The Glue Factory has been running for years as a remarkable Sunday evening zoom program celebrating contemporary and modernist literature hosted and curated by David Collard. He kindly invited me on to talk about my novella MUEUM and with him not living far away from me, I went to his house and we had this chat http://davidjcollard.blogspot.com/
A note on : MUEUM launch at Brick Lane Bookshop : October 5th
October 5th, 7pm, at Brick Lane Bookshop, my debut novella - mueum - will be launched alongside readings from Iain Sinclair, Chris McCabe and Chloe Aridjis. More on the event bricklanebookshop.org/events/#mueum and tickets at £5
The novella is available here tenementpress.com/M-U-E-U-M
As part of the book's launch, here is a long-form interview with Gareth Evans, shot at Resonance Extra studios in London, discussing the origins of MUEUM.
A note on announcing my first novella M U E U M
tenementpress.com/M-U-E-U-M
(Summer, MMXXII) COMING SOON
From the publisher : A novella of ludic menace, SJ Fowler’s M U E U M is a puzzle without pieces. Following the grand tradition of the Nestbeschmutzerauthors (one who dirties their own nest, vis-à-vis Bernhard and Gombrowicz,et al), M U E U M pictures the amassing and dismantling of a public edifice, brick by brick, in prose that refracts and breaks the light emitted by history’s ornaments and history’s omissions.
Suspended in unknowable time there is a city; in the city, an event, a conflict. Amid the ash, fog and cloud, there is the manufacturing of a space—a many-winged museum on the make. On the plinths, exquisite remnants of life present and past—adorning the walls, portraits of gentle torture sit hand in hand with brutal and statuesque portrayals of camaraderie—and the gift-shop is littered with plastic curios and gilt revulsion. Goya, as atmosphere rather than artwork, hovers amid iron age ghosts, bronzed ideas, and antiqued anxiety.
Pacing the halls, the atrium and corridor, there are those who keep the museum—the various midwives to the building’s demands—and those, like the reader, who merely visit; those who pass through the vacant galleries adrift with questions. What can I touch? What is next to Egypt? What is hidden in Mesopotamia? Where do we eat? Drink? Where is the entrance? The exit? In Fowler’s curt, spiralling and acute work, the museum’s keepers will answer...
A SONIC ITERATION OF THIS NOVELLA IS ALSO FORTHCOMING, & WILL BROADCAST SPRING MXXII WITH RESONANCE EXTRA PRIOR TO THE BOOK’S RELEASE
Published : STICKER POEMS
My new book, one I really am happy with. The press has done a brilliant job with it. 'Sticker Poems' from Trickhouse Press
£10.00 128pp, A5, full-colour. https://www.trickhousepress.com/product/-sticker-poems-by-sj-fowler/6?cs=true&cst=custom
From the publisher “Forget everything you thought you knew about stickers and everything you might have suspected about poems. From animals to Mexican wrestlers, football players to medieval knights, zombie apocalypse to motivational mantras, Garbage Pail kids to dinosaurs, Sticker Poems is no less than a snapshot of human cognition, narrated by Fowler’s idiosyncratic poetics. This book offers a bold new take on what poetry means, a playful shock treatment for arthritic literary convention, and the kind of crystalline insight which is usually reserved for the deranged. These poems will stick to you like gum to your hair. Strawberry gum.”
The book contains 99 sticker poems, full colour, on photographic as well as essays by myself and David Spittle. Every order includes two free stickers of sticker poems which you can stick to that which you wish to stick to.
