A note on: Poetry School Camarade - July 16th & 17th 2016

A wonderful opportunity for me to work with the Poetry School again coming up this July (all the details on my other courses here) but this time in a unique format, one that suits how I like to share ideas, and specifically, in this case, what I've learnt about collaboration through the 100 or so collaborations I've done and over 200 collaborative events I've curated.

It's a weekend course, kindly hosted by Rich Mix near Brick Lane, which will finish with a Camarade reading featuring those on the course, in pairs, and other poets connected to the Poetry School (which is a grand list). It means not only do I get to contextualise the theory behind collaborations, and to explore its history in poetry, and the methodologies consequent from these two things, but I get to do so immersively, and with a definite, practical goal - the reading.

I think it'll produce some wonderful works and I hope, for those who participate, be a real locus for a whole new world of writing poetry across mediums and with other fellow poets.

Book here: http://www.poetryschool.com/courses-workshops/face-to-face/the-poetry-school-camarade.php

More details www.theenemiesproject.com/poetryschool

Saturday’s July 16th 2016 workshop

1pm – Introduction to the possible methods of collaboration in poetry and text.
2.30pm – Facilitated group writing exercises and practise performances.
3.30pm – Facilitated breakout sessions for collaborations in pairs.
5pm – Group discussion on the process, final pairs confirmed and feedback.

Featuring a discussion of the philosophies behind collaborative writing, the diffusion of the poet’s identity in collaboration and the consequences of that for solo writing. Extended explorations of the notion of the reading versus the performance, group writing, conceptual writing, constraint writing, improvisation and more literary methods like line-to-line and stanza-to-stanza. Features both talks, discussions and exercises.

Sunday’s July 17th workshop

1pm – The history of collaboration in poetry featuring source materials provided to the participants, covering a selection of salient examples from 20th century poetry, including movements like the Surrealists, CoBrA, The Beats and assorted examples from the likes of Ian Hamilton Finlay and John Furnival, Ron King and Roy Fisher, Anne Waldman and Joe Brainard.

2.30pm – An analysis of a host of collaborative performances from The Enemies Project video archive with footage screening and discussion.

4pm – Facilitated rehearsal of group collaborations and final paired works, with feedback.

Published: 2 limited editions released in March: Tractography (Pyramid Editions) & 40 Feet (Knives Forks & Spoons press)

Very pleased to see two new publications emerge in March. 

Tractography is the first of a new series of poems, called Neurocantos, and is launched in a boutique limited edition by Pyramid Editions, edited by Owen Vince. The poem is partially built from the words of a paper by the neuroscientist Daniel Margulies. http://pyramideditions.co.uk/

40 Feet, written with David Berridge is to be launched at the Essex Book Festival Camarade, on March 20th 2016, 40 Feet is published by Knives Forks and Spoons press. http://knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/ 

40 Feet is a poem in dialogue. 40 poems as 40 moments, 40 fragments, 40 conversation starters / enders. It is a poem deliberately broken, misheard, overheard and overlapping. It is a record of meeting, writing, witnessing; mulching and reflecting London in 2013, where both poets lived and frequently met. 40 Feet is the events of that time and the character of that place, fixed in the subjective, the miniature, the specific - through an open-ended poetics of expression and conversation. 

An excerpt featured in Enemies: the selected collaborations of SJ Fowler (2013) and is now published in it's entirety by Knives, Forks & Spoons press. And you can read more about David's work herehttp://verysmallkitchen.com/ 

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Gorse no.2

It is particularly appropriate the 2nd issue of the extraordinarily well edited and well produced Gorse journal should land as I find myself touring island, awaiting its felt in my hands as a heavy lexus draws me from Derry to Galway and Galway to Cork. I'm very happy to have more work in the magazine, this time three of my runic poems, concrete experiments in runology and disjunction.
read all the contents here http://gorse.ie/ and buy the journal, it is one of the very best you can, while you can. Dylan Brennan, Lies Van Gasse, Rob Doyle, Alan Cunningham, Susan Tomaselli and many others in there. I hope to hold it in Dublin in just a few days time

2 poems in the Quietus

http://thequietus.com/articles/14302-two-poems-by-sj-fowler

Two Poems By: SJ Fowler 
Karl Smith , January 26th, 2014 08:24

New writing this week comes via interdisciplinary polymath artist, poet and editor SJ Fowler
SJ Fowler is a poet, artist, martial artist & vanguardist. He works in the modernist and avant garde traditions, across poetry, fiction, sonic art, visual art, installation and performance.
He has published five books, the latest, Enemies, published by Penned in the Margins, and has been commissioned by the Tate, Mercy, Penned in the Margins and the London Sinfonietta. He is the poetry editor of 3am magazine and is the curator of the Enemies project.
The liver fluke cometh
though I'm dead & so very game from you
there are tugs on the seastrings running from the sea
stitched gut goggles to swim through in order you
inherit the next breathing please on in
to the next so I'm still keen as a mountain
as quick up as quiet falling off wood bars between
two quiet high points in space shuffling
rivalling the tory in the actual event, the manmade
is fielded with fat burs & begins to crank until stop
the liver fluke cometh, pack the ready bags

Though it hasn't gone very well
pity gutted in the hotel built on a wall
& though it hasn't gone very well I am afraid
if I go out my tail will freeze in pre-penicillin
wars with crows cawing in the forests
were this the past where the male version
& the not born children should elicit sympathy
sad I am to not remember that perfect line
for this poem that I had dreamed oh well
on with the end of the german basics
the lean to a spider you are afraid to become

the rumbling on the cliffs for another year of Enemies

Plans are really starting to grow for Enemies year two. Whether or not they come to fruition as I hope they will is another story, but for now, some exciting possibilities developing with Danish, Slovakian, Kiwi, Mexican and maybe Swiss poets, as well as possible partnership with Like Starlings, the Poetry Library, Chelsea college of art, maybe an art writing tour, maybe a Scottish thing. I feel a trenchant need to not stay still in the form and shape of poetry events and project, they have to keep changing and I feel ambitious that 2014 can be a year where this really happens in a groundbreaking way. We'll see. If I'm still in England then I hope it happens. Part of that year will also be a partnership with Knives forks and spoons press, one of the most dynamic publishing initiatives that the UK has ever seen for avant garde poetry. We are lucky to have them around, and the Enemies project is very lucky that they will be publishing 3 to 5 new books around our endeavours.