Reel Festivals in Iraq & Syria Speaks

Reel Festivals is a remarkable organisation that promotes events and programs of literature in areas of conflict to celebrate diversity, build solidarity and create dialogue with audiences internationally. They organise these events to explore alternative stories through direct interaction and shared experiences and last month, I had the extraordinary privilege to be a beneficiary of this work, as part of the Reel Iraq project in Erbil, Kurdistan. I was among four British poets who worked together with a group of contemporary Iraqi and Kurdish poets on translations and collaborations before reading at the Niniti Literature Festival, thanks to the British Council.
 
Next month, thanks to Reel Arts, leading Syrian artists will tour Britain throughout June to launch Syria Speaks, an anthology of art and culture from the Syrian frontline. The line-up will include award-winning Damascus-based novelist Khaled Khalifa, video artist Khalil Younes, writer and film maker Zaher Omareen, and authors Malu Halasa and Robin Yassin-Kassab. The tour begins with an event at the Rich Mix Arts Centre on June 11th, in the main space, from 7.30pm. http://www.richmix.org.uk/whats-on/event/syria-speaks-art-and-culture-from-the-frontline/
 
The book and tour, organised by Reel Festivals, aims to demonstrate how Syria’s artists are leading the country’s resistance against tyranny. Syria Speaks is the first book to provide a window on Syrian creativity since the uprising, showcasing the work of over 50 artists and writers.http://www.saqibooks.co.uk/2014/04/syrian-writers-artists-tour/
 
In the interim, while in Iraq I had the chance to write some blogs about the trip, which can be found here: http://blutkitt.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/reel-iraq-kurdistan-diary-1.html
http://blutkitt.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/reel-iraq-kurdistan-diary-2.html
http://blutkitt.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/reel-iraq-kurdistan-diary-3.html
http://blutkitt.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/reel-iraq-kurdistan-diary-day-4.html
http://blutkitt.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/reel-iraq-kurdistan-diary-5.html
http://blutkitt.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/reel-iraq-kurdistan-diary-6.html
http://blutkitt.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/reel-iraq-kurdistan-diary-7.html
 
& a suite of poems I wrote for the project have been published online by Reel Arts here http://www.reelfestivals.org/the-arbil-suite-a-history-of-erbil/ “The Arbil Suite is a poetic history of a city that rightfully claims itself to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited places on earth…”
 
& here are videos from the Niniti Literature festival: 
Ryan Van Winkle & Dan Gorman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SrNw5Q3WKI
Kei Miller & Ahmad Abdel Hussein https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15yI3trw7ks
Zhawen Shally & myself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn-ibXKPJk0
 
& there’s photos online here & here, as well as a great interview with Nia Davies who also attended, and more blogs from Ryan Van Winkle and others on the Reel Festivals site.
 
Please attend the event on June 11th if you’re free, and follow and support the remarkable work of this extraordinary organisation. http://www.reelfestivals.org/

