The Midsummer Poetry festival in Sheffield

Really pleased to be in the company of so many good poets and I get the chance to speak about Maintenant / Enemies, and really how they are strategies to avoid anthologising in the formal sense!, before I then read as part of an event celebrating the dear world anthology. An epic lineup, and a chance to visit Sheffield, all power to Agnes Lehoczky http://www.midsummerpoetryfestival.co.uk/symposium/ 
Steven Fowler, ‘Anthology: The Form of the Innovative’ SJ Fowler discusses his projects, the Maintenant series, 100 interviews with contemporary European poets, and the Enemies project, exploring innovative poetry and collaboration, as forms of non-traditional anthologising practise. http://www.midsummerpoetryfestival.co.uk/events/dear-world-everyone-in-it/

Museum of Water at Somerset House - June 21st

So pumped for this, I will be reading a new poem while intermittently trying to drown myself. What a lineup too. http://www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk/index.php/2014/02/museum-of-water/
As part Amy Sharrock’s extraordinary Museum of Water at Somerset House, Penned in the Margins curates a packed programme of water-themed poetry and performance. Join us in the spoken word room from midday for nautical field recordings, durational water performances, and poems inspired by rivers, estuaries, sewers and the sea. A detailed schedule will be announced soon.
JR Carpenter re-sounds the islands, flying jellyfish drones and nautical field recordings of her underwater digital project Etheric Ocean in a live poly-vocal performance with poet Alison Gibb.
Faber New Poet Jack Underwood and sound poet Holly Pester collaborate on a one-off durational performance: a poem for two voices about the water we share and the water between us
Award-winning writer Ruth Padel reads estuarine poetry from her collections The Mara Crossing, The Soho Leopard and Fusewire
Claire Trevien composes poems live in response to the exhibition and reads from her book The Shipwrecked House, inspired by the sea and her Breton maritime heritage
Canal Laureate and narrow-boat dweller Jo Bell reads poetry informed by living on water
SJ Fowler rails against the Water Cannon with an original poem in between self-drowning sctivities
Siddhartha Bose reads poetry inspired by the holy rivers of the Thames and the Ganges
Justin Hopper explores sea disasters in the Thames estuary and follows hidden currents of Pittsburgh in his poem-projects Public Record and Fourth River: Ley Line
Tom Chivers reads from Flood Drain – his psychogeographical poem about the river Hull – and shares his experiences of leading ‘urban pilgrimages’ along London’s lost rivers
Early medieval scholars and postgraduates from King’s College London and elsewhere read poems drawn from the Old Water Hoard of Anglo-Saxon poems about water

Schedule

12:30 Claire Trevien
13:00 Jo Bell
13:30 Siddhartha Bose
14:00 Old English Sound Hoard
14:30 Justin Hopper
15:00 Jack Underwood & Holly Pester
15:30 Tom Chivers
16:00 SJ Fowler
16:15 Ruth Padel
16:45 Etheric Ocean by JR Carpenter
17:15 Claire Trevien

Chinese avant garde poetry at the Poetry Cafe - June 18th

Really honoured that Ill be reading the English translations of Jiang Tao's work at the Poetry Cafe. Come along to this free event, and get a small insight into contemporary experimental Chinese poetry. http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/events/event/2696/

Jiang

One Hundred Years of New Poetry in China

Visiting poets from China will read their poems and discuss their work. Featuring Jiang Tao and Ming Di.
Organised in association with Oxford Brookes University, it will be introduced by Jennifer Wong, a first year PhD student at Oxford Brookes University, studying contemporary Asian diaspora poetry and the power of ethnicity. S J Fowler will read from Jiang Tao's work and Jennifer Wong will also read some of her poetry.

four poems from Iraq in Colony

http://www.colony.ie/#!sjfowler/c1p49 the wonderful Irish journal Colony has published my four translations from the Iraqi poets I worked with for the Reel Iraq project a few months ago. A huge honour to have had the time with them. 
"A product of the remarkable Reel Iraq project in April 2014, where four British and four Iraqi poets spent a week together in the Safeen mountains of Kurdistan, I had the pleasure to spend time meeting and transliterating the work of Ahmad Abdel Hussein, Miriam Al Attar, Ali Wajeh and Zhawen Shally. These works appear without their Arabic originals to emphasise that in the process of their being reconstructed into English, I have transliterated, rather than translated the original poems, and while I was as loyal as I found myself able to be (feeling deeply responsible to the poets, if not the poems, I have actually been very careful to maintain the original texts, by my own mangling standards), they now exist somewhere between myself and the original authors, in a no man’s land of sorts, possessed by neither, and better for that. They are four complete failures. – SJ Fowler

in the name of god (lower case)
transliterated from the Arabic of Ahmed Abdel Hussein

you are the well of thirst
you are the black prize in the mouth of the wolf

leave off your endless light of miracles
which lights up the name of Iraq
raise up your blindfold
which has been gently knotted upon the eyes of Baghdad
gather the decorations of war from the thresholds of home
turn the guns of battle
to brooms, so that they might not kill
snuff out that light which propagates the darkness of the mothernight
and don’t leave my lover to course in dread
from her home to the halls, and from the halls to her home
but print on her heart instead, the furthest stars
until she knows while she’s tightening her hijab
that you are the rictus grin that proceeds death

