Володимир Білик (Volodymyr Bilyk) - a statement & collaborations

Very proud to call Volodymyr Bilyk a collaborator. Undoubtedly a pioneer in avant garde Ukrainian poetry, one of the finest visual and minimalist poets working in the world right now, I published some of his work on 3am, www.3ammagazine.com/3am/volodymyr-bilyk and since then we've been exchanging collaborative works, lo-fi jpeg poems. I've included two of our exchanges below. Recently, in the midst of the injustice violently overtaking the Ukraine, which he and his people refuse to stand for, he released this statement, recently translated into English. 
"At the present moment our language is on the long and winding road to simplification, abbreviation and restriction of itself. Language itself is turning away from expressing the things to bare notification of the objects. Instead of sense-concentration we got informal hollow. We got everything but the essence. Ain't that a shame? Not exactly, but you can hear Screaming Trees for Vengeance and the horde of the blots giving birth to the blobs.

Short and simple messages are not bad at all. It can be understood in the matter of seconds and almost without an effort. But it works only in terms of communication. When you're exploring something - there's no way to be short and simple - you have to exhaust the thing.

But what's wrong with expression today? Nothing, it's ok. Nobody believes it. It's too dangerous and unpredictable. It can be provoked but can't be fully controlled. And we're making safe and stable unnatural world where any stroke of nature is marginalized for its own good - mostly as a possible threat. But we have to realize that the only thing left for us in this Brave New World - is swinging the chain. I don't think we have to agree with that.

Conceptual writing and concrete poetry can bring some fun. But are we here to have some fun for ourselves or are we here to bring some horror to the eyes and ears and hearts of the beholders? Matter of choice, question of time. Let's quote Mr.Pop and The Stooges - "No Fun" and let us quote Mr.Lydon and Sex Pistols - "No Future".  Or let us use other quotes from them - "We Will Fall" and "We don't care". And don't forget to sing-along "Ball of confusion - that's what the world of today!". 

Simonides of Ceos once said "Painting is silent poetry, and poetry painting that speaks." - so we're up to let the beast out of the cage and to keep the nerve. We must remember that "Music helps to ease the pain" - to quote Mr.Waters and Pink Floyd. We must remember that "Anger is Holy". If not - we're lost.

Key to joy is disobedience. So why do we disobey all those common rules and guidelines? In order to be seen and read and heard? But why we fill it with greed and cowardice and shame? Is that what we're fighting for with all these orthodoxes and new-born-again conservatives? Or fight because we want to make difference? 
Power to Imagination."

Gorse issue #1 arrives


This is an extraordinary journal, the production value is breathtaking, removing it from the package it really strikes one as a wholly considered and serious arrival on the avant garde literature scene. It has the feel of something that might be remembered as a moment. Great credit goes to Susan Tomaselli and the team in Dublin, the contributors are all remarkable, but especially nice to be the only poetry in the magazine alongside Colin Herd. 

TŘYIE

Olga Peková - Zuzana Husárová - SJ Bearface
Very happy to announce the formation of the TŘYIE collective, an enterprise of electronic / performative / avant garde poetry across Europe, a stretch from London to Prague to Bratislava. It's an opportunity to root myself in a wholly new aesthetic, both formally, because of the expertise of Zuzana and Olga, and the brilliance of their practise, but also aesthetically - the dynamic of gender, of language, of approach in general should completely revitalise much of what I fall back upon when performing, which is endemically masculine I suppose. There should be a measure of trickiness, of wryness that comes through, and if anyone has watched the performances of Zuzana and Olga, then their ability to drag from the past the best of European avant garde history while being wholly considered in the most contemporary of ways, is the quality that is unmissable, and that I hope to leach from. Our performances this year, probably:

Prague Microfest on May 13th - London, Rich mix theatre October - Bratislava, Ars Poetics October

some brilliant new poets up on 3am magazine

One year to the day of Anselm Hollo's death

One year anniversary of the death of the great Anselm Hollo today. My tribute to him on  http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/anselm-hollo-1934-2013/  Really hard to imagine its been an entire since this happened. It completely transformed my awareness of my own writing, the poetry I read and in many ways my place in navigating this city. I poured over his works for many months afterwards, and gave his books as gifts just as much. The last reading Anselm Hollo gave, at my event in Bloomsbury, London 2012
Here's a link to my poem 'Wormwood Scrubs' dedicated to Anselm Hollo, published by Exquisite Corpse magazine http://www.corpse.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=710&Itemid=32 & Im also very proud that all that reading bore fruit into actual poetry, and my collection with upcoming this year features lots of homage to Anselm, there are numerous epigraphs of his amongst other less obvious touches I owe to his work.

This extraordinary message was sent around today by Anselm's widow Jane http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/anselmhollo The post has some beautiful images too.

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

Knowing your Enemies by David Berridge

http://davidberridge.wordpress.com/2014/01/15/knowing-your-enemies-thoughts-on-thoughts-about-collaboration/

"Over at Sabotage Reviews David Clarke has written a fascinating review of Enemies: The Selected Collaborations of SJ Fowler. Drawing on Bakhtin’s arguments around the dialogic text Clarke (as I understand it) argues that the dialogic elements are actually most evident in texts that refuse a clear sense of who wrote what, maybe even of form and subject. Without this certainty, the reader has to get involved, and the possibility of the text as a multiplicity of possible and actual voices emerges.

