The Blue Bus

Thanks to everyone who came to see me read and who bought Red Museum, it was a lovely night. The normal room above the Lamb pub in Lambs conduit street had been double booked so we read out in the garden. It was interesting, eventually it worked out well, the heating vent adding character to the poetry.


Reading at the New Gallery Peckham


I decided to read some Taxidermy poems, about dead animals, rather than the piece in the Aspidistra magazine that was being launched. It was a lovely evening, my friend Chris Page came to keep me company as I knew no one in the room aside from the magazine editor, Bella, who did an amazing job. This was the first time I had ever been to Peckham, I think. It was nicer than most people's first visit to Peckham.


The work of Joel Ely was in the magazine and on exhibition in the gallery. It blew me away, we have subsequently begun a collaboration. Can't recommend his work enough. http://www.joelely.com/

Backstage at the Wigmore hall

I got to be the only poet to ever perform during the Voiceworks project (normally the poets write and the singers sing, but this time the composer had me reading as well as the singers singing) and so I got to hang out in the performers dressing room awaiting the final performance at WIgmore hall. It was a once in a lifetime experience, to be in a dressing room that only classical singers get to inhabit, being a poet. The status of the Wigmore hall to the singers and musicians was clear and the atmosphere backstage was utterly unique and captivating to me, as it was completely alien to anything I had done before.

My status as a visitor, a tourist, is what made it feel like a holiday. I watched a lot. Lucy hums the same buzzing insect lullaby for hours to warm up, she is going to the Algarve mountains with friends soon after this, hoping not to be butchered in the Portuguese hills. She has a golf club for protection. Vocalisation exercises and instrument warm ups mean nothing can be heard. Everyone is so nervous. No one is close to cracking at all though. A girl has a huge red flower on the strap of his burgundy dress. It is gross but fitting. She has a tiny waist.

There was a last minute panic before we exited onto the stage, the stopwatch is forgotten. Lucy goes mad, Hadleigh is smiling at this. Lucy leaps to the top of the stairs shouting Pete, over and again. She returns laughing a little bit. We are opening the evening. Maybe 100 or more people await but the place seems smaller than I had imagined.

We return back to the dressing room, all has gone well and I can truly relax and enjoy the others fear. A singer smells so nice as she brushes past me, it disturbs. Two female violinists help each other with zipping. I’ve never studied at a music school but in the dressing room I miss my brief visits to the Guildhall this year.

They ask us to tidy up after ourselves, to leave no trace of our being there, as professionally famous musicians are following us in for a performance later in the evening. Half full imposition, no one minds.Everyone still saying how do you feel, it went ok, ok. I take pictures to document the experience but they are poor quality. I don’t belong in the room, as a poet. It has something to do with discipline. I have little of that compared to them.

» Maintenant #61: Marcus Slease


Though the Maintenant series tries not to overstate the importance of the poet’s origin, practicality alone demands an attempt to show the range of European poetries with a representative range of nations. However in actually seeking out those poets creating exciting, original, genuinely evolutionary work, we find many cannot be tied to one single nation – they are migratory, multi-lingual – pan-European if not pan-global. Marcus Slease fits this archetype more than most. By birth he stands as the first Northern Irish poet to feature in our series. However by experience he is a poet of England, America, Poland, Italy, Turkey. Unsurprisingly he is an adroit and worldly writer, defined by his ability to remain elastic and fluid, and utterly unpretentious in his idiom, and yet fulfilling and resonant in his tone. His poetics are extremely contemporary, and yet they seem to maintain the confidence and solidity of time past. A major feature of the current London scene, we are pleased to introduce Marcus Slease as the 61st edition of Maintenant.
Accompanying the interview are six of Marcus' poems.



{Maintenant Slovakia in association with Literature across Frontiers & Arc Publications}
June Saturday 18th 2011 - 7pm - Entrance Free - The Rich Mix arts centre. London
Ivan Štrpka - Mila Haugova - Marcus Slease
Tamarin Norwood - Jonty Tiplady - Colin Herd ...
Slovak poets Ivan Štrpka and Mila Haugova will be joined by a half dozen London-based poets to celebrate the sixth event in the Maintenant series held at the Rich Mix arts centre in London's Brick Lane. As ever, the Maintenant series will advocate a diverse selection of poetic methodologies, ages & nationalities - collecting together some of the most interesting poets Europe has to offer. Further details to follow...

