Auld Enemies diary - Kirkwall

After a day of exploring the sights of the Shetland mainland we boarded another ferry south, much more comfortable a journey this time, to Kirkwall in Orkney. We stayed in more wonderfully comfy B&Bs and I went on a night walk just after arriving late, taking in the pedestrian town centre and the awesome St Magnus Cathedral. We met Ross' friend Amy Liptrot, a brilliant writer who is from and has lived on the island for the last few years after being in London and Edinburgh. To have someone show such generosity in showing us the epic stones of Brodcar, the archaeological dig nearby and a trip up to the Kitchener monument and the nearby Puffin cliffs, places we never would have got to in one day by ourselves, carless, really transformed the experience of the place. An amazing beauty the island possesses was given context by Amy and her knowledge and her experience of the place, her closeness to it. We caught her just before she was apart to depart too. The reading itself was another intimate and pleasant affair, the very generous Pam Beasant hosting and contributing, and we did a round robin reading of sorts, with only 4 of us remaining. After departing the library we all flopped into a local chinese, that looked like a shipping container with a sign, and reflected on a really brilliant, unexpectedly touching, week or so on tour together. Sad to see it come to a close in Scotland, we said our goodbyes that night. 

 Auld Enemies Kirkwall
nick-e melville & Colin Herd & Ross Sutherland & I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkVfrWtSLMQ
Rosie Alexander & Rosemary Merriman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C0NqXaSLHI
Pam Beasant & Lydia Harris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjKp7E7aXXg

Auld Enemies diary - Lerwick

We got the ferry from Aberdeen overnight to Lerwick, on the auld Northlink. Scots drinking like Vikings as we swanned in the Magnus lounge watching the world cup final. It was a singular experience, something intense and enjoyable, if occasionally stressful, about sea travel. We laughed a lot, the spirit of the tour has been defined by a real closeness, more than I could've imagined, that has been expressed through dark, biting humour. Colin and nick-e are extraordinarily dry. Most of us had cabin bunks, I could hear the sea and the engine as I scratched out a few hours sleep. We docked in Lerwick and then headed to our venue, the Mareel, an amazingly modern and beautiful arts centre, very plush. 

 At this point nick-e got really ill and we had quite unforgettable drama at how serious this was and felt and could've been. Again a powerful realisation of how big this experience is, how close to so many important things, like friendship through creativity, going out of your comfort zone etc... nick-e stayed in overnight at hospital and missed the reading, which felt an afternote to me, of course, but was really well received and enjoyable and friendly. Ross was amazing on the night, lifted everyone up with his positive energy and indomitable professionalism, and Ryan and Colin too showed out just how resilient and genuine they are. The local poets were really talented, different to us, but all the more welcome to that, and the island felt like another world, as much for the way we arrived and experienced our first hours, as it's unique character.
Auld Enemies Lerwick
Ross Sutherland & Ryan Van Winkle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIz_GmfchMk
Nat Hall & James Sinclair https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVrGiJIVErQ
Colin Herd & I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv_o3xH7yUE
Laurajayne Friedlander https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_uFxkRzZy0
Donald Murray https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoL4oheG8vU

Auld Enemies diary - Aberdeen

I for one had a brilliant few days in Aberdeen, the imposition of the architecture, the clear city beneath the city, the windswept drama of the weather, the endless microcosms of humour and local culture, and the underbellies of that - finding great bookshops, trawling the long, almost uninhabited beaches, the funfair. I found it to be a strange place, and all the better for my experience, taking plenty of time as I did, to explore by myself, to walk and to read. Our hosts were very gracious and we read in cellar 35, below a pub, green lit like a David Lynch film. The idiosyncratic nature of the readings, and the atmosphere, uniformly warm but quixotic, added yet another look to our rapidly expanding tour. 
Auld Enemies: Aberdeen
SJ Fowler & William Letford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6km9ykR0mm8
Keith Murray https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT2Cyw951Oo
Gerard Rochford & Richie Brown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sx6vqnCVyk
Colin Herd & Ryan Van Winkle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmIxnofK4Vk
Maureen Ross & Catriona Yule https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz6YQ-j0Yhk
Haworth Hodgkinson & Bernard Briggs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLeHB1pJZIY
nick-e melville & Ross Sutherland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ddd62svSWU