I found myself relating Clarke’s ideas to some of the decisions Steve and myself have been making regarding the book form of our collaboration, forty feet, an extract from which appears in the Enemies book. Something of the process Clarke describes has been evident in our ongoing and changing decisions about how to arrange the text on the page, what kinds of sections and designation to give the writing, to what extent the text should indicate the presence of two authors, and/or a more general process of exchange and response by which the book’s writing unfolded.

Originally our text had forty distinct sections, in which we took turns as author. Although we never had a manuscript that named our respective contributions one early idea was to have two distinct fonts for our respective writings. For the extract in the Penned in the Margins book, sections were cut up, placed in columns, our separate contributions mashed one to the other. I thought the book might take this further, but instead it seemed right to go back to 40 numbered sections, although now those numbers broke up some our existing sections, whilst the text itself no longer had each section starting neatly on a new page.
cyril-connollyCyril Connolly Enemies of Promise (1): Getting Blocked in By Your Own Book Collection

Reading what we have now, I no longer know who wrote what. This isn’t entirely true, of course, but there are specific lines and sections where I mean this literally, and the whole text has moved, in my reading of it, beyond that sense of two alternating voices as its organising principle. This unknowing in the face of my/ our own text made me think of Maurice Blanchot’s comment about the text that removes itself from its author. I could only remember Blanchot’s view in these most general of terms so I went back to The Space of Literature and read on page 24:
The writer cannot abide near the work. He can only write it; he can, once it is written, only discern its approach in the abrupt Noli me legere which moves him away, which sets him apart or which obliges him to go back to that “separation” which he first entered in order to become attuned to what he had had to write. So that now he finds himself as if at the beginning of his task again and discovers again the proximity, the errant intimacy of the outside from which he could not make an abode.
All I have said here, of course, is from the writer’s point of view. Clarke’s review focuses on the experience of reader and reading and how the knowledge that a text is a collaboration (more particularly in the case of Enemies: some sort of couple) relates to the sense of voice, location and exchange that is  named or intuited by that reader in the text’s form and content. The (currently) final version we have made of forty feet seems one where writer and reader find some sort of equivalence.

One other point that I found useful in Clarke’s review was his sense of why the book – and Steve’s collaborations project as a whole – should be called Enemies, a title I realised I had responded to primarily as a provocation that cleared away a certain complacency about what might be involved and at stake. For Clark, again, it is best understood through how we read:
His collaborations are not friendly: neither in the sense of seeking to arrive at a position of harmony between those producing the work, nor in the sense that a finished artistic product offers the reader any easy answers. In fact, these collaborations are the opposite of a ‘finished’ product: they remain open to a dialogue with the reader, indeed to many dialogues (as in many re-readings) with the reader.
Steven’s own introduction to Enemies can be seen here. Forty Feet will be out soon from Knives Forks and Spoons Press.

on Enemies by Christodoulos Makris

http://yesbutisitpoetry.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/on-sj-fowlers-enemies.html 


"On SJ Fowler's Enemies

It wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to say that SJ Fowler has charged the poetry scene in London (and elsewhere) with a fresh vitality. Since he entered the ring of writing, editing and, particularly, event-organising some years ago, the diverse factions that poetry habitually splinters into seem to have converged that little bit. The scene(s) have brightened that little bit. It's probably for his relentless curatorial efforts that he is known best - for Steven a worthy and totally valid way to grapple with poetry. The byproduct being that he has created fertile ground for those working under the umbrella of avant-garde and literary writing to begin conversing anew.

His poetics, residing squarely in the avant-garde, are not altogether distinct from his role as event organiser. Enemies, his recently-published book from Penned In The Margins, which collects extracts from his numerous collaborations, is a comprehensive statement on his perspective on writing. Benefiting from coming to poetry on the back of what are on the surface unrelated longstanding concerns, Steven's nonlinear and outward-looking approach offers a route out of the insularity typifying much of it. It punches a hole through poetry's preciousness. His commitment to collaborative practices is also a way out: out of the poetic ego - as he writes in his introduction to Enemies, "a testament to my refusing to be alone in the creative act." It's also a "record of friendships." Steven refuses to see writing as a way of separating himself from other people, whether these people are fellow artists or readers/audience.