“Screw your courage to the sticking place! SJ Fowler has invented a new poetic form, and traced out all its kinks and convolutions in one deliriously weird book. Let your nail grow out a bit to really get under the corners of his language and prise them off the page and you’ll be rewarded. I found at least one of these adhesive little poems at the back of my knee after a particularly hard reading session and now it’s stuck. What is there in life but adhesion?” Colin Herd
A note on : Poem Brut in the City
the first live www.poembrut.com event in a long time, over 18 months, and the launch of my new book, sticker poems https://www.stevenjfowler.com/#/stickers/
I took people on a merry dance. I’ve spent a lot of time in the city of london, i explore it often, im interested in its history and so when i wanted to do a poem brut event, outdoors as we emerge out of lockdown, i thought it suited as a locale. 11 poets were given 11 locations but no one but they knew where the readings would be or in what order. so there was a sense of surprise, i hope, amidst the hot weather, hidden corners and general friendly ambiance. we began at bank and ended up at the thames, two hours later, a good few dozen of us. all the videos of the excellent performances are online here www.poembrut.com/city
Published : 2nd edition of 1000 proverbs and Knives Forks and Spoons books
In 2015 I published a full length conceptual collaborative book with my nemesis Tom Jenks. We sent each other warped poetry proverbs, one liners, for a few years, and Knives Forks and Spoons press, headed up by Alec Newman, put it out. It was a poetry society book recommendation and recently sold out of its print run. Took 5 years but none the less, it has been printed in a 2nd edition, with a fancy new cover, see images. I am delighted, as Tom and I continue our collaborations. It also made me reflect on how important Knives Forks and Spoons press has been to my own work and development. In the image below you can see the six books I have published with them. One of my three debut collections (I released three in the same summer) Red Museum, amongst four collaborative volumes and an early Fights pamphlet. I think if Alec hadn’t have supported my work around this time 2010, 2011, then perhaps I wouldn’t have become as overconfident with publishing as I have. But seriously, his faith in me did me a huge boost and I’m very proud to be associated with what the press has continued to do over the last decade. Visit them https://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/
The book is available here for 7 pounds www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/product-page/1000-proverbs-by-s-j-fowler-tom-jenks-57-pages
A note on : Sticker Poems! available for pre-order
I am so excited for this. I have had so much joy making this book, the next in my visual poetry series, and over a year in development. It has been such a pleasure to work with Dan Power of Trickhouse Press on the project, which is 99 full colour, full bleed, complex collagic weird poems made of actual stickers and digi-text. Launched on June 10th, more soon on that, but available for pre-order now https://www.trickhousepress.com/product/-pre-order-sticker-poems-by-sj-fowler/6?cs=true&cst=custom
Forget everything you thought you knew about stickers and everything you might have suspected about poems. From animals to Mexican wrestlers, football players to medieval knights, zombie apocalypse to motivational mantras, Garbage Pail kids to dinosaurs, Sticker Poems is no less than a snapshot of human cognition, narrated by Fowler’s idiosyncratic poetics.
This book offers a bold new take on what poetry means, a playful shock treatment for arthritic literary convention, and the kind of crystalline insight which is usually reserved for the deranged. It contains 99 original and striking sticker poems, as well as essays by SJ Fowler and David Spittle.
“Screw your courage to the sticking place! SJ Fowler has invented a new poetic form, and traced out all its kinks and convolutions in one deliriously weird book. Let your nail grow out a bit to really get under the corners of his language and prise them off the page and you’ll be rewarded. I found at least one of these adhesive little poems at the back of my knee after a particularly hard reading session and now it’s stuck. What is there in life but adhesion?” - Colin Herd
A note on : The Printed Poetry Project
A new page dedicated to the PPP www.stevenjfowler.com/ppp
Aiming to create overlaps between poetry and letterpress, as well as publishing and book arts, I’m lucky to be the poet at the centre of this project so far, thanks to Angie Butler and Sarah Bodman. Evolving organically over many months of correspondence, the PPP is creating a generous, generative space for real collaboration between those with the expertise to realise printed matter and those who might write the poems within.
Supported by the Centre for Fine Print Research at UWE, Bristol, the current form of the project is really the brainchild of Angie Butler and has taken in, so far, a short residency at The Whittington press working with Pat Randle of Nomad Letterpress in May 2021.
This will be followed with a limited edition publication, entitled 25 poems, which was written during, and about, the project, before being collaboratively typeset and printed by Angie and Pat. This will be followed by an ambitious symposium in October 2021 and more happenings into the future.
A full diary of my time in Bristol is a available too, www.stevenjfowler.com/ppp, an excerpt here “The process then was a whirl. The evenings in my airbnb, doing long runs through Bristolian suburbs, the sharing of ideas with Sarah Bodman and the the postgraduate students at UWE, and the conversations with Angie, both for an online event and in her motorcar - these all fed into the poems I wrote, that were to be finished in this week so they could be printed there and then! We found an old cast in the press that said ‘25 poems’, next to an image of a cock and bull, and i leapt on this as the title. So 25 poems. A perfect chance for me to exorcise a desire to write one word poems I thought, following Aram Saroyan and 16 were created, for the opening and closes pages. Then notes, fragments, overheard conversations, things I thought when I was not thinking, these began coming together for the remaining 9 poems - with a sense always of the vernacular of letterpress and printing, of the terminology, the vocabulary, the intense sense of workable knowledge.