Auld Enemies diary - Edinburgh

The Auld Enemies project is quite obviously an experiment. We put a lot of time into making sure it was as well organised as it could be, that the pairs of poets we asked to collaborate were carefully matched, for or against each other, and that the venues and local poetry communities we asked to partner us were the right people to approach. Yet, after this event in Edinburgh, it became clear to me we needed a moment when it became obvious the whole thing was a good idea and that the experiment had been a success. It came at Summerhall, with a night so good, so full of brilliant new work, so full of openness and intensity and energy, a night that brought together a whole community, that I really felt if it had ended there, in Edinburgh, three nights in, it all was worthwhile. The Demonstration room was absolutely full to capacity, with people sitting in the aisles and standing, and the 22 poets in 11 pairs all used the rawness of the idea to bring genuinely exciting work, and poetry and performance that really showed the variance of responses to the open criteria. After the event, many said to me it was the best evening of poetry they'd ever been to, and it was undoubtedly one of the finest events I've ever put on. Already a creative crescendo for Auld Enemies, nights like this make you think of doing it all again. 
Auld Enemies Edinburgh:
Ryan Van Winkle & William Letford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clX4wL6G2MM
JL Williams & J.Johanneson Gaitan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwP5R0Ttlx4
SJ Fowler & Ross Sutherland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT10PSFxCk0
nick-e melville & Jane Goldman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NgtoI73Hm8
MacGillivray & Andrew Blair https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CktB3yYAWP8
Mike Saunders & Karen Veitch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGOiyOozsvk
Rob McKenzie & Janette Ayachi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiGMT0VffPA
Colin Herd & Iain Morrison https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_LwXXfxzI8


Auld Enemies diary - Glasgow

The days I get to have free in Edinburgh, my third visit in a year, getting deeper into a relationship with the place, we are based here until we leave for the proper North. The reading in Glasgow is a co-habitation with the Fail Better series run by Henry Bell. Can't tell it's vibe, raucous I'd say, as is the expectation (perhaps unfairly) for the city in general. It's in a noisey pub, but it suits, the audience is partially drunk, but Ryan is hosting (we alternate) and I just relax, reading first with nick-e melville, a collaboration I love reading as I loved writing. Some amazing work, high high energy, Calum Rodger, Anthony Autumn, Katy Hastie, Graeme Smith, real highlights, high standard. Getting trains together now, just starting to laugh most of the time we're not reading or writing together. My first ever reading in Glasgow in fact, auspicious first time.
Auld Enemies Glasgow
SJ Fowler & nick-e melville https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgfRBC-z0l4
Neil Davidson & Thomas Betteridge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGMy71puSXc
Iyad Hayatleh & Nalini Paul https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx6vHebiW1M
Jim Ferguson & Ellen McAteer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqILf5aG-7A
Ryan Van Winkle & Ross Sutherland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tonXsFEe_tc
Katy Hastie & Graeme Smith https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na3c0UIy1jo
William Letford & Colin Herd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO5AGYobprc
Calum Rodger & Anthony Autumn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3-Vm8ApyeA

Auld Enemies diary - Dundee

The beginning of the tour. Ross Sutherland & I up from London, Ross trapped by a lovely old Scottish gent / spider for hours out of lovely politeness, while I wrote. Dundee in blazing sun, looking beautiful. Into the Art College to read, the Duncan of Jordanstone building, reading in the foyet, walled by massive windows, a lovely space. Two local pairs of poets, and the wonderful Richard Watt, and the hospitality and immediately apparent generosity and professionalism of Peggy Hughes. Reading with Ryan Van Winkle myself, our Burbs, written over the last few years, the span of our friendship, since meeting in Sofia Bulgaria. And Colin Herd and Ross stealing the show, with their rave poem, washing over the gentile audience. A good beginning, back to Edinburgh in the car, with Colin, all at ease already, and beautiful countryside between the cities.
Auld Enemies: Dundee
William Letford & nick-e melville https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9nguF0rryY
Andy Jackson & Lindsay McGregor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKnLOyDcAes
Ryan Van Winkle & SJ Fowler https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acEzvn2oOw8
Jim Stewart & Dawn Wood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qWcQDijin8
Richard Watt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJizJchW6F4
Colin Herd & Ross Sutherland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnP3q4tGV6k