His numerous collaborators over the years, some featured in Enemiessome not, range from poets to visual artists to photographers, musicians, illustrators, sculptors, filmmakers... He strays not only from English (linguistic & national) territories but also from accepted literary patterns of expression in order to seek appropriate modes for a confluence of form and content - in what seems to me an attempt to get closer to something crucial. There's a healthy lack of respect for convention; at the same time there's deep respect for the avant-garde tradition. He is frighteningly prolific. The seemingly inexhaustible energy he pours into arranging events - the list seems to be lengthening year on year - to showcase the work of so many of his contemporaries and forerunners in experimental poetics, and to encourage innovation with processes of composition, is also evident in his publishing endeavours. Humility and generosity are recurring themes. The quickness of mind he displays on stage, whether in the role of producer or performer, is a vital element of his writing. Fretting about inserting the right word at the right place seems not of overriding importance or interest: if an element doesn't materialise at the primal compositional stage then there's probably no reason for it to be there at all. In this sense, his work is as close as you will get to live literature on the page - and the results are incisive, exhilarating and bursting with potentiality. The key lies at the pre-compositonal stage: already pregnant with a conceptual turn, and with a mind in perpetual take-and-give-back-in-spades mode, the act of writing becomes, in Steven's work as much as anybody else's, the content itself. This is at the core of what we get and what's inspiring in this book of collaborations, as has also been the case with previous books like Minimum Security Prison Dentistry or Fights.

Since he wrote to me a few years ago seeking to feature my work in his 'Maintenant' series for 3:AM Magazine, Steven and I have worked together several times (apart from one or two occasions, our relationship consisting of him showcasing or promoting my work...) so much so that on greeting me at the book's launch the publisher ofEnemies congratulated me on being part of it, which I'm not. "Probably better off not being associated with me," according to Steve! Nevertheless, plans are afoot for us to work together as curatorial partners and, in extension, as writers: in Yes But Are We Enemies?, part of the 2014 programme of Steven's extraordinaryEnemies Project, we will be bringing poets in/from Ireland together with poets in/from England to produce and perform new work in rolling cross-border collaboration. Format, dates, venues and participants TBC. Watch this space."

Simon Howard 1960-2013

I just heard, a month after the fact, that the poet Simon Howard died in December last year. Unlike recently departed poets whom I knew, even if briefly, like James Harvey and Anselm Hollo, I cannot say of Simon that we ever met, or even came into close contact. We did correspond, as I tend to try to do with anyone whose writing seems to maintain the erudition and innovation that Simon's did, and our writing itself crossed over more than a few times, sharing space on the lists of presses and zines that often define the community of British vanguard poetry in the 21st century. 

 What bonded me closest to Simon was his engagement with music, classical music you'd say (if you knew little about it, as I do) and the fact that his incredible expertise in that field had brought him close to many contemporary British composers and musicologists, and had led his poetry being brought to music by Philip Venables, before Philip and I worked together extensively for the London Sinfonietta's blue touch paper project. Simon's work, and his expertise, and his genuine brilliance in this ever challenging collaborative realm, was always on my shoulder somewhat, as a spur, or an inspiration. 

 Simon was very close to others I'm proud to call my friends, Mark Cobley, Richard Barrett amongst them, but to me, his presence was defined by his poetry and not his corporeality. In a time where mystery is an almost impossibility, when writing is often defined first by its psychology, its explanation, in the form of the human who has produced it, Simon was absent, defined wholly by his poetry and the vacuum of all else. Naturally this led me to respect that decision, to wonder, but also, frankly, to overlook his work at times. Reconsulting his output over the last week, I have come to rue that decision. Such is the speed of life. 

 His books from Oystercatcher http://www.oystercatcherpress.com/books.html The Red Ceilings http://www.theredceilingspress.co.uk/chaps13.html and the remarkable Numbers from http://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/numbers.html and you can find much of his work on his brilliant blog http://walkingintheceiling.blogspot.co.uk/, the last poem he published, just two months ago, sits, waiting for you to read it. 

 I know nothing of the details of his life or his death, only of his work and his interests. I will do my best to keep it this way, sad to have lost a voice like his. We actually wrote together once, for his brilliant Plus-que-parfait project, put together by him and Emily Howard and Mark Cobley. Here is Linguistically Fluent in Targoviste, a deluge that will now stand as a personal testament, for what my memories of him through his poetry, are worth http://plusqueparfaitblogspotcom.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/linguistically-fluent-in-targoviste.html

WEDNESDAY, 9 FEBRUARY 2011

... linguistically fluent in Targoviste


I hate it when you get angry with me.......

Euro Literature Network & discovering Peirene Press

I had an immense time visiting, and speaking, at the extraordinary Euro Lit network meeting at the Freeword centre, organised by Rosie Goldsmith this past week. Honestly feeling as though, in the best way possible, a lot of my curatorial activities are best served by a singular vision, where collaborations emanate from my approaches, this evening, the brilliance of the other organisers who attended and their generosity of spirit, made me think there is so much to gain from sharing resources and projects and ideas laterally, with those already well established in this field. Rosie Goldsmith is an immense centre to this activity, and I really feel great optimism to what seems the start of many friendships and relationships with people who represent presses, festivals, venues and so forth. http://eurolitnet.wordpress.com/

 One of the most distinct, of a very many brilliant presses in attendance (those like Arc I have worked with before), was Peirene press and the work of Meike Ziervogel, whose own work is very interesting (http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/sep/30/not-booker-magda-meike-ziervogel), and who has published Hamid Ismailov amongst a many brilliant others http://www.peirenepress.com/ "Peirene Press is an award-winning boutique publishing house with an extra twist, based in London. We are committed to first class European literature in high quality translation. Our books are beautifully designed paperback editions, using only the best paper from sustainable British sources. Affordable, timeless collector items. And because literature - both reading and writing - can be a lonely affair, Peirene hosts a wide range of regular literary events, from informal coffee mornings to exciting literary salons and tailor-made, exclusive events."