» Maintenant #60: Luljeta Lleshanaku


It is hard to make a case against Luljeta Lleshanaku being the greatest Albanian poet of the modern era. Such is the measure of her work, and her repute across Europe and America. Her poetry reflects her marked humility and reverence for the written word, utterly unique and yet universal in a way that belies the overuse of that concept. Though a child of political exile and marginalization, let alone physical danger, her work remains dignified and singular, and nor does she allow her poetry to be dominated by the issues of her nation, of it’s politics and history. She is a voice that would be recognized as truly poetic in any language, in any setting and this perhaps her most remarkable achievement. A winner of the International Kristal Vilenica prize (following the likes of Peter Handke, Zbigniew Herbert & Milan Kundera) it is wonderful to announce her first work published in the UK will be released this September with Bloodaxe Books, already a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation, and she will be attending this year’s Aldeburgh poetry festival in November . It is honour to introduce the 60th edition of Maintenant, a pioneer of Balkan poetry and a rightfully major figure in the current European poetry landscape.

News for May

Performances upcoming at the Guildhall school of Music on May 13th and at the venerable Wigmore Hall http://www.wigmore-hall.org.uk/ on May 26th as the culmination of the Voiceworks project

 an e-poetry postcard published by Infinite Editions here, Jack Dempsey is it's name
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SJ Fowler book launch at the Blue Bus
Red Museum with Knives, Forks & Spoons press
April Tuesday 19th 7.30pm
at The Lamb, 94 Lamb’s Conduit Street, London WC1N 3LZ
'A tremendous and persuasive surge of the red and the black: conflicted doctrines, scorched paper. Gothic scripts and plague-year screenplays for an apocalyptic cinema. Death chess. Heretical crusades. Hurt flesh. Fire angels. Madness. A grimoire for a haunted river-city. The poetry lies in the interpretation of malfated woodcuts. It is sinewy, knotted, persistent. And true.'
Iain Sinclair

also to be released, the chapbooks:
Fights XIX: Johnny Tapia with Oystercatcher press www.oystercatcherpress.com
Fights XX: the Songs of Salvador Sánchez with the Red Ceilings press www.theredceilingspress.co.uk

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new issue of Sein und Werden, poems both in the print & ezine issuesbuy the print magazine here http://www.kissthewitch.co.uk/seinundwerden/print.html
read "If one of us is to be confounded..." here
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the poem {Gallery} is featured in the magazine Psychic meatloaf. it can be bought here
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featured on Resonance's FM: The thread radio show, on the panel for the How to Throw a Punch boxing themed evening of discussion and chat. On the panel with the authoritative and knowledgeable Kasia Boddy & Lynda Nead. Features a short reading from Arthur Abraham toohttp://thethreadradio.org/?page_id=370
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this Guardian video of Saturday's protest features me reading for art uncut outside of BHS on Oxford Street at the 6.45 mark

the full reading on Oxford Street as part of the Art uncut occupation of British Home Stores (BHS) on March 26th 2011. The peaceful art installation protest was moved to the street after beginning in the store. This event was part of the protests against government cuts to which half a million people attended in London

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Aspidistra magazine launches it's latest podcast. The recordings features a reading of one of my fights cycles Tomas Adamek, more about Polish poetry and it's influence than about boxing, but still. Thanks to Bella Dear & Edith Bergfors

"Join the artist Emma Leach in a discourse on detection, poet Steven Fowler as he presents a round of haunting works on the subject of Tomasz Adamek, enjoy the dulcet tones of Matthew Emery and a thorough undressing by Rosanna Mclaughlin"
www.cargocollective.com/aspidistra#1193840/Podcast
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Fighting Cocks - the beginnings of a collaboration with RDG Thomas

Fighting Cocks


#

they are trying to break you

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you are like a plastic bag blowing in the wind

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until I get caught on you, you big barbed wire fence. Together we are urban pollution

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you pollute me with your magic. Where did you learn such devilment?

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I am a gigantic dark vessel, those who embark will not regret

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I heed your warning. I take note of both size and colour. There are Jurassic park-esque tremors in my gallery. Is that you, travelling?

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I travel through concrete like a worm, like the popular film tremors. I’m never far from the action.

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All teenage French girls have good quality cameras to record their blossoming sexuality. It will in fact document their deflowering.

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As you spread the young French girls legs you should bellow “Agincourt” at their soon to be taken flower!

