Published: Oxford Brookes Poem of Week : Snow Bunting bay bay

Well nice of Oxford Brookes poetry centre at the University to publish my poem Snow Bunting as their weekly poem. The poem was commissioned for the amazing Birdbook 4 anthology from Sidekick Books, who are equally brilliant publishers. http://www.brookes.ac.uk/poetry-centre/weekly-poem/weekly-poem-for-21-february-2017/ I put a good bio on this one

SJ Fowler is a poet and artist. He has published five collections of poetry and been commissioned by Tate Modern, BBC Radio 3, The British Council, Tate Britain and Wellcome Collection. He is the poetry editor of 3am magazine, Lecturer at Kingston University, teaches at Tate Modern and is the curator of the Enemies project. He is a high functioning vegan bear, befriends birds and will protect their eggs with electric technologies. Currently he is writing an autobiography of the famous Hyde Park Mud Crow. Find out more about his work on his website.

Notes from Sidekick Books: With this poem we continue our selection of poems from Sidekick Books’ four volumes of Birdbooks. In 2009, with two micro-compendiums under their belt, Kirsten Irving and Jon Stone, the editors at Sidekick, discussed the idea of a book of bird poetry – but one in which less well known species were on equal terms with the popular ones. There are dozens of poems about herons, eagles, ravens and nightingales, not so many about the whimbrel, the ruff, the widgeon or the hobby. Paper-cut artist Lois Cordelia was recruited to give the series its distinctive covers, and over 150 artists and illustrators were commissioned over six years to complete the series. The first volume is now in its second printing. Find out more about the Birdbook series on theSidekick website.

Published: Birdbook: Saltwater and Shore anthology from Sidekick Books

I'm very pleased to have two poems (on the razorbill and the snow bunting) in the latest Birdbook from Sidekick Books, entitled Saltwater and Shore, edited by Kirsten Irving and Jon Stone (£12.00 + postage, September 2016, 140pp) 
http://www.sidekickbooks.com/birdbookiv.php

Saltwater and Shore is the final volume of Sidekick’s wildly ambitious Birdbook series – a collaborative alternative ornothopedia where every species gets equal billing. This time we find ourselves flung beyond the limits of the island, before being gathered in again at its outcrops, outposts, briny mouths and sandy fringes, where well-established stars like the puffin jostle with the lesser-known knot, scaup and razorbill, the whimbrel, spoonbill and turnstone. It’s a bustling, polyphonic cliffside colony of a book, a multitude of individual voices and dynamic images poised to spill into the air and take flight in the willing imagination.

Featuring poems by friends including Annabel Banks, Vahni Capildeo, Holly Corfield Carr, Rishi Dastadar, Sasha Dugdale, Harry Giles, Kirsten Irving, Jon Stone, David Tait, Kate Wakeling

Reading at the launch of Coin Opera 2

I was very privileged to feature in the magical Coin Opera 2 anthology of video game poetry edited by Kirsty Irving and Jon Stone and their always beautifully rendered Sidekick books. Not only was the anthology full of great poets and poems but the whole enterprise felt fresh and valuable to me, this is what anthologies should be about, not a taxonomy but a commission, a chance for new work and collective community. I was even happier to get to read at the launch, held upstairs at the Four Quarters bar in Peckham, essentially the loft room of a fully functioning arcade. Pretty grand stuff. 

Do buy the book here http://www.drfulminare.com/coinoperaii.php Here's my wee reading.