2nd edition of my 1st collection: Red Museum

http://knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/redmuseum.html As is the poet's prerogative, this, my first book, was somewhat declaimed by me over the last few years. Coming into this year, it's gotten a little attention and reconsulting it, it suddenly seems to have its own 'value'. Not sure what that is exactly, that it is so big and dense to be a reading challenge, that it maintains its intensity of language...Anyhow, very happy Knives forks and spoons press have gotten to the point where the first print run has gone, and a new one needed doing, with really beautiful production values. It looks better than ever, a lovely thing to receive in the post.

Anatol Knotek's postcards

Really priviliged to receive a set of Anatol Knotek's new postcard series. He is genuinely a groundbreaking presence in the Visual Poetry scene, and a new generation, one who is not afraid of turning back to work and collaborate with more lingually orientated poets, like myself. Im very proud to call Anatol a collaborator too, and I think our work together will have increasing opportunity in the public realm this year. Here is one of the postcards "nothing lasts forever" http://www.anatol.cc

2014> {updated}

Dear friends, to the year upcoming! newly updated with what is confirmed, much more to come of course. All events are free and in London, unless specified otherwise. Please add the dates to your diaries.

Maintenant! – a course for the poetry school
a bi-weekly course exploring post-war & contemporary European avant-garde poetry. The course will take place at the Poetry School London office, 79-83 Lambeth Walk. 2 hour lessons – 6.45pm to 8.45, bi-weekly tuesday nights, beginning January 28th. Week 1: Oulipo / Week 2: Austrian postwar modernism / Week 3: Concrete poetry / Week 4: CoBrA / Week 5: British Poetry Revival


The Poet is a Boxer – February Wed 5th at 8pm at the Poetry Library, Southbank centre
A conceptual look at the world of boxing, with discussion, readings and screenings, all seeking to capture the profound complexities of this unique sport, featuring Italian poet Gabriele Tinti amongst others. I shall be reading from my book Fights. To rsvp specialedition@poetrylibrary.org.uk


Wrogowie: February Sat 11th at the Rich Mix Arts Centre
a Polish enemies project. 5 pairs of poets from Poland & the UK premiere original collaborations, beginning a year long engagement between contemporary Polish poetry & their British peers in collaboration & translation, featuring Marcus Slease & Grzegorz Wroblewski, Joanna Rzadowska & Francesca Lisette, Ula Chowaniec & Amy Cutler, Piotr Gwiazda & myself, Adam Zdrodowski & Philip Terry. Supported by the Polish Cultural Institute http://www.polishculture.org.uk/ & UCL SSEES http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ssees


Central St Martins showcase – February Mon 24th at St Martins Campus
February Mon 24th 2pmat St Martins Campus
A performance and then practise discussion with Dr.Diane Silverthorne as part of the Central St.Martins performance arts showcase lecture series for undergraduate students.


Annexe: introducing launch: February Wed 26th at Candid Arts Trust
Annexe presents a launch of two new pamphlets by myself and Tom Chivers, as part of their introducing series. My work will be part of my Vikings sequence, entitled the Whale Hunt.


Bill Griffiths celebration reading: March Sat 1st at 7.30pm at Goodenough college
Working with Reality street publishing and the editor of the second collected volume of Bill Griffiths poems, Alan Halsey, to present an evening launching that volume and celebrating the work of one the great vanguard poets of the late 20th century with readings from Geraldine Monk, Allen Fisher, Harry Gilonis, Robert Sheppard +. To RSVP ken@realitystreet.co.uk


Lyrikline - in 2014 I will be publishing a series of poets on http://www.lyrikline.org/ one of the world's biggest resources of translated poetry, attempting to redress the lack of contemporary British-based English language experimental poetry in translation in my role as UK editor. First set of poets published early March.


Translation Games – March Wed 5th at 9pm at the Poetry Library, Southbank centre
“We 'translate' things every day, from one language to another, from one action to another.
Ricarda Vidal and Jenny Chamarette, co-curators of Translation Games invite a range of artists and practitioners to 'translate' a selection of concrete poetry into live forms incorporating performance, sound, visual and digital art.” I shall be live writing on the night. To rsvp specialedition@poetrylibrary.org.uk


Fjender – March Sat 15th at the Rich Mix arts centre
Danish Enemies: 3 pairs of poets from Denmark & the UK premiere original collaborations, featuring 3 of Europe’s most innovative and exciting poetic practitioners in Morten Sondergaard, Martin Glaz Serup and Cia Rinne. Supported by the Kulturstyrelsen – Litteratur, Danish Agency for Culture http://www.kulturstyrelsen.dk/english/ with thanks to the Danish Embassy in London. http://storbritannien.um.dk/


the Wordpharmacy – March 15th to 31st at the Hardy tree gallery with a Special view reading on March Sat 22nd.
Morten Sondergaard’s utterly unique and brilliant poetry project in exhibition for the first time in London “The Wordpharmacy consist of ten medicine boxes, each representing one of the ten word classes. Each box contains a leaflet that functions as an instructional poem, guiding the reader’s ingestion of the given word class. If you lack verbs in your life or if you want to know whether you can use prepositions if you are pregnant or you are in desperate need of numerals, then help is at hand.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HvlealRgek