Weirding out the Baltic - performing in Riga for Totaldobze & the FreeRiga festival

Another epic trip into outside the UK, to the Baltic, where I havent been for ten years, visiting all three nations, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, but really for Latvia, Riga, thanks to the amazing Totaldobze art collective, and the British Council who supported me visiting and performing for them. Im the fourth year of British to visit Riga, and Totaldobze brought the wonder Hannah Silva over a few years back, so I slot in nicely, though in Latvia anything outside of literature is called spoken word / slam, so I was a bit worried they wouldnt be up for what I do. Not that I planned anything, I intended to wait to see the space and speak to the curators Austra and Kaspars about what this festival was really about, called Freeriga, I had been told it was a specially organised exploration of abandoned spaces in Riga, which were denied to artists while rents rose, blocking them out of the city. This is a world wide issue, a huge one in London too, with so many flats empty and so many people struggling for space. Many reasons to be grateful and excited.
The performance day was a brutal / brilliant one. At it's close I felt like I had beaten myself up, which I did. The whole time in the Baltic I have walked, at least 50 miles over the ten days, all told, and on the performance day, just after arriving, I started by walking miles in 30 degree heat, right out to the outskirts of Riga, near countryside, listening to moondog, before walking all the way back past my factory studio (which was an incredible space, a once abandoned place, enormous) across the railway lines and all the way across the city to the river, crossing the Daugava via bridge and arriving at the Press building, the new home of Totaldobze for the afternoon to teach a workshop. The press house was a massive space, just indescribably big and dustry and resonant and ghostly. Like real resident evil set, it had been left to mulch for twenty years, just recently cleaned, recently electricked and watered by the arts collective and room after room was empty, sealed off, full of furniture, glass, material. Just breathtaking. 
For my workshop,  just a few people, but really generous and lovely people. 17 year old Kristina, and the remarkable journalist Ivars, established poet Laura...we worked on translations of their work from Latvian into English before they filmed covers of my poems. Then Ivars interviewed me and his erudition and intelligence, and incredible knowledge of literature really made me feel more situated in the space and the atmosphere of the collective. 

 So the performance, as I said this whole festival was about Freeriga, how so much of the city sits unused, inaccessible to artists and the people of the city, while rents elsewhere price them out. I wanted so much to let this idea and the environment itself create my performance. I considered doing many things, readings, exercise performances, sound performance, but when I arrived in the space I knew it had to be about the space. I felt I could see how the buildings are constructed (one being built, a high rise, with the address 9 11, in sight of the Press house), then abandoned and deconstructed, stripped down, and occasionally, someone like Totadobze then reconstructs them. I wanted to highlight how that process is about regeneration, through the act of destruction. How it is not about utility, or presence, or history, but business, the appearance of improvement. The press house is black stone, so it is a ghost town. The new tower is glass and rises, during a crippling depression. I spoke to Austra and Kaspars in depth about what parts of their new home had to retain their integrity and which parts I could go nuts in, practical things.. We traced out a path where I would travel and the rooms I could absolutely level. We settled on me using a sledgehammer to crush the rooms and walls and old furniture and piles of tiles and doors etc... We couldn't find one anywhere, I walked over an hour to an industrial estate in the countryside, in the torrential rain, but they had shut. Just before closing time, just before I gave up hope and would have two hours to come up with a new performance, I found a gardening shop and bought a brand new cast iron shovel. I had read recently (On the plane over in fact!) does a rifle kill someone? yes. does a spade kill someone? yes. does a spade dig a hole? yes. does a rifle dig a hole? no. Choose the right tool for the job.
I had real, sweating, retching fun in this performance. I loosed, so rare I get to express anger so immaturely and bare monkey power in the process of the concept I felt somewhat behind. I reached moments during the performance where I felt like I was going to collapse from exertion, and had to keep repeating my mantra, and reading the excerpts of found text I had taken from the net about abandoned urban spaces and the history of Riga. I smashed floors, walls, piles of glass, cement, tiles, concrete, wooden boards, furniture. I smashed a metal dress into hundreds of pieces. I stopped when, with extraordinary satisfaction, I broke the brand new steel spade in two pieces.