Petrarch & this summer's events

Please join us on June 28th at the Rich Mix Arts Centre for an exploration of the work of the poet Tim Atkins and the launch of his collected Petrarch from Crater press. The entirety of one of the most remarkable poetic projects of our era will be brought together for the first time in a 400 page book, as we take a rare chance to celebrate one of the most brilliant and generous living British vanguard poets in Tim Atkins. http://www.craterpress.co.uk/
The reading will feature well over a dozen poets reading from Tim’s Petrarch works, including Peter Jaeger, Philip Terry, Andrea Brady, Marcus Slease and Jeff Hilson, and the man itself of course. http://www.richmix.org.uk/whats-on/event/petrarch--a-celebration-of-tim-atkins/
& if anyone's kind enough to come …
 June 5th: I’ll be performing and conducting workshops in Riga, Latvia for the Totaldobze projecthttp://www.totaldobze.com/ curated by Kaspars Lielgalvis, followed by readings in Vilnius and Talinn, in a minitour of the Baltic.
June 16th: For the Generative Constraints Committee via Royal Holloway, I’ll be performing / speaking about violence (& poetry) at the CC4C http://creative-collaboration.net/ in Kings X, alongside Sasha Roseneil, chaired by Prudence Chamberlain, in an evening called 'About the Stand-Off’ from 6.30pm.
June 20th: I’ll be speaking about the Enemies project before reading in the evening at the Midsummer Poetry Festival in Sheffield. http://www.midsummerpoetryfestival.co.uk/ 6.30pm onwards
June 24th: For the remarkable Translation Games project I’ll be leading workshops with Ricarda Vidal on transmedia translation at the Guildhall school, Barbican, as part of the Cultural Capital Exchange conferencehttp://translationgames.net/?page_id=346
June 25th: As part of the Science Museum’s amazing Exponential Horn installation, I’ll be performing a new conceptual / soundart / noise piece at the Museum, to be recorded by Resonance FM & the BBC. 7pm onwards.http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/exponentialhorn
June 26th: I’ll be reading at the Bookart bookshop in Old St. London, http://www.bookartbookshop.com/ to celebrate the incredible POW series edited by Antonio Claudio Carvalho, which was recently completed. Lots more info on the series here by Chris McCabe http://chris-mccabe.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/pow-final-series-perrone-melville-vas.html 7pm onwards
June 27th: I’ll be reading as part of the BAMS international Modernism now! conference, at the CC4C introducing & reading from the modernist poets who have influenced my work http://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/events/ies-conferences/ModernismNowThe program is called ‘Make it Now: A Modernist Reading by Four Contemporary Poets’ and begins at 7.30pm.
 
July 3rd: Very happy to be curating a celebration of the great Czech avant garde writer Bohumil Hrabal through the Czech Centre London, at the Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury, which will feature brand new commissions from Zoe Skoulding, Sarah Kelly, Stephen Emmerson, Marcus Slease, Tom Jenks & others. More to come. http://www.thehorsehospital.com/
July 9th to 17th: Auld Enemies – a cross nation collaboration, a tour of Scotland with six poets writing in rolling pairs and inviting locals to Camarade – Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Orkneys, Shetland. Much more to come… Supported by Creative Scotland.
July 26th: Auld Enemies in London. At the Rich Mix Arts Centre a collaborative poetic celebration of Scottish contemporary experimental poetry and the events and works of the Auld Enemies tour. http://www.richmix.org.uk/whats-on/event/auld-enemies--the-enemies-project-scottish-poetry/
August 7th: At the Whitechapel gallery, I'll be performing my short story MueuM, which was up for the white review prize this year, readable here http://www.thewhitereview.org/fiction/mueum/ alongside Holly Pester, Kristen Kreider and Patrick Coyle.


The Rottweiler's guide to the Dog Owner launched

I was trepidatious about the launch of my new collection, the wine-ing of the event not being my normal outmode, but in the end it was a lovely evening, and I owe a debt of thanks to everyone who was kind enough to attend and buy a book and to those who brought it into physical form. It has been extraordinarily well produced and designed, don't think it could be better really, and the people at the London Review of Books were amazing too, John Clegg making me feel as at home as was also possible.http://www.eyewearpublishing.com/products-page/books/s-j-fowler/ Here's the vid

a year since EVP : the full Electric Dada

The Electronic Voice Phenomena was a huge watershed in my performance art, one year ago, racing up and down the UK with Ross Sutherland, Hannah Silva and co, thanks to Nathan Jones & Tom Chivers. I was never happy with the videos taken from the tour, as they captured the first performances and fragments, when I hadnt found my grove. The best stuff in Manchester, London and Bournemouth, will never see the light of day. In its stead, these 5 pieces of stumbling mauling glory.http://www.electronicvoicephenomena.net/index.php/electric-dada/ SJ Fowler Act 1 Gateshead from Mercy on Vimeo.
SJ Fowler Act 2 London from Mercy on Vimeo.
SJ Fowler Act 3 Gateshead from Mercy on Vimeo.
SJ Fowler Act 4 London from Mercy on Vimeo. SJ Fowler Act 5 Gateshead from Mercy on Vimeo.