Hidden Door festival Camarade – March Saturday 29thth in Edinburgh
A special edition of the Camarade series for this brilliant Edinburgh arts festival. Featuring Samantha Walton, Colin Herd, Ryan Van Winkle, Iain Morrison, Graeme Smith, nick-e melville and others, with around 8 pairs of poets reading original collaborations for this event. Also the beginning of Auld Enemies, the Enemies project in Scotland.


Fjender (in Copenhagen) – April 1st-7th
The second leg of the Fjender project, I will be reading in Copenhagen alongside Morten Sondergaard, Martin Glaz Serup & others, as well as curating a short-run exhibition of my work and the Enemies project in the Danish capital. Supported by Arts Council England international development fund.


P.O.W. (Vikings) very privileged to be the penultimate issue of the Concrete poetry poster series edited by Antonio Claudio Carvalho, with Hansjorg Mayer being the very final issue. My work, Vikings, has six poems rendered into the shape of the Futhark, the first six magical letters of the elder runic alphabet. http://blutkitt.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/the-vikings-are-coming-from-pow.html


Under the Volcanoes by Grapsas press – My collaboration with Holly Pester is to be published in a boutique edition by Grapsas press edited by Alex Latter. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAbVvohKWP0


& other works to be published in following editions of:
- Gorse http://gorse.ie/ an amazing 260 pages of rarified modernist material, who were kind enough to run this profile on me http://gorse.ie/introducing-sj-fowler/
- the Wolf http://www.wolfmagazine.co.uk/ over a decade of publication, edited by James Byrne, delighted to appear in issue 30.
- the Honest Ulsterman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Honest_Ulsterman a legendary magazine resurrected by Darran Anderson & co
- Huellkurven http://huellkurven.net/ the most exciting repository for sound art and sound poetry in Europe, out of Austria, edited by Joerg Piringer amongst others, I'm in issue 2 here http://www.huellkurven.net/magazine.php
- Annexe http://annexemagazine.com/books/annexe-introducing/ dynamic publishing and events enterprise, edited by Nick Murray, will be launching a suite of my Vikings poems in late February.
- Privileged to be involved in the second Revolve:R project, curated by Ricarda Vidal & co, it is a really beautiful publication revolutions of responsive and collaborative works between artists and poets http://ricardavidal.com/test/revolver/revolver-edition-one/


Like Starlings & the Enemies project: May Saturday 3rd (TBC)
An event between the longstanding collaborative poetry journal, founded by Caleb Klaces and its shared concerns with the Enemies project, exploring the many brilliant exchanges that have been featured so far in Like Starlings through innovative, collaborative performances.


Poetry in Collaboration: an exhibition at the Saison poetry library: May 6th - July 6th
Very proud to be co-curating the Poetry Library’s major summer exhibition with Chris McCabe, running a full two months at the Southbank centre’s Saison poetry library. “This exhibition explores the world of poetry in collaboration including poets-with-poets, poets with visual artists and poets with musicians. Drawing on the history of collaboration, from the Surrealists to the Beats, there are also contemporary collaborative works drawing upon S.J. Fowler’s Enemies project. Amongst the work on display or on the extensive reading table will be works by Andre Breton, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Sarah Lucas with Oliver Garbay.”


Vikings at the British Museum – May Fri 9th 7.30pm in the Great Court
Curating a reading with Eirikur Orn Norddahl for the special event to be held in the Great Court of the British Museum, celebrating modern interpretations of Norse culture for the exhibition Vikings: life and legend.


Kiddy Kamarade: May Sat 10th 12 noon at the Rich mix arts centre (TBC)
A unique family poetry event in collaboration with Angela Brady and Sophie Mayer, replete with a crèche for children, welcoming an exploration of children’s poetic expression and featuring short talks by poets on the impact of parenthood on their practise, and sound recording experimentation with children participating in avant garde poetry!


Fiender – May Sat 10th  7.30pm at the Rich mix arts centre
a Norwegian Enemies project, three poets from Norway, including Endre Ruset and Joanna Rzadowska, will read their own work as well as premiering original collaborations with British poets based in London. Supported by Norla http://www.norla.no/content/view/full/78 & the Norwegian Embassy in London http://www.norway.org.uk/


Prague Microfest - May 11th to 15th 
A small reading of the Czech Republic, punctuated by the debut performance of the TRYIE collective at the Prague Microfest, alongside some of the finest innovative authors from around the world.


Baltic tour: June 5th to 15th
Riga, Latvia – a reading and workshops at the Totaldobze art centre curated by Kaspars Lielgalvis supported by the British Council. http://www.totaldobze.com
Vilnius, Lithuania – a performance collaboration with Gabriele Labanauskaite
Talinn, Estonia – reading and collaboration with / hosted by Ville Hytonen.