audio installation at Poetry International at the Southbank centre

Happy to say some audio recordings of me reading my own work have been commissioned, alongside some classic anglo saxon poetry texts, as part of the listening wall, to be installed at the Southbank Centre as part of Poetry International The installation is called I Leave This At Your Ear

Poetry International takes place from Thursday 17th - Monday 21st July, and from Friday 18th I Leave This At Your Ear will be open for the public to sit at and listen to the recorded poems.  The wall will be installed on the Clore Ballroom floor of the Royal Festival Hall (level 2, entry level). Full details can be found on the Southbank website Go and spend your summer days listening to my radio voice.

my summer reading on 3am magazine

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/summer-reading-steven-j-fowler/ 

summer reading: steven j. fowler

By Steven J. Fowler, Poetry Editor
@stevenjfowler
Poetry:
Stephen Emmerson’s Comfortable Knives
Colin Herd’s Glovebox
Tim Allen’s Tattered by Magnets
James Davies’s Two Fat Boys
Kristiina Ehin’s Walker on Water
Tom Jenks’s On Liberty, Repressed and Crabtree
Anna McKerrow’s Regressive Poetics
Tom Chivers’s Flood Drain
Chris McCabe’s in the catacombs 

Essays 
Tom Chivers & Martin Kratz’s Mount London 
Fiction
Tomaz Gonzalez’s In the Beginning was the Sea

Interviewed by Punctum magazine in Latvia

Doing this interview with Ivars Steinbergs in Riga was a highlight of my stay, the man knows his stuff. http://www.punctummagazine.lv/2014/07/04/meklejot-procesu/ Some things considered controversial here, but I'm not translating 

Stīvens Džeimss Edvards Bjērns Johanness Faulers jeb SJ Faulers (1983) ir britu dzejnieks, mākslinieks un avangardists, izdevis sešus dzejoļu krājumus, regulāri piedalās starpnozaru mākslas projektos, ceļo, intervē Eiropas dzejniekus un rīko eksperimentālus sadarbības pasākumus. Jūnija sākumā uzstājās Rīgā mākslas centrā Totaldobže. Ar dzejnieku sarunājas Ivars Šteinbergs.
Kad un kādēļ sāki rakstīt? Es sāku rakstīt salīdzinoši vēlu, man bija jau krietni pāri divdesmit, tas bija aptuveni pirms četriem pieciem gadiem. Līdz tam man nebija nekādas pieredzes literatūrā vai citās radošās jomās. Man, protams, bija paveicies, ka man bija izglītība, bet es nekad nelasīju baudas dēļ un es reti biju uzmanīgs skolā un lekcijās. Savu laiku pavadīju, trenējoties austrumu cīņas, biju ar tām apsēsts un ar sportu nodarbojos profesionāli. Taču pēc kāda īpaši slikta dzīves perioda atklāju dzeju. Tā man palīdzēja tikt ārā.

Trepidation commended for the Forward Prize 2014

I'm pleased to say my poem Trepidation, which featured in my latest collection, the Rottweiler's Guide to the Dog Owner, has been highly commended by the Forward Prize. It means it'll feature in the anthology the prize puts out to celebrate it's awards later in the year. I wrote the poem as a set of ten on two days in Berlin for a performance with Alessandro Eramo, sat with WS Graham in a bedsit in Wedding, in a snowing February in 2013. I've never once thought back on that poem as being in anyway exceptional, for it to be singled out is pleasing as it surprises me to reread it and see what people might see when viewing it in isolation. A random thing, but good to have recognition for the thing within the thing. http://www.eyewearpublishing.com/products-page/books/s-j-fowler/

Poetry in Collaboration exhibition at the Poetry Library closes

The brilliant photographer Alexander Kell joined me as I visited the Poetry in Collaboration exhibited I've curated over the last two months at the Saison Poetry Library with Chris McCabe just before it closes. Im very proud of the exhibition, its carefully chosen, beautifully presented and easy on the eye. Its been a pleasure working with Chris too, and to have had so many people see the work is a wonderful thing, it's the premiere place to have a show like this in London. Hopefully not the last time Ill get to work with the library and its amazing collection.