Camarade at the Poetry Library

4 amazing pairs, camarade elite, to celebrate the wonderful exhibition happening at the Saison Poetry Library right now, Poetry in Collaboration, curated by Chris McCabe and I. The exhibition is looking beautiful, minimal, with work that represents the last century and includes new Enemies commissions, with video and audio interface too. It was a lovely turnout to see the exhibition and these four remarkable pairs of poets

James Byrne & Sandeep Parmar 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKBt2cs5An4

Joe Dunthorne & Sam Riviere 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwLCXBDjNtE

James Davies & Philip Terry 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9CQTDaYmW8

the Londonist - 12 publishers...

http://londonist.com/2014/05/twelve-independent-publishers-every-londoner-should-know.php

Eyewear

Eyewear is a relatively young London press, up and running for just two years, but in that time it has published many poetry collections. Simple colourful graphics illustrate the covers; the academic Dr Todd Swift picks the poets. Marion McCready’s Tree Language (out last April) has already gained plenty of praise, and Eyewear will also publish a book of SJ Fowler’s poetry later this year. Head to the London Review Bookshop to browse its titles.

mountPenned in the Margins

Like Strange Attractor, Penned in the Margins started by running events and performances before it began to publish poetry and experimental prose in 2006. Now it regularly publishes leading young names in poetry such as Ross Sutherland and Claire Trevien. Adventures In Form is its bestseller — a must for anyone interested in how texts and Twitter updates affected poetry. Its 90 poems experiment with traditional methods such as collage, as well as playing with new poetic forms. Visit Rough Trade East or nearby Brick Lane Books to see what’s in stock.

The Prague Microfest - a diary

A fascinating three days in Prague for the Microfestival. So many weird and wonderful elements to my experience – I was sent there by the remarkable generosity of the Czech Centre in London, whom I’m building an increasingly strong relationship with, and went not only to meet Czech poets and curators, and people at the festival, but to partake in the debut performance of the TRYIE collective, which I’m a third of, next to Zuzana Husarova and Olga Pekova, two powerful powerful avant garde writers out of Bratislava and Prague.
I met Zuz and Olga last year at the Ars Poetica festival and it was immediately obvious upon meeting them they were unusual. I talk so often about process over product, community over hierarchy, kindness over posture – and in that traditional festival environment, their humour, their energy, their work just really resonated with me. It has since proven a good hunch as we formed the collective and spent the last months exchanging texts and ideas before this big off. The work in the end was a really adventurous, dynamic, complex performance. It involved Zuz and Olga behind two specially made screens, reading a text of multiple languages, and using their bodies to create a ghostly imprint on the canvas of the screens while I intermittently read on stage while walking or carrying a dog. The piece was really about the balance of genders through the text, using iconography and light, and a brilliant sound accompaniment by the 4th honorary member of the collective, Lubo Panak. It was highly performative, with Zuz and Olga feeting and fingering the screen while I carried and petted and kissed the beautiful French bulldog motoracek, even using her as a reading stand, while reading new texts I’d written while in Prague, that were about the experience of the festival and preparing for the performance, and drew from Kafka as well as ideas about the relationship of our collective, indulgence, boredom, and my own personal history in Prague itself.


The festival itself is a strange thing. Shining so brightly in places, with really innovative work, and some really gracious, warm hearted people, it also suffered from a occasional lack of quality control and at times I felt outside of things. In turn, because I wasn't perhaps as quiet and mannerly as I normally am about the work that was so different than that which I gravitate too, I felt conflicted that I perhaps was being too didactic or judgmental. Genuinely, the fact that poets were reading for over 30 minutes at a time effected me profoundly. It was just an excess, drowning out any chance of finding that which I might have discovered in their work, and often massively exemplifying the faults I perceived. I am aware that most often that which I talk about, and blog about, is effusively praised. I do this deliberately, to speak only about that which I like. But there does come a time when I suppose I had no choice but to listen, when a line has to be drawn. Some of the work was very poor, and left a trace for me. Moreover literary cynicism, a culture of it, can easily slip into the discourse and curation of such an intense undertaking like a poetry festival and at times in felt like the scene surrounding the happenings was in a village. I spent some of the time wondering if it wasn’t me, that I wasn’t burnt out a little after Paris/Edinburgh/Copenhagen/Iraq/Venice in a two month space, or if I wasn’t falling into habits of being anti-social, or overly critical, or egotistical, wanting more attention. I tried to remain consistently open to communicating with people, really focusing on their work, and in places it was easy – with the students of Charles University who seemed to be the lifeblood of the festival, with friends Im getting to know better with each collision like Jorg Piringer and Heike Feidler, and with the amazing Maggie O’Sullivan, with whom I shared my last day, having coffee in a beautiful art deco café, and whose intelligence, humility and wisdom, left me feeling elevated and tiny at the same time. Yet perhaps Ive been spoiled by things like Reel Iraq and Crossing Voices, and now I expect everyone to be like Olga and Zuzana, funny, deferent, collaborative and frankly excellent as writers and artists. Much to learn, and to insist upon, for the things I organise, in experiencing things here I didn't enjoy. Feeling a wee bit alienated can only keep me on the right path for my own events.

