probably picked up, each one is very different from the next – different style, method, tone, subject. You couldn’t tell they are from the same person, I’ve been told that anyway, and I take that as a badge of honour. The language I reclaim from the world and plop down on the page is not supposed to represent me as an individual but just some of my mental activity and inquiry. The Guide is different as it’s a return to more literary ground, it’s more notably poetic. That’s because I only discovered poetry in 2010 and this kind of writing, post war European poetry, is what got me into the field. So for the first time I feel I’ve been reading that work long enough to let it speak out. And I’ve also been more active with really experimental pieces of performance, visual art and theatre over the last few years, and so I felt, organically, my poetry could be a little more lyrical.

3:AM: In this collection you begin most of the poems with quotes from a wonderfully curated list of European poets. Could you explain the concept behind this?

SJF: When I first began reading poetry I would take out huge anthologies from Senate House Library in London, big dusty things from the 60s, 70s, 80s that no one else was looking at, and I would spend all day reading them, stopping only to write down lines from poets, both known and obscure, that struck me intensely. It sounds untrue but back then I would read poetry for six or seven hours a day, I was so excited to have discovered it. So for this collection I raided this old word doc of stolen lines. I assigned the epigraphs randomly, often, and I know people hate epigraphs, they take it to be the poet being a prick, showing off their learning, so I thought if I put one for pretty much every poem that’d be quite funny. It’d also force people to look for meanings between the poem and the epigraph which perhaps don’t exist aside from their own analysis, which is also nice. .... CONT'D