 After the performance I felt elated, but also like a pall had fallen over me in the space. People seemed understandably weary of me, though complimentary, and the standoffishness, which was not anyones fault but was terribly exacerbated by a few moody hipsters (who made me think for the first time that the abandoned space / squat vibe is a stereotype of vapid artists, especially in East London, and that this hadnt even come close to occurring to me in Riga was such a compliment to the legitimacy of Austra and Kaspars activity and attitude) made me feel like I should leave, to let the adrenalin of the assault fall away gently.

 Ive walked across unfamiliar cities at night when travelling over the last few years, quite regularly, by accident, as I tend to leave late but earlier than others when they start drinking. In the last half year Ive nightwalked Mexico City, Bratislava, Reykjavik, Paris, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Venice, Erbil, Prague, and now Riga, crossing the Daugova to fireworks. An hour back to the factory, more, suburbs and high rises, I realised as well as cutting my hands quite badly during the performance (which was bandaged at the venue) I had mushed my previously broken right big toe with the spade. The adrenalin wore off, its what I deserved.

Cabaret Hrabal - July 3rd at the Horse Hospital

Cabaret Hrabalhttp://london.czechcentres.cz/programme/travel-events/cabaret-hrabal/  


”The world is maddeningly beautiful. Well, it isn’t really, but that is how I see it.” Bohumil Hrabal (uncle Peppin) *** A groundbreaking evening of literary experimentation and innovation celebrating the centenary of Bohumil Hrabal, one of the greatest Czech writers of the 20th century. Inspired by Hrabal’s work, brand new commissions from some of the UK most exciting poets, artists, conceptualists, theatre makers and dramaturges explore Hrabal’s magic world. Curated by poet and curator SJ Fowler.
One of the boundless figures of late 20th century Czech literature, Bohumil Hrabal was a novelist, a drinker, a bon vivant, an avant gardist, a railway dispatcher during the Nazi occupation, a traveling salesman, a steelworker, a recycling mill worker, a stagehand… His novels, which include Too Loud a Solitude, Closely Observed Trains, and I Served the King of England, were censored under the Communist regime, yet have since been translated into nearly thirty languages. A survivor of both the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Czechoslovakia, much of Hrabal’s work juxtaposes the darkness of history to the comic, human-scale happenings of the every-day. His oeuvre is as inimitable as his novels are unforgettable.
Through a half-dozen brand new commissions from some of the most exciting UK based poets, artists, conceptualists, theatre makers and dramaturges, Hrabal will be evoked and enveloped, transposed into some of the most exciting literary experimentalists of contemporary London.
Featuring Zoe Skoulding (sound poetry), Sarah Kelly (book sculptures), Joshua Alexander (film art),Stephen Emmerson (conceptual performance), Marcus Slease (poetry), Tom Jenks (literary experiments), Eva Danickova (stage reading) and Lucinka Eisler (theatre), this is a chance to discover, or rediscover, a great European writer through new and exciting works that pay their debt to the remarkable achievements of Hrabal in the essence of their happening.
Moderator
SJ Fowler is a poet, artist, curator & vanguardist. He works in the modernist and avant garde traditions, across poetry, fiction, sonic art, visual art, installation and performance. He has published six collections of poetry and been commissioned by the Tate, Reel Festivals, the Liverpool Biennial and the London Sinfonietta. He has been translated into 13 languages and performed at venues across the world, from Mexico city to Erbil, Iraq. He is the poetry editor of 3am magazine and is the curator of the Enemies project. He is presenting and co-curating Cabaret Hrabal.

Artists

Josh Alexander is a London based artist who makes experimental film and photography. In collaboration with artist Luke Montgomery, Josh’s work has featured in various exhibitions includingJoint Ventures organised by Space In Between in 2012. He made the music video for Drowned At Seaby Fairewell. Josh is part of A616, a collaboration with Erkembode, they are currently working on a series of moving image works. In May 2014 Josh had his first solo exhibition Light on Paper at the Hardy Tree Gallery, London. For the event, Josh Alexander will be presenting a visual interpretation of 'Handbook for the Apprentice Palaverer' in the form of a moving image piece.

