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 : Limbo screened at London Short Film Festival

This first screening of Limbo, Lotje Sodderland’s new short film which I co-wrote, was supposed to take place this January 2021 in the Curzon cinema, either in Soho or Mayfair. Unfortunately, not possible, and so the London Short Film Festival premiered it online, in a program of excellent shorts. Nice that the film has been aired once, and hopefully many more festivals to come.

Published: Worm Word, Old Oak - new short fiction with Sampson Low

This is the link, https://sampsonlow.co/2017/07/14/worm-wood-old-oak-sj-fowler/ why not visit this link and spend 3 english pounds on this limited edition edition?

My first piece of fiction published in some time, this limited edition chapbook from Sampson Low is part of my exhibition and residency at Kensal Green Cemetery Dissenter's Chapel and explores the role of the Developer as some sort of ambiguous agent for catastrophic change in contemporary London, referring to the Old Oak development in West London, just minutes from the cemetery and where I live, which will utterly level and 'modernise' the entire area and its history and community. www.stevenjfowler.com/wormwood

Sampson Low have been publishing since 1793 and under the editorial guidance of Alban Low are releasing some beautiful chapbooks with contemporary poets and writers. Worm wood old oak will be available to buy https://sampsonlow.co/ soon or at the reading on July 13th at Kensal Green Dissenter's Chapel.

Interview with the Double Negative magazine

Kind of a weird one... http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2014/08/the-glitch-interview-s-j-fowler/

The Glitch Interview: S. J. Fowler

C James Fagan throws the rule book out of the window for his interview with Syndrome’s latest resident artist, poet, performer, and muse, S. J. Fowler…

Syndrome is an event; it is a place where poetics, technology and movement meet. Tonight, Syndrome Sessions 2.1: CHOROS opens; the latest in a series of interactive installations, held, as always, at the micro Victorian warehouse 24 Kitchen Street, Liverpool.

But what does CHOROS mean? The closest Google can get is that choro is a ‘little cry’; Syndrome tells us that it is an environment created by Jamie Glendhill and Stefan Kazassoglou where bodily movements will be recorded and reproduced into electronic echoes.

“Into this space steps S. J. Fowler: poet, performer, master of the martial arts…It is, in his own words, “one of the most innovative and intensive pieces of performance art that I’ve ever undertaken”

If that weren’t enough, into this space steps S. J. Fowler: poet, performer, master of the martial arts. Who’ll be using CHOROS as a boxing ring, to perform a element of The Book Five Rings: a piece regarding the sport of western shadow boxing. Making the space his sparring partner, his pugilistic antagonist. The Ivan Drago to his Rocky. It is, in his own words, “one of the most innovative and intensive pieces of performance art that I’ve ever undertaken.”

Before he gets punch drunk, I approached S. J. Fowler to conduct a pre-match interview, in the style that Syndrome is most accustomed: glitch. That slippery art of electrical tomfoolery. These questions are taken randomly from other interviews, found exams, questionnaires, and personality tests.

What sound or noise do you love?

The word Osu. A Japanese word that means a lot of good things at once.

Spontaneity or stability?

Stability.

What do you prefer: Giving or Receiving?

Receiving.

If you were Santa Claus…

… I’d change the last answer.

Constants are changing.

Paradox.

Are there other ways to treat my condition?

Need more information. But yes, probably. Eat better, exercise, first port of call.

“‘Who are you and why?’ I don’t ever want to be able to answer that question”

What are your weaknesses?

I’m actively trying to seek them and work on them, but I must recognise they are perpetual and improving; one will create another. So whatever I give will be temporary. At the moment I still retain a quick temper based on a prideful and unnecessary sensitivity to rudeness and lack of perspective in other people.

Modes of Aberrant Research - next week at the Whitechapel Gallery

Very excited to be part of this event with brilliant artists, and I'll be reading my experimental story MueuM for the first time in public after it was White Review prize nominated this year.

Performances coming up this August at the Whitechapel Gallery Performance: Modes of Aberrant Research Thursday 7 August, 7pm  An evening of deviant anecdotes, radical storytelling and narrative segues through archives, collections and institutions. Through experimental fiction, multi-media performance and voice-driven texts, five artists and writers, including SJ Fowler, Patrick Coyle, Holly Pester and Kreider + O’Leary,  examine the subject’s status as agitator, witness and unwitting member of memory institutes.   £8.50 full price (£4.25 members price). Book now

The White Review Prize - MueuM nominated

http://www.thewhitereview.org/the-white-review-prize/

Really nice to be nominated for a prize I respect, that I entered in fact, so of course I respect, but specifically because it is doing the work that needs doing for the recognition of experimental short fiction. It's the only prize doing this really. The shortlist is really strong, Eley Williams and some really talented others on it, but its nice for me, if this is all it is, to have some recognition for my non-poetry. My work nominated, MueuM, is available to read in full online, link below

[ONLINE ONLY]

MUEUM

SJ Fowler

Since I have worked at the mueum I have published, and I have written 486 pems. I have seen people drawing freehand maps of accuracy been talked to like they are pieces of dogshit. I have seen shutters shuttered like windows in the face of so many wokers that all blinds have drawn into a darkness like an eclipse. I have witnessed rosetta stone backpacks, launchboxes of the great wave. I have seen prayer rug mousemats. I have been a witness of Commerce. I have been bystander to a five pound coffee. M is Muster, the passing od. You can get a sudden attack of nausea by staying too long in an art gallery as well. It must be some kind of illness – museumitis – unknown to medical science. Or could it be the air of death surrounding all things man-made, whether beautiful or ugly? (Gustav Heyrink) I have lists of people who were colleagues. The rise of the Temporary work in our century, and I have one avowed to those who are trapped in the hotbed of sexual discrimination and harassment because if they complain, to those inculcated with the ones making the advances, they can lose their work immediately, and without reason. Sweeps of the young like pograms, I remember them and make an effort to stay in touch. To have Grigor in shadow of men, a lunaticuntil moonlit then, a dwarf of melody, a celestial harmony, some tiny child model perfection below, a debut in the untertow. For not much. How young fashion students? Seen too robed; roof of the Nile, ark of the covenant, baby hercule as asp, a thesp, a guided tour of softcore smeared all over faces to make the time pass, for it is boring work.. In the endless dead hours of a dead work the sevens go to the tens, the fives to sevens, and you find yourself chasing them physically to express to them against yourself a desire to not only be bored but to be with them, when you are aloud to be so. And more shame for that because for the ones in charge, the honest, are the ones who will sack the girls if they don’t at least smile back. But am I was I a refuge or just blind that I was another of those unwelcome men when some person is trying to just pay their rent anymore? A witness of my record, 3 in a day. But which of those 3 is a life tired, to temper hard to soft, mean to kind? But always open pursed to me? Friends, there are shadows in any case. Even if the morass of the faceless are not looking into that case for an objett they’ve never heard of and will never remember. One cannot hide beneath head’s hair. I awoke from my nightmares with an erection, penetrated the sleeping Claire, went limp, and fell asleep again. (Peter Handke) ...............................

http://www.thewhitereview.org/fiction/mueum/