What matters really is that I did mediate my experience of this beautiful city through people, and had the chance to meet wonderful poets and curators, explore the town a bit, even getting to the zoo, which fully lived up to its reputation, and to leave behind me a really satisfying piece of collaborative work. The performance of TRYIE was an auspicious beginning of our collective, one that I hope flares into being a few times a year for the near future at least, and Zuzana and Olga were elated, which was what I really wanted. Their performances certainly went great, they worked the concepts to great effect. I felt my own stuff wasn’t so strong, that the audience was a little frozen or discomforted by my presence, as I fondled the doggy, read at them and wandered about the basement venue, weaving it between them with the lovely French bulldog bitch staring and sniffing them out. Im too sensitive of audiences, I want to attack them on instinct when they recoil. I wasn’t free to really loose on them, because of the spirit of the beautiful little animal. Maybe that is good for me, to gain that experience as a performer, and to learn the skill of letting others express that force for me, with my cooperation. Others seemed to enjoy the whole thing, and seemed to think it was truly a collaborative act, a conversation in complex poetry and theatre performance, and successful in relating the message of our concerns about gender. You always run the risk of pretension with something like this, and we escaped that. A feminist hell, one person described it as. Happy to have found myself there http://tryie.tumblr.com/

Kiddy Kamarade

all hail the extraordinary Sophie Mayer who pulled off this genuinely wonderful and original undertaking
SONY DSC
Welcome to Kiddy Kamarade! The Archive of the Now and Rich Mix invite you to join our carousel of poets, providing ideas and inspiration for making word-art together with your children. Try out our imaginative techniques — and have a chance to show off what you create!
Station 1: Sarah Crewe and Chris McCabe – Poem Post Office
page2Sarah and Chris had a stack of postcards with mystery recipients (including Roald Dahl, Mr. Tumble and the Pope) written on one side – it was up to you to send them a message that might describe them before you knew who they were! The message you wrote was a description of something you could see in Venue 2, the long, sunny upstairs bar where the event was taking place.
I was describing the event itself – but there was a magical, funny collision with the recipient who was revealed to be:
I like to think She enjoyed it. Especially the glitter… of which more at Station 3: Poetry Potions!
SONY DSCBut first, Station 2: Tim Atkins – Wonderful Day Haiku Station
Tim posted this haiku by Shiki Masaoka (in English and Japanese!) and invited us to imagine our wonderful day in brilliant colour! the delicious array of food treats available around the venue (including bagels) was a popular theme – as was the event itself…

Crossing Voices - a Venice diary

Crossing Voices is the kind of project I will always want to be a part of. A project that was so resonant to experience, it’s ruined others by comparison and informed me massively on how I want to develop my own stuff. I got to spend nearly a week in Venice, learning from and sharing with 5 brilliant poets, a remarkable curator, working toward genuinely innovative work, in the shadow of a Venetian venice, well away from the Disneyland city I had experienced before. Just a privilege from the first moment to the last. http://crossingvoices.weebly.com/

Crossing Voices is the child of Alessandro Mistrorigo, who is part of the faculty at the University in Venice, and who had connected with James Wilkes in the UK, and being part of the collective Mopha with Jamie, and Emma Bennett, who also attended, I found myself invited to be part of the program. The format had six of us, three Brits and three Italians, spending three days together in the Cultural Flow Zone (!) workplace connected to the library of the University, which was pretty much on the water in Venice, developing six brand new pieces of collaborative work, each led by one of us, and involving the other five of us. These six pieces would be performed back to back at a night in the University.