J&L Gibbons landscape architecture residency / London Festival of Architecture
Centralising a year long residency I am undertaking with the remarkable landscape architecture firm J & L Gibbons http://blutkitt.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/in-2014-residency-at-j-l-gibbons-award.html there will be an event or programme of events at the LFA 2014 http://www.londonfestivalofarchitecture.org/


Tim Atkins celebration reading: the launch of Petrarch: June Sat 28th at Goodenenough college
Crater press are launching the entire collected Petrarch poems of Tim Atkins, one of the most extraordinary poetry sequences of the last few decades, clocking in at over 400 pages. To celebrate that book's existence and the highly influential work of Tim Atkins, a myriad of poets will read from the book alongside Tim himself.


Auld Enemies – July 8th to 26th
The Enemies project in Scotland. Proud to announce a multiple date national tour of Scotland supported by Creative Scotland featuring William Letford, nick-e melville, Colin Herd, Ryan Van Winkle, Ross Sutherland and myself writing rolling original collaborations across the breadth of the country. Each leg of the tour will feature local poets, workshops and a documentary and publication will be forthcoming.
July 9th wed - Dundee
July 10th thurs - Glasgow
July 11th fri - Edinburgh
July 12th sat - Aberdeen
July 15th tues - Shetland Isles, Lerwick
July 16th wed - Shetland Isles, Unst
July 18th fri - Orkney Islands, Kirkwall
then that coming Saturday July 26th at the Rich Mix arts centre, the Auld Enemies project will come to London for screenings, discussion and readings.


Yes but are we Enemies? – September Sat 27th at the Rich mix arts centre 
the Enemies project in Ireland confirmed beginning in London featuring original collaborations between Irish and British poets, including Christodoulos Makris, Sam Riviere, Billy Ramsell & others TBC. http://yesbutisitpoetry.blogspot.co.uk/


the TŘYIE collective – October (TBC)
A theatre based UK debut performance for the TŘYIE collective, comprising of Olga Peková, Zuzana Husárová & myself, pioneering experimental electronic literature / avant garde performance collaboration.  http://tryie.tumblr.com/


Camaradefest II – Octobber Sat 25thth at the Rich Mix arts centre
A one day collaborative festival of pairs of poets producing original pieces of poetry. Hoping to hit 100 poets in 50 pairs in 2014. Here’s 2013’s fest  http://blutkitt.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/camaradefest-videos.html


Vlak celebration reading – November (TBC)
A selection of readings, screenings and discussions celebrating five years of the immense VLAK journal, featuring work from contributors across it’s near thousand pages. www.vlakmagazine.com
  

Thanks to all those already confirmed to participate in the events, and to the Rich mix arts centre and all those who continue to support the Enemies project. More to come.


Richard Marshall discusses Red Museum in his Eric Auerbach essay

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/time-history-and-literature/ Humbling to be mentioned by the extraordinary literary critic and scholar Richard Marshall in his epic essay on Eric Auerbach, which covers a multitude of interweaving subjects, and ends up discussing my first collection, Red Museum, which was launched in 2011. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Museum-S-J-Fowler/dp/1907812431

 "...In the Middle Ages Dante’s poetry is described as a true umbra, a shadow of the truth. This suggests figura was Dante’s theory of inspiration. Auerbach suggests that ‘… we can say in Europe , the figurative method goes back to Christian influences, the allegorical to ancient pagan ones, and that the first is applied for the most part to Christian materials, the second, rather, to ancient ones’ but then admits that this is too neat and in the High Middle Ages ‘ the Sybils, Vergil, and the figures of the Aeneid, indeed, even the characters from the cycles of mythic sagas from Brittany (Galahad in the Quest del Saint Graal, for example) were absorbed into figurative readings.’
SJ Fowler’s poem ‘Benedict IX, elected Pope at the age of ten, shocked the sensibilities of the pagan age’ from his ‘Red Museum’ collection is a fiercely brilliant example of a contemporary poet working sensuous vigor into death, echoing Capaneo in ‘Inferno 14’ ‘I am in death as I was in life’, refusing the ascetic demand to sacrifice particularity even when in these vast poetic vaults of fantastic prodigousness. Fowler’s collection first strikes a reader as the imaginings of a cunning Gothic primitive, presenting a massive net of barbarian gothic figura. He’s picking up unmediated vital forces and threading them with legacies of late antiquity coupled with ideas and fantasies frozen in time immemorial to swarm across the page like their own ghastly phantoms. His voices span that gulf between allegory and history where, as Schelling says about Dante, individuals ‘… become timeless because of the positions in which the poet has placed them, positions that are themselves timeless.’ The grim sculptural visions Fowler achieves are a result of the synthesis of a vernacular pulse plus the imperishable spheres of locality as vivid and tragic as he judges necessary. Fowler is our contemporary tragic realist poet, capable of infusing passion with erotic hum as well as Auerbach’s ‘zealous and domineering egoism… ambition… gloire.’

The last stanza of ‘Canados’ from the same collection is this:
‘We are not a drought,
We need an artificial lake.
I have a book I would like to sell you, he says.
He whips back his long grey coat;
Its buttons stitched in blue thread,
And from within produces a book
As deep as a ribcage.’