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It is not I who will work the foliage. It is thou! Worm devourer, I hold them as sacrifice for your bored worming revelation

Writers Forum

Writers Forum - new series

Saturday 12th February, 4 - 6pm (arrive at 3.30pm)

Saturday 12th March, 4 - 6pm (arrive at 3.30pm)

Please note, to avoid confusion, this is Writers Forum - new series, not Writers Forum run by Lawrence Upton

William IV, 7 Shepherdess Walk, London N1 7QE

Admission is free

Five poems for Deakin University Journal - Windmills


These five poems are to appear in Windmills Issue #5, thanks to Alyson Miller at Deakin University who publish the journal from Australia. They are part of a series I have been working on the theme of the Natural History Taxidermy museum in Tring
http://www.deakin.edu.au/arts-ed/communication/literary/words-at-deakin/

(Allenopithecus nigroviridis)

the Allen's Swamp Monkey

I wet my bed
I made not my father proud
even my mother would wince
when I tried to swing
from tree to tree

I have only known alone
now is no different
that is why I killed that child
pulled its arms off
I did that okay, didn’t I?

I’ll drink your blood
as though it were wine
the policeman is my uncle
dance around your own bones
dig your own monkey grave




(Steggr)

the Stag

a rattle whittled from an antler
the animal had fallen by the
dead of starvation
the brown needle nittle
could be hewn or settled
with string or gut from the same carcass
instead it was placed point-first
beneath the fingernail of Ivan
and edged beneath
tick by tick
until he shared his secret
of fainted from the pain
we learned which herbs were poison
which rivers ran north
we learned the lathe of magnetism
and salves
made of mud and roots rotting
put to use as glue
to replace a fingernail, severed
now black in water’s blue





(Galago)

the Bush Baby

read my report
I am unafraid
we both know fear of death
controls you and not I

accusations of financial impropriety
reflect more succinctly
your desperation
than my bad book-keeping

I live where you visit
and in that space I thrive
treeless
glass lines the floor
here I have children with myself









(Aries Ovis)

the Ram

it is not unfortunate
that I am associated with lust
paramound
is shamelessness
in the steady cold

protrusions become intrusions
and then, suddenly
progeny are legion
then they become forgetful
of the sack, the funk

Vico knew Cyprus
as the Templars knew Malta
he spoke of corpse
as others speak of ‘sleep’
and I listen still
and rut





(Apteryx)

the Kiwi bird

I once had work

I repaired Cacti
using cotton

should thirst hack
from a flower its time
depriving it of it’s corded
bee
they would call me

I would gut the fruit
pickle its inner walls
a fix it an exoskeleton
of teeth and chickenwire
and brim it with tumblecotton
then I would sell it at markets
to pilgrims and lost lovers

a possession
for the dispossessed
of all but the forlorniest of hopes
as I am now

Samuel Twardowski

then, flying from the town

that stupid child, dimpled with deep renown

came to a river banked by graceful trees

he chose a myrtle from among all these

and hanged himself. the branch above him bent

the rich cord tightened. Gold haired and innocent

his head bobbed heavy as a poppy pod

Ramon Buenaventura

leave my corpse

to whomever wishes to burn it:

make an end

to the life we’ve made

warm my memory

and die gracefully

when you wish to

youth, in some way

redeems mediocrity

in the United states importance is only granted to best selling writers (the rest are part of an indispensable mudhole over which statues are erected). As for the french, all french writers are important. In England there are no writers of any importance to anyone: letters keep a safe distance away from the pub. In spain, before discussing weighty matters, it would be a good idea to explain to the people what a writer is. Above all to the professors, and the fleshy critics.

Takis Papatsonis

before the advent

I feel myself to be a man disgraced

great shall his reward be who without hesitation admits

the likelihood of error in every day of his existence

more wretched than the wretched hour is to measure it.

let is pass by unmeasured

and, if you find this at all possible, without leaving its traces.

William Hazlitt

to think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom

those who are the most distrustful of themselves, are the most envious of others; as the most weak and cowardly are the most revengeful

Marina Tsvetayeva

they blow themselves up with pettiness

as if they were swaying with drink

for such gentlemen what

is the sunset or the sunrise?

They swallow emptiness,

these readers of newspapers

Look, friends much

stronger than in these lines, do

I think this, when with

a manuscript in hand

I stand before the face

there is no emptier place

than before the absent

face of an editor of news

papers’ evil filth