To make this work was an extraordinary achievement on Alessandro’s part, to choose the right people, to make sure the context of their experience together was conducive to the work, to emphasise the process and shape the direction. It was an amazingly energising experience to be part of, the works were so exploratory and there really was the space to workshop things, take things into new directions, and all of us were together in risking that. Such a rare thing, to have the time and space to really collaborate. The Italian poets were all young, humble, eccentric and authentic – Alessandro Burbank, a gentle bear like presence who would descend on the group as quickly as he would disappear, a true Venetian, who mediated the city for us. Andrea Leonessa, immensely open, intense, technologically considered and genuinely innovative. Ariadne Radi Cor – a poet, but also a live writer, a penwoman, a gentle, visual presence.

We arrived straight into a reading in a gallery on Guidecca, or Judgment Island, getting a full whack of the really interesting local poets, who read with video or music accompaniment, and seemed really open to the more conceptual, avant garde work we were presenting. Emma did a beautiful birdsong performance, and Jamie, his wonderful delayed feedback strokeout work. I did some new performative stuff from Fights, I thought it was a bit naff in the end, punching the air, stuttering, but I wanted to try it. We were introduced to each other through this reading, the group was exposed to each other before we would spend three days in close quarters, in a room, having to trust each other, push each other, before a looming performative deadline.

The first day we shared the concepts we had prepared before the meeting, ideas that were reasoned but not fully formed, and the complimentary nature of the directions we wanted to go in was immediately apparent. I wanted to use the project to try something to do with song, with choral multivocal techniques that use multiplicity to mediate atonality, something Im interested in because I cant sing. I used a lot of musical references to introduce, sacred harp singing, Calabrian fishing work songs, Swans. Emma developed a piece based on repetition, and unfamiliar languages, that evolved live into a brilliant Chinese whispers circle, where we would race around our hexagon, mauling words and phrases as they passed from mouth to mouth. James had brought some amazing visual materials, acetate and inks, and gave us the chance to create collaboration asemic and calligraphic works. These were developed and then read as scores by us in pairs, Cobbing esque, reading abstraction as noise. Andrea designed a program that read his voice, awkwardly, and read into his computer while playing a flight simulator, leaving James, Emma and I to live interpret the bastardised text that would scroll out after he spoke. Ariadne used his full range of skills to actually shoot and edit a beautiful short film over the 3 days, and Alessandro created a really complex psychogeographical live skype performance with Greek chorus accompaniment, half translations, security camera streaming and live google searches. Hard to explain.

The works developed over hours and hours, but over our breakfasts and our evening meals as much as in the workshop. We were treated to local treatment, masses of seafood, black spaghetti, long walks through the city, live translations, Venetian wit and hospitality. The entirety of the experience was genuinely absorbing, and for me, a week back from an equally overwhelming experience in Iraq, in which time I contracted norovirus and was in fever blindness, I felt like everything was somehow more immediate for feeling so ethereal. Venice has that about it, when you can get it without feeling utterly outside. The company of the people made it, channelled so carefully by the gentility and intelligence of James and Alessandro.

I loved the experience of the performance itself, really rare to feel collaboration as truly collective. The audience seemed to feel that, that they were invited to become a further extension of what had become a miniature, fleeting community of artists. The war of it brought us into friendships too, having to balance so many elements creatively and performatively, and to step outside of our normal zones. The final night, like the others, was spent around a food filled table, talking, until late, until we got the boat home. Sad to leave it behind, but I am sure it won’t be the last note of a remarkable thing. I’m very lucky I was a small part of it.