I like to think the book is Dante but it’s just as likely to be some woman who, as in the Bowie song, ‘makes you feel so lonely you could die.’ The goal is not to enjoy individual details in quiet contemplation but to get caught up in the dynamic movement of the plenum like a fish in a net, struggling for a last astonishment."

Huellkurven 2 - bring your guns we will exchange them

I am genuinely excited to be in the magazine Huellkurven. There are very few repositories of sonic art poetry soundwork online which have such a brilliant and considered format, and such a vibrant editorial stamp. I have listened to every work on issue 1, and now to be one of 21 people in issue 2, it is very pleasing. You can also download the whole issue as an album too, and it's edited by a collective out of Vienna. The very finest avant garde sound poetry on display. My piece is a live recording in situe at a modern museum, in their ethnographic gallery, which through found radio and installation noises, as well as responsive, guttural sound poetry aims to ambiguously compliment / satirise / criticise the anesthetised western usage of african sound culture http://www.huellkurven.net/magazine.php

Penned in the Margins podcast: on poetry & performance

Really privileged to be invited to partake in a round table discussion on poetry and performance by Penned in the Margins, for their very first podcast. It was chaired by Tom Chivers and featured Hannah Silva and Sidd Bose. Quite an honour to be with them both, far greater than I in the performance realm. Certainly there was an interesting and proper difference in our approaches and general aesthetics. I was maybe a bit too harsh on spoken word, as I often am, I should be more mindful that the best of the medium is very good. It's just the case that the very average, or the very very poor, of the medium does parade as poetry, and userp it's resources, unfortunately. That tends to have me too trigger happy in smashing it. Anyway, a fine discussion, gentle and open, glad to be involved. 