A note on : Bristol - The Printed Poetry Project
Angie Butler at work
I am very lucky indeed to have been working on a project with Angie Butler and Sarah Bodman at UWE in Bristol over the last number of months, since the summer of 2020 really, that will come to fruition in multiple instances throughout this year 2021. The Printed Poetry Project will see some collaborations, teaching, publications, conversation, conferences and the like, and it begins with my going to Bristol next week and working with Angie at the Whittington Press in Cheltenham https://whittingtonpressshop.com. What we create is ahead of us, but it’s the kind of project I really love, where i get to learn and work collectively and drain other people’s experience to open up new avenues in my own work. As part of my time in Bristol, I’ll be chatting with Angie in this online talk, which anyone can watch!
Print in Conversation: The Printed Poetry Project with Steven J Fowler: poet, writer and artist (13 May 2021)
https://cfpr.uwe.ac.uk/the-printed-poetry-project-with-steven-j-fowler/
Thursday 13 May 12.30pm – 1.15pm A free, open session for anyone to join. Part of the Art of the Maker event series : An informal lunchtime public engagement session, talking candidly with poet, writer and artist, Steven J Fowler about his collaborative research project-in-progress with the Centre for Fine Print Research (CFPR), UWE, Bristol. We will discuss Steven’s experience so far, in terms of the development of our project ideas and how the work has developed during the course of the week. We will explain how we are using the craft of type-setting and the process of letterpress printing in relation to the haptic production of the printed word within contemporary publishing activities. They’ll be time for Q&A, too!
Published : reading list massage (If A Leaf Falls press)
Very happy to have a new pamphlet released with If a leaf falls press, in an edition of 60, entitled reading list massage.
It has sold out on the publisher’s site, Sam Riviere, but do go buy other titles https://www.samriviere.com/index.php?/together/if-a-leaf-falls-press/
I have a few copies spare, signed, and welcome enquiries if anyone wants one http://www.stevenjfowler.com/contact.
A few words on the book = “A succinct suite of minimal misspelled poems written for, and published by, Sam Riviere's If a leaf falls micropress. Fragments of speech, mis or unlabelled quotations and comforting typopoetry reference self-referentiality as a kind of brief, grim spectre descending upon writers and academics, in rare moments of lucidity, too clever by half.”
The booklette was written a few years ago, and is constructed, in parts, of quotations, with my poetry written through. The tone was meant to be different than most of my literary work, ironising a personal subjective involvement in the poems a little bit, following people like Paul Blackburn, Ed Dorn. and Tom Raworth, who weren’t ironic, but acknowledged themselves in their poems with a raised eyebrow.
❧ If a Leaf Falls Press publishes limited edition titles with an emphasis on appropriative and procedural writing processes.
A note on : Edwin Morgan Centenary Concrete Poetry Poster
Such a pleasure to have been a tiny part of the 101 WORDS FOR EDWIN MORGAN CENTENARY concrete poetry POSTER OF 101 ONE WORD POEMS, edited brilliantly by Julie Johnstone and Greg Thomas.
“101 poets, artists, publishers, editors and researchers were invited to send a word or a one word poem for Edwin Morgan on the occasion of his centenary. This poster is published on what would have been his 101st birthday, 27 April 2021. The contributors were given the following instructions: Each “word” must be a straight horizontal line, fifteen characters maximum in length (no minimum length), and must not include any spaces. Each letter and punctuation mark counts as a character (think of it as having fifteen presses of a typewriter’s keys to work with, except for the return key and space bar). The poster design is based on an initial arrangement of words by character count, with each group of words then arranged in alphabetical order.”
My word was URSIGN, check out all contributors and more info https://juliejohnstone.com/edwinmorgan/
Published : Virtual Oasis, an AI anthology from Trickhouse Press
Very good yes to have a poem in a new anthology from Trickhouse Press, edited by Dan Power, who are publishing my new visual poetry brut book Sticker Poems soon in 2021. The anthology is entitled VIRTUAL OASIS and “is a collaboration between human writers and AI artists, a dream shared between machines both fleshy and fibre-optic. This anthology contains 23 original poems responding to automatically generated images.” Some brilliant people within, such as James Knight, Matthew Haigh, Robin Boothroyd, Sam Riviere, and Vik Shirley. Buy one here https://www.trickhousepress.com/product/virtual-oasis-/5?cs=true&cst=custom
A note on: Vik Shirley's Disrupted Blue
Really worth a punt https://hesterglock.net/Vik-Shirley Vik Shirley’s new book from the always brilliant Hesterglock press is powerful poetry and an important work in the 21st century take up of photo poetry and it’s possibilities.