Billy Mills reviews the Whale Hunt on Sabotage reviews


 "The whale hunt in the title of SJ Flower’s excellent chapbook is of the Viking variety, these being Viking poems. There is no clear evidence that the Vikings actually hunted whales, although whales and Vikings did most definitely co-exist and the one scavenged the carcasses of the other when such carcasses washed up on convenient beaches. Indeed, the limits of Viking whaling may well have been to injure whales in the hope of facilitating such scavenging. Sadly the Sagas are relatively silent on the matter.
Tilikum the captive orca, on the other hand, very definitely exists and is reasonably efficient as a people hunter, having killed three of them. Maybe he mistook them for Vikings? Together, Viking whale hunts, real or otherwise, and Tilikum the angry orca form the warp and woof of Whale Hunt.
*
As an object, this is the kind of chapbook that pleases my senses greatly. Its A6 page size is perfect for pockets, and the choice of a crisp serif font more than compensated for the small point size, meaning that the blocks of text are clearly readable. These untitled blocks, or poems, are nine in number and vary in length from eleven to seventeen lines, giving the whole the feel of a sonnet sequence. The inclusion of three interestingly complimentary illustrations, combining photomontage and angular line drawings, by publisher Nick Murray and the good-quality paper used add considerably to the pleasure.
The language of the poems is suitably jagged, given the Viking substratum:
Sparrows above, they are the size & colour of seagulls
Jokke saw they are so delicate, said their beaks
I told him & we throw rocks at them & eat them
with the preponderance of single-syllable words and fricative consonants combining highly effectively to create a suitably Nordic soundscape.
In a recent interview, Fowler mentions Pierre Joris and Tom Raworth as exemplars of the kind of poetic practice he admires. Anselm Hollo, a poet often associated with them, gets a name-check in the first of these poems; ‘now a skald in Valhalla’. On the evidence of Whale Hunt, what Fowler’s work most has in common with these older poets is speed. Speed of perception, of movement from one object to another, of language: these are the dominant characteristics of these poems. They are fast, disjunctive and unsettling of readerly expectations:
when war walked upright on the waves
bearpaw blackfish           red arts admin.
that I surely shouldn’t do the recorded ruins
resurrected in Englishness tracery
intact in the tombing, parted company
heat dissolving delicacy, bound up
clow clear framing everyward to be heard
There is an additional undercurrent of animism running through the poems. Fowler’s whales and other animals are shape-shifting totemic creatures inhabiting a world in which ‘Time began with a bear then it became a Viking’. The bear is almost as much a presence as the whale; indeed they cannot really be distinguished:
Becoming Bear from Whale
Turns out the Whale is a Beaver
Bear > Beaver > Whale
Like Housman’s hunter and sailor, whalers, even putative Viking whalers, come home in the end. In fact, ‘home’ is the final word in both the first and last lines of the ninth and final poem in the set. For poet and Viking alike, it’s a hard-won landfall, ‘famished but alive’, wearing an Orca skull as helmet, home at last. It’s a neat resolution for such a restless sequence, final but somehow lacking finality, home until the next time, language, for the moment, at rest."

Anglaise Actuelle - a new series of Vanguard poets in French for Recours au Poeme

Announcing a new series for the remarkable French journal, Recours au Poeme, launched for the 100th issue of the magazine, anglaise actuelle will feature a series of British experimental poets translated into French by Marilyne Bertoncini. The first instalment of AA is the great Allen Fisher. Lots more to come

Un regard sur la poésie anglaise actuelle (1). Allen Fisher, présenté et traduit par Steven J. Fowler et Marilyne Bertoncini

 Confiée au jeune poète et animateur de la revue 3AM magazine, Steven J. Fowler, en collaboration avec Marilyne Bertoncini, cette chronique vise à faire découvrir des poètes anglais actuels aux lecteurs français de Recours au Poème. - See more at: http://www.recoursaupoeme.fr/chroniques/un-regard-sur-la-po%C3%A9sie-anglaise-actuelle-1/sj-fowler#sthash.Dmc2nwB2.dpuf

my new collection launched at the LRB

I'm happy to say my new poetry collection is launched on May 21st, 7pm, at the LRB bookshop in Bloomsbury. http://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/ If you're free and are kind enough to attend, you can book a spot using the eventbrite link below. It's free.


The Rottweilers guide to the Dog Owner is made up of 13 different sequences or commissions, including works written for VerySmallKitchen, Zimzalla, The Enemigos project, Lush & the Wortwedding gallery, & features works that call on, or celebrate, the poetry of Anselm Hollo, Tom Raworth & Jack Spicer.

A sample work here: http://www.dusie.org/atacama_by_SJ_Fowler.pdf Thanks, Steven.