Enemies reviewed with care & skill by David Clarke on Sabotage reviews

-Reviewed by David Clarke-
The Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin once argued that the distinguishing feature of the novel was its multi-voiced-ness. This distinguished it from the lyric mode, which, he claimed, addressed the reader as a single, undivided voice. Whereas the lyric is a mode of identity, Bakhtin suggested, the novel is multiple, orchestrating an array of discourses, none of which can lay claim to ultimate authority. Avant-garde poetics in its various forms sharply calls such a distinction into question: to the extent that a lyric I is performed by such texts, they delight in deconstructing that I as a mere site through which many discourses pass, a disjointed or even fragmented voice which refuses to resolve itself into univocal meaning. This is as true for that swathe of the avant-garde referred to as modernist as it is for post-modernists like Ashbery or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets like Bernstein. Referring to prose, Bakthin called this effect dialogic, and I was put in mind of this notion repeatedly when reading Enemies: The Selected Collaborations of SJ Fowler, a handsomely produced volume from the excellent Penned in the Margins.
This is a compilation of some of the collaborations which Fowler has undertaken with over 150 artists, writers, sculptors and musicians in a project funded by the Arts Council and the Jerwood Foundation. The scale of the work has been enormous and is a testament to Fowler’s commitment as a kind of impresario of the avant-garde (or vanguard, as he prefers to call it): alongside this anthology, numerous discreet publications have emerged with small presses. Many of the performances associated with the project can also be found on-line (see http://www.weareenemies.com/ and Fowler’sYouTube channel).
The dialogic aspect of the book, in a banal sense, is clear in the material presented, which includes samples of work from 29 of the collaborations. Many of these take on the form of a dialogue between text and image (i.e. where Fowler has written text to accompany visual material), but there are also entirely text-based exchanges: for example, an exchange of e-mails with Sam Riviere and a series of poems written by Fowler and Claire Potter in which the poets have exchanged YouTube links and asked each other to respond. With other co-produced texts, it is less easy to reconstruct the exchange which took place, although Fowler provides notes which give a broad outline of the process.
However, I would argue that these texts are dialogic not merely in the sense that they are the products of artists exchanging work and responding to each other, but in the more important sense that the exchange and the work it produces enter into an unresolved relationship, in which the reader is also implicated. This contrasts with more established notions of how poetry responds to other works of art, or indeed to other poems. The ekphrastic tradition, for example, records the response of the poet to a work of art. She may see something new in that work, bring a new interpretation to it, for example, as Auden famously does with Brueghel’s Fall of Icarus; yet this kind of dialogue with others produces above all a new meaning which the reader is invited to consume. The dialogues taking place here do not follow this pattern.
To take two of the collaborations which set up a dialogue of text and image, we can see how this works in practice. Fowler and Alexander Kell’s ‘Museum of Debt’ juxtaposes monochrome photographs of employees of the British Museum with short poems. The photographs themselves refuse any fly-on-the-wall documentary aesthetic: in fact, it is unclear in most cases what kind of work the individuals pictured actually do. Their poses jar with the context, pouting or apparently larking about in the way people might do in a Facebook photograph, yet the texts equally refuse either to illustrate the images themselves or to comment on the workers’ everyday experience. There is a clear parodic intent, sending up the many residencies offered for poets by workplaces of all kinds (not least galleries and museums), yet it is in the unresolved dialogue between image and text that the real interest lies. In the second poem in this sequene, ‘tooth of the Nile’, for instance, we see a photograph of a young woman grinning exaggeratedly up at statue which cradles another, smaller statue in its arm. The text reads as follows: ‘the ark of the covenant / baby hercule / an asp, a thesp / a guided tour /of softcore’. The text, read together with the image, allows a number of possible meanings to emerge: perhaps this is Hercules we see cradled in the statue’s arms, but what covenant could this represent, in what sense is this an erotic image? Or is our looking at the young woman as she looks at the statue potentially erotic? The reference to theatre is apt, since the image seems self-consciously staged, yet this may also establish a link with the guided tours that museums offer, which are theatrical experiences in themselves. I hesitate to resolve the ‘meaning’ of this poem as it emerges from its relationship with the image, because I ultimately feel that this is not the point. Neither image nor text claim any authority over our interpretation of the museum space, although the interpretations which could emerge from our own interaction with text and image are clearly rich. Even from this one example, however, we can see that the demand for engagement on the part of the reader articulated by this collaboration, for all of its tongue-in-cheek wit, is considerable.
‘Animal Husbandry’, a series of inkblots and accompanying texts by Fowler and Sian Williams, calls upon the reader to make sense of the relationship between inkblots of the kind used in psychiatry and texts made up of tentatively associated (but often very beautiful) fragments of language. Again, rather than simply offering an interpretation of the inkblots, the texts set up a loose chain of associations which do not finally resolve themselves into a final meaning. The reader’s dialogue with abstract image and mysterious text is all the more disquieting when we look at the context of the inkblot test, a psychiatric technique for uncovering unspoken desires. It is unclear whose desires are failing to reveal themselves to the reader here, but the inkblots themselves are an invitation to the reader to make their own interpretation, which will necessarily interfere with that (not) to be found in the text.
Although in subtly different ways, the text and image collaborations in the volume follow similar patterns. The pieces based on exchanges of text, however, make similar demands of the reader in terms of their dialogic construction. For example, ’40 Feet’, written with Dave Berridge, emerges from an exchange of blocks of text (none of which are marked as belonging to either author), which produces a kaleidoscopic vision of London made up of fragments of real events and apparently disconnected thoughts. The reading experience made me feel a little like one of Wim Wenders’ eavesdropping angels in Wings of Desire, but without the privilege of their omniscient point-of-view. ‘Dead Souls Like’, with Chris McCabe, produces a similarly multiple, wildly associative piece of flaneurism or psychogeography on the city of Liverpool.  In ‘Videodrome’ with Claire Potter, the exchange of texts about YouTube videos which we cannot actually see, involves the reader in a disturbing act of imagination, particularly given the hints at violence contained in Potter and Fowler’s texts: I will admit that I have not dared to open the links, although I would not mind betting that their relative harmlessness is part of the joke. The key point in all of these, however, is not so much the space left for the reader in these dialogues, but that any (ultimately unrealisable) attempt to pin down the meaning which these conversations set in motion is the reader’s alone: none of the many voices in these collaborations is going to relieve the reader of that responsibility.
For me, this is the significance of the title that Fowler has chosen for his project. His collaborations are not friendly: neither in the sense of seeking to arrive at a position of harmony between those producing the work, nor in the sense that a finished artistic product offers the reader any easy answers. In fact, these collaborations are the opposite of a ‘finished’ product: they remain open to a dialogue with the reader, indeed to many dialogues (as in many re-readings) with the reader. In his introduction, Fowler acknowledges that he has been told that ‘this book is dense and mysterious, full of challenging material, and shifts in tone.’ This is certainly the case, and the volume requires not just a careful reader, but a ‘writerly’ one, as Roland Barthes would have put it. Some of the texts leave less space for this. The series of invented proverbs Fowler produces with Tom Jenks, although amusing, are more easily consumable, and the e-mail exchange between Fowler and Riviere circles around the latter’s typical concerns about the role and identity of the poet, as well as exploring the very possibility of collaboration itself. A kind of meta-collaboration then, or a collaboration about collaboration, but sometimes a little too close to shop-talk.
This volume fulfils a further function in setting out the stall of the avant-garde in contemporary British poetry. While anthologies of recent years have situated the avant-garde as one feature of a ‘pluralist now’ (as in Roddy Lumsden’s anthology Identity Parade) or have made the argument that younger poets have bought into avant-garde techniques without necessarily sacrificing the motivation to express personal concerns (as in Nathan Hamilton’s recent Dear World and Everyone in It), this book will serve as an introduction to the full provocation of today’s ‘vanguardist’ poetics, for which Fowler is a vocal and eloquent advocate (see, for example, various talks on his Soundcloud page). Fowler’s co-ordinating presence has an impact on the themes which emerge most strongly in the collaborations: issues of criminality, marginality, sexuality, and control and surveillance noticeably echo elements of Fowler’s own Minimum Security Prison Dentistry, for example. Nevertheless, this is a volume whose primary function will be to engage contemporary audiences with the ramifications of the avant-garde’s undiminished challenge to the reader.