I was happy to offer a quote onto the back of the book, proud even, and had the pleasure to publish some of these works on 3am magazine a few years ago https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/poem-brut-74-disrupted-blue-on-sepia/
Published : The Mystery Book on Tar Press
Tar Press publish new short fiction on twitter, in an episodic unleashing over one long Sunday. The editor, Henry Johns, shared my tale, The Mystery Book, along with illustrative photos I took on the trip that inspired the story.
Henry said of the work, “In this story we’ll follow the narrator on a walk. But there’s a notable disparity between the passing of diegetic time and reading time. We’ll spend about two days following this walk that presumably took the narrator just a few hours.”
You can read the other Tar Press tales in their archive https://www.tarpress.co.uk/, including an excellent one by Tom Jenks. I have been on record saying twitter is something I am partially ashamed to engage with, but you have to try to make that which is corrosive bountiful, even if it’s inherently a failure, so good on Tar Press for doing what they do, and I was happy to be a part of it.
Here are six parts of a 20 something part story. You can read the whole story at www.stevenjfowler.com/themysterybook
A note on : Phone interview with Henry Johns of Tar Press
This chat was in aid of a new piece of short fiction being published with Tar Press, so editor Henry Johns phoned me up and we spoke. We spoke about lemon smell, axes, courses, warhammer and the story itself. Tar press publishes fiction on twitter, trying to do something good in a bad place. https://www.tarpress.co.uk/
Published : 4 poems from Aletta Ocean Alphabet Empire in Mercurius
My #poembrut vispo book Aletta Ocean's Alphabet Empire published with Hesterglock press in 2018 has 4 unpublished asemic / art poems now online at Mercurius, an online journal. https://www.mercurius.one/home/aletta-ocean-alphabet-empire
AOAE is available https://poembrut.bigcartel.com/product/aletta
The publication includes the essay featured in the book, on poetry, eroticism and pornography.
“You can never discover for yourself what you’ve been given. Bodies and knowledge, both. The primary purpose of this book is to worry about the division between the experienced and the perceived, and what is lost between that ever expanding gap.
Bataille suggests that you try to imagine yourself changing from the state you are in, to one in which your whole self is completely doubled. He means this to be a disturbance. He reminds us, you would not survive this process since the doubles you have turned into are essentially different from you. Each of these doubles is necessarily distinct from you as you are now, as while you’ve split into two new versions of yourself, you cannot be the same, twice over. A kind of procreation is what he is suggesting and the metaphor is about writing, I think. To mark the pages then release them is to indulge oneself, fundamentally, in a productive onanism. Cells dividing, with some of that division escaping you. No wonder it feels sad, a let down, to release things into the world.
At some event, I’m watching a panel of speakers talking about something banal. The title is specious, it’s designed to intrigue but not offend. It’s a turgid literary festival, stuffy and fake, but the panellists keep talking about sex. They are almost battling each other over it. It is awkward, and insistent, but not, perhaps, for the reasons they’d imagine. They are desperate to appear comfortable with the notion of sex and in so doing are opening a gap between themselves and sex itself. Gone is anything remotely evocative of the experience, from within, within consciousness. I do not believe them too, it is a falsehood which is designed to make the audience comfortable while appearing to be discomforting. Aletta flits across my mind, as I’m actively daydreaming an escape, and it occurs to me there seems nothing more unerotic than poets talking about sex. “
Published : Crayon Poems on Mercurius
Crayon Poems is the poetic equivalent of a cat gifting its owner a dead bird, only it’s done with greasy, gentle colours on the page. It is a gift you don’t want but should be grateful for. https://www.mercurius.one/home/crayon-poems
One of the highlights of the year, publishing my book CRAYON POEMS, with the brilliant Penteract Press. Thanks to Thomas Helm, over at Mercurius, a few more of the poems have been published online
A note on : Atomised by Robin Boothroyd
A brilliant new book of minimalist poetry has been ejected into the world thanks to Dan Power’s Trickhouse press. I was lucky enough to blurb it, below, and the book can be snapped here https://www.trickhousepress.com/product/-atomised-by-robin-boothroyd/2?cs=true
“Hey listen poetry is about language first and it's more artificial than speaking even. So if a poetry is reduced down to its atoms, small clusters of letters, single words and their slight variations, misspellings, mishearings, well that's important literary work. And hey listen Robin Boothroyd is not only able to do this, which is hard, because the smaller poems get the more every single tiny gesture is exposed, but he has done it with a humour which suggests a great emotional intelligence as well as a linguistic, poetical, intellectual one. Atomised is a concentrated gem of a book. It's Brain Eno and a whole whale. It's froth and sore eros. You'd be lucky to see it slowly!”