Wednesday, 21 May 2014 from 19:00 to 22:00 (BST)
London Review Bookshop
14 Bury Pl
WC1A 2JL London
United Kingdom
 
Attend

Open Mouth Surgery, a collaboration with Morten Sondergaard, published in the Bohemyth

http://thebohemyth.com/2014/05/06/morten-sondergaard-steven-fowler/ Im proper pleased one of my favourite collaborations this year, with the extraordinary Danish poet Morten Sondergaard has been published in the great Irish journal the Bohemyth, edited by Michael Shanks. The work, Open Mouth Surgery, is a fusion of Morten's wordpharmacy project and its concerns, and my own aberrant attempts to run veins of speech fragments and surrealism through such a beautiful tailored poetic project. 

The Prolific Myth: Interview with Hannah Silva

I'm really pleased to have spoken with Hannah Silva recently at the British Library, she as generous enough to invite me to have an extended ramble with her for her exciting archival project there. Hannah has been a generous friend since we met on the EVP tour last year, and genuinely one of the people, one of my peers I suppose, whom I am constantly learning from and trying to follow. It sounds limited to say that, that I might not mean it, but her exactitude, her professionalism, her openness, her remarkable understanding of technology and the width of her practice are spectacular. I actively seek to work such different worlds of poetry, from spoken word to the avant garde, as I actively seek to wield technology, as I aspire to write for the stage. She is a model I can work from, learn from, meeting her, like so many others who have proven themselves brilliant outside the page or reading form of poetry, has been significant. So to be interviewed by her is pretty funny to me, an immense pleasure.
Interview excerpt found  http://hannahsilva.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/the-prolific-myth-interview-with-sj-fowler/
"I’m glad about that but I think that it would horrify some people, that this thing exists in the world that represents you, that’s got your name on it, and people can read it and you can be ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’. That happened to me recently. Someone published an extract of one of my poems, and I was like, where did you get the title from? He said –it’s one of your poems, I said I’m pretty sure it’s not, but alright…I just don’t care about that. There’s poets who have done this, and might not be in the public’s consciousness, who I really admire. People like Pierre Joris and Tom Raworth who just pump out book after book, I’ve always believed in that. When I was interested in film, it was people like Bergman, who’d create radically brilliant, often different works, year after year. I admire that approach because they are I suppose professionals. That’s how they saw it/see it. It was a life engagement, not about dropping their rarefied thoughts on the world, but about grinding it out and if it pops out and it’s genius you can just see them smiling ‘oh alright that was genius, onto the next’ – that’s how I feel, if people say something I’ve done is rubbish, or brilliant, I don’t care. I care about writing, I love writing, it’s helped me be a better human being, it’s helped me mediate the world around me, it’s helped me sublimate really fundamentally aggressive energies in the world and I feel better for that. I’m not going to slow down or strategically launch the books so that people can take the time to actually read the work I’ve done in order to somehow mitigate the form…I think there’s a myth about being prolific, that it harms you, but I don’t think anyone will read me anyway and if they do I’ll be dead. Why not just do fifty books, and then they’ve got lots to read?
I’ve had some great conversations with people about their first collections, and I’m really interested in it, like Jack Underwood was in the faber young poets pamphlet and I don’t know what happened, something with faber, and now his next book is out, he announced on twitter it’ll be out in 2016, he announced this last year, and that to me is amazing because what that says to me is that …he’s going to get a huge reception and I hope he wins prizes, he’s a sweet man and he’s well known, he’ll do so well and he’ll be known by so many more middle class people than me!…But, the reality is that to me that says he’s going to spend the next year and a half not writing, because if he writes hundreds of poems in the next year and a half they’re just going to be in a dusty drawer…maybe not, but that’s just how it feels, that’s my instinct.
I’ve spoken to a poet who was told off by his PhD supervisor for publishing an extended chapbook because the guy was like: your first collection is the most important collection, you must go to these people and make these connections and slowly breed these relationships over five years and then launch your book when you get to around thirty. That to me just seems like an absolutely crazy backward view of what your work is......"

Poetry in Collaboration: an exhibition at the Saison Poetry Library

Really delighted to announce I’ll be co-curating this summer’s Saison Poetry Library exhibition at the Southbank centre with Chris McCabe, entitled Poetry in Collaboration.
 