Eva Daníčková works in London and internationally as a dramaturg, librettist and translator of plays and prose (A. Goldflam, M. Horoščák, Z. Svěrák). Eva studied dramaturgy at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She founded Boii Theatre in 2010, translating and producing Czech plays (The Green Room at the Etcetera Theatre, Boiled Heads at Tristan Bates Theatre and others). She wrote and produced two operas for the Tête à Tête Opera Festival at Riverside Studios in 2011 (The Moonflower) and 2012 (Insein). As a dramaturg, she has worked with Parrabbola, Patrick Dineen (The Golden Boy, Unity Theatre Liverpool) and on her own projects. Eva reads and translates Czech play scripts for the National Theatre and the Royal Court International Department.
Lucinka Eisler is Joint Artistic Director of Inspector Sands and has co-created all of their shows to date. For Inspector Sands she has performed in Hysteria or If That's All There Is. Other acting work includes The Magic Flute (Complicite at ENO / DNO) and Macbeth - The Abuse of Power (Contender Charlie/ China Plate). Directing credits include Rock Pool, Portrait of the Ordinary Festival Goer and A Life in 22 Minutes (all for Inspector Sands) and A Quiet Afternoon, (Stamping Ground Theatre for Riverside Studios/ BAC). As assistant director Lucinka has worked with Rufus Norris (National Theatre; Young Vic) and Theatre O (Barbican). Lucinka is a visiting lecturer at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Lucinka will perform a theatre scetch A Boring Afternoon from The Death of Mr Baltisberger.
Stephen Emmerson's publications include: 'A never ending poem...' (Zimzalla) 'Telegraphic Transcriptions' (Dept Press / Stranger Press), 'No Ideas but in Things' (Dark Windows Press), & 'Albion' (Like This Press). Installations / exhibitions include: Albion, The Dark Would, Visual Poetics at the South Bank Centre, Pharmacopoetics, Illuminations, and Placebo at Farringdon Factory. His work for the Hrabal celebration is an participatory installation centred around the concept of placebo and language control.

Tom Jenks has published five books of poetry, co-organises The Other Room reading series and website, and administers the avant objects imprint zimZalla. Building with the texts of Bohumil Hrabal, Tom will be presenting a brand new conceptual poetry project.
Sarah Kelly is an interdisciplinary text artist and poet, working predominately with hand made paper sculpture. She has published widely and is the author of 'locklines' (KFS Press). Performances and exhibitions include The London Poetry Festival, Saison Poetry Library and MACBA. For the event Sarah will be reworking the material book 'the Death of Mr.Baltisberger' into a collected series of integrated text sculptures.
Marcus Slease was born in Portadown, N. Ireland but moved to Las Vegas at age 11. Currently, he lives in London and teaches English as a foreign language. His latest book is Rides (Blart Books, 2014). For the event, Marcus Slease will be responding to Hrabal's Closely Watched Trains and Too Loud A Solitude
Zoë Skoulding is a poet, translator, editor and critic. She has published four collections of poetry, most recently The Museum of Disappearing Sounds (Seren, 2013). She is Senior Lecturer in the School of English at Bangor University. She will be presenting a sound-based response to Hrabal's 'Diamond Eye'.

London Review Bookshop - new & recommended poetry

http://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/on-our-shelves/on-our-tables/new-and-recommended-poetry

New and Recommended Poetry

Our pick of poetry. Here are six of our current favourites, as chosen by our poet in residence, John Clegg.
The Rottweiler’s Guide to the Dog Owner

The Rottweiler’s Guide to the Dog Owner

S. J. Fowler
From the publisher:
A groundbreaking, aberrant but ever ebullient love letter to those who deserve it, The Rottweiler’s Guide to the Dog Owner refracts marriage, death, friendship, violence ...

Mount London should be climbed

Sometimes the publication of such a beautiful book as Mount London goes by, and is properly celebrated, as this one has been, but it still feels somewhat improper that it passes by so quickly. The volume looks as it is, which is an all too rare quality in life; a truly unique achievement by Tom Chivers and Martin Kratz. The essays, which are as varied and agile as the subject matter, are utterly complimentary for their difference, and some of the writers have been real discoveries for me, as Ive read through the volume. Im also very happy with my piece in the book, being as it genuinely represents something about me, my style here is my subject. I thoroughly urge it upon people. The launch was really wonderful too, fine readings from Joe Dunthorne, Chrissy Williams et al. It felt like the heart of London's most spacially aware writing community had convened
 http://www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk/index.php/2014/03/mount-london/ 


Petrarch: a celebration of Tim Atkins - the lineip

Come along, June 28th, 7pm onwards, free! 
http://www.richmix.org.uk/whats-on/event/petrarch--a-celebration-of-tim-atkins/ These are the wonderful poets who will be reading from Tim's collected Petrarch poems.
Peter Jaeger / Carol Watts / Philip Terry / Chris Gutkind / Andrea Brady / Sam Walton / Robert Kiely / Marcus Slease / Michael Zand / Jow Lindsay / Juha Virtanen / Stephen Emmerson / Lucy Harvest Clarke / James Wilkes / Holly Pester / Jeff Hilson / Tim Atkins

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/