- SJ Fowler
Published : My essay, Adult Waste and Childish Wonder: On Writing Crayon Poems
https://periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2020/09/sj-fowler-adult-waste-and-childish.html
I tend to write essays for my poem brut books for a myriad of reasons. Initially, it was a sort of justification, knowing the work might seem intense / brutish / opaque to literary eyes, I knew that if I described the process, the reasoning, there would be some valuable context. I knew too that if I avoided the deep theory I’m allergic to then the essays would be more than bewildering apologia and allow me knowledge that might bode well for myself and my future work. Increasingly, the essays are for me. They allow me to understand what I’m doing and why, and they give me a structure in which to research purposefully.
This essays features in the back of my Crayon Poems book from Penteract Press https://penteractpress.com/store/crayon-poems-sj-fowler and has been generously published by Periodicities, a journal Rob Mclennan edits with great energy. An excerpt….
“Here is a formulation I would not say I believe, but have often thought of, making these works. If the crayon is for the child, and children are the most living of human beings, the most life orientated of us, being new, being closer to birth and further from death, and the crayon is their artist tool, evoking bio-matter, edibility, refuse, mulch, excrete, bodily colours and vegetation, then are crayon pictures not somewhat symbols of mortality? Otto Rank, given to me by Ernest Becker, suggests the primary trauma of life is birth (not the Oedipal Complex, causing Freud to cast Rank aside for this break in psychoanalytic dogma). Being birthed then begins our uncomfortable relationship with creatureliness. Going for a shit reminds us we were born and we will die. We are repulsed by the reminder, the smell of it, and the gushing of blood, popping spots etc.., and with good reason. These things are often, unlike their imitation in crayons, disease bearing. This is why, I believe, I was drawn to crayons to write poems, and that these poems became illustrations of deaths heads, dream animals, drowning faces, organ geometries, daft monsters and natural disasters. Things alive but not alive in the way the human mind thinks they are alive. Perfect for kids and a book which is a celebration of life.
If creatureliness drives the images of this book, then wonder drives the texts. In a sense, these ‘reminders’ that interest me so much, in my work and in all things, can be equated to wonder. They are the shock of realisation. Surprise. This may stretch beyond extreme emotions like love and near-death, into any kind of alive consciousness or moments of distinct knowing. These moments also evoke both our childhood, that process of constant discovery that masks the confusion of our adult lives, and our end, that we cannot imagine the world without us, in one moment. The shock of wonder, like the reminders of creatureliness, put us in time. They force us to realise, in that temporality, we are.”
Published : Anthology, Myth & Metamorphosis
Well happy to be in this brilliant anthology with a Rune concrete poem… Full-colour, Perfect-bound Paperback, 148x210mm, 56pp https://penteractpress.com/store/myth-amp-metamorphosis
“Myth & Metamorphosis” presents a collection of poems inspired by an array of ancient mythologies. The poetic styles on show are similarly varied, showcasing the breadth of contemporary formal poetry: constrained poetry, concrete poetry, erasure poetry, asemic poetry, found poetry, prose poetry, photo poetry, puzzle poetry, translated poetry, typewriter poetry, as well as original and traditional verse forms..
Featuring work by:
Merlina Acevedo, Sacha Archer, Gary Barwin, Gregory Betts, Christian Bök, Luke Bradford, Marian Christie, Franco Cortese, Clara Daneri, Lucy Dawkins, Anthony Etherin, Kyle Flemmer, SJ Fowler, Mary Frances, Greg Hill, MD Kerr, James Knight, Alex McKeown, Annie Morris, Ben North, Rachel Smith, Dani Spinosa, Alex Stevens, María Celina Val, and Martin Wakefield.