 
The exhibition furthers and re-contextualises the concerns of the Enemies project (www.weareenemies.com) in panoramic scope, drawing from the vast collection of the poetry library to reveal a small sliver of the modern history of poetry in collaboration, to evidence, in microcosm, just how fundamental a shared practise can be to poetry.
 
On display will be new works commissioned by the Enemies project, including book art by Ragnhildur Johanns and Iain Sinclair, as well as collaborations by Ian Hamilton Finlay and John Furnival, Ron King and Roy Fisher, Anne Waldman and Joe Brainard, amongst many others. There will be an extensive reading table, an audio station with live collaborative recordings of the Beats, and videos of works by Robert Desnos and Man Ray, as well as footage from the Camaradefest, held last year at the Rich mix arts centre in London.
 
The exhibition runs from 6 May 2014 to 6 July 2014 and is free to attend at the Saison Poetry Library in the Royal Festival Hall
 
As part of the exhibition, a special view Camarade event will be held on May Tuesday 20th. As well as a quick introduction to the exhibition itself, around a half dozen pairs of poets, some of the most memorable from previous incarnations of Camarade, will read original collaborations, including James Byrne & Sandeep Parmar, James Davies & Philip Terry, Sam Riviere & Joe Dunthorne, Samantha Walton & Jo Walton. Please rsvp at specialedition@poetrylibrary.org.uk as space is limited, but entrance is free.
 
 
Multiple special events and commissions will happen during the exhibition, including a chain, or renga poem, written by five poets (including Matthew Gregory, Livia Franchini, Sarah Howe +) over the two month duration of the exhibition to be published in VLAK magazine later in the year. More details to come.

Kiddy Kamarade

An event I'm very privileged to have a hand in takes place Saturday May 10th at the Rich Mix Arts Centre, exploring the potential, untrammelled magic of children's poetics! & featuring a brilliant lineup of contemporary poets leading workshops, discussions, performances with their kids and for anyone who wants to bring their family, completely free. Include Sarah Crewe, Tim Atkins, Tom Jenks and many others http://www.richmix.org.uk/whats-on/event/kiddy-kamarade-/
 
Kiddy Kamarade 12-3pm & Silent Disco 3-6pm. Both events free.
 
"Kiddy Kamarade (ages 8 and under, accompanied by parents or carers). The Enemies project and Archive of the Now join forces for a day of poetry, where we'll start playing with words and end by dancing to them! Silent Poetry Disco is open to all ages.
 
From 12-3pm, join our carousel of poets, who'll be providing ideas and inspiration for making word-art together with your children. Try out our imaginative techniques -- and have a chance to  show off what you create! Activities will include arts and crafts, performance/story-telling/charades, music and movement, and the afternoon will conclude with some collaborative performances by adults.
 
From 3-6pm all ages can join the Archive of the Now team - including students from Queen Mary, University of London, founder Andrea Brady and poet in residence Sophie Mayer - who will be hosting digitally-enabled poetry performances by Hannah Silva and Andra Simons, followed by the fabled silent poetry disco! Please bring a QR-reader equipped smartphone or tablet + headphones if you have access to them, or download tracks from the Archive of the Now to your preferred MP3 player, so you can join in with the disco."

Exhibiting w/ Anatol Knotek at the Text Festival, Bury

www.textfestival.com A unique and admirable fusion of exhibitions and events, celebrating text based art and vanguard poetry, the Text festival is a beacon that lights up Bury, and has done quite a few times over the last decade, drawing in some of the most interesting writers/artists in the world. I'm happy to say, for the Dark Would exhibition, edited and curated by Philip Davenport, the amazing Anatol Knotek, my long term collaborator, has produced beautiful visual poetry work based on our collaborative exchanges for the Dark Would anthology ebook, the interviews in fact, that we provided for the digital version. You can see a few pictures, taken by Philip, of the work below. 

The Text Festival in Bury is an internationally recognised event investigating contemporary language art (poetry, text art, sound and media text, live art). Opening on 2 May 2014, the next Festival will be its fourth manifestation and run into July 2014.