Petrarch: a celebration of Tim Atkins, the videos

A magical evening, one of the best Ive been a part of, ever. It could not have been more joyous, funny, brilliant. It felt like a family, let alone a real community. All because of the human being Tim is, the way he has taught a generation of poets and peers to cut through the misanthropy to the warmth that permeates through his poetry and his persona. So proud to have been part of this evening, all 19 poets read so wonderfully, all worth watching. 
Chris Gutkind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fkryQdk42E

Modernist mashup at the BAMS modernism now conference reading

The BAMS modernism now conference was the kind of thing I shouldve attended, and maybe contributed too, but didnt, as I find myself finding it difficult to do actual academic study at this point, with so much creative opportunity abounding. Fortunately JT Welsch offered me the chance to share some work with the people of the conference via a reading, a simple reading. The idea was to contextualise contemporary practise, my writing, in the modernist tradition, how it fed my poetry etc...So I took poems from seven modernists and mashed fragments of their work up with my own. I pretty much lifted my Enthusiasm poems from these writers anyway, so their close sitting makes sense.

P.O.W. poetry poster art celebration reading

Held at the Juggler in Hoxton, supported by the Bookart Bookshop and curated by the lovely Sophie Herxheimer, this was a really intimate, warm and enjoyable reading, a celebration of the brilliant work of Antonio Claudio Carvalho and this unique concrete poetry series that he has published. Good to meet some really brilliant poets too, like Robert Vas Dias and Victoria Bean. & I got to read with Chris McCabe, with some heavy male bond swaying. 


Glitter is a Gender anthology

An anthology that is lean, powerful and full of brilliant poets and poetry, Sophie Mayer and Sarah Crewe have put together this lovely book from Contraband press with great care and skill. I thoroughly recommend it and Im really happy to be a part of it.
My poem in the book is called Muyock
 a poem for Tiphaine Mancaux

if you weep, I think that
others might cry
                Larry Eigner

i.             danslenorddelafrance

rejoice, y th’ living
 ababy
      on m knees
           theearth bere
 ft breaks
       intodryred      mud
        heavy w birds         & gherman picks
sorriy id mean a lovtap  bt the avantage tend
      to be blunt is u neverve to worriy i she’s concealing
   for you    for shed say    if she did
     at th momenthr was wonder
  bt she is muscld like litl rok                  ifever th ws retroactive resistant
                              so said the mdwif   ‘J'espère que je ne vous ai pas dérangé’
with the RIB DIG
  the haus o de maus  flexes i nous

Performing at the Science Museum

I took Josh Alexander, the filmmaker, my friend, along to this strange evening at the Science Museum. He and I are going to make a film/poem together. He is quite brilliant, and wonderful company, very dry, very gentle mannered. We were kindly invited by the equally wonderful Sophie Mayer, as I am part of her anthology (ed with Sarah Crewe) called Glitter as a gender, which was being celebrated as part of a Late Night opening at the museum, about sex. I performed in front of the amazing Exponential Horn installation. A massive 30 foot amplification horn. In a dark room. It was an atmosphere of speed dating and champers in the museum, and I went on at 7, so the people were in and out, of staying and going, and of listening. I wore a Plague Doctor mask and a hoodie. I mumbled some weird stuff about speed dating in between humming like Glenn Gould. I got told off for shouting into the horn. No one really listened to me. All the better, perhaps, as Josh filmed me, they seemed not to know I was performing, and slouched, undefended as I went on. Josh and I both work in a museum. The event briefing we had to attend early on, with its false happiness and energy and air of strange bovine threat lingered in the strange ursine nature of my performance. This will be a night that gives something for the film, but weird to live in. Nice to be asked though.