Published : The Hope Slayer, Alcohol - despising the drunk on Versopolis Review

Way more personal than I normally like to do but it’s a topic that I felt compelled to be blunt about, and the editor pushed me. https://www.versopolis.com/times/essay/771/the-hope-slayer-alcohol

“What I was not prepared for, and remains profoundly and bizarrely understated in English discourse, was the level of violence perpetrated, and accepted, in every pub and club I worked within. I had had no experience of the kind of aggressive drinking that felt emotional, psychological, confrontational. People in their hundreds and thousands drinking as much as they could as fast as was possible. People screaming, at the top of their lungs, for no reason, weeping, pissing their pants, fighting over nothing. 

I once saw a man try to gouge a stranger’s eyes into his head. I saw another kick a stranger’s head like a football. I saw a woman wrap her handbag around the neck of a stranger and try to strangle them to death. I was punched, kicked, tackled, bitten and even, though not seriously, stabbed, by humans who couldn’t stand up straight. And within this adrenalin-soaked arena, I remained, unlike my colleagues, completely dry. Not on shift, or off shift, would I touch alcohol. And so, so my peers told me, remained without the tiny speck of empathy which often held their hands. I have calculated, in writing this, that I did a minimum of 200 shifts, probably far more, and while some at student unions and small pubs were quiet, most, in gaudy nightclubs and city centre pubs involved multiple physical confrontations a night. Conservatively I have tangled with over 500 drunk humans. Some easy wrestling. Some life-threatening fights. 

I watched them enter, sober, watched them order luminescent chemical candy drinks by the doze. I watched them drain these liquids like water and begin to slowly hunch, slur, drool and scowl until, inevitably, they attached themselves to a fellow inebriate, and my job, under the abuse of other customers, was to interrupt these conflicts and eject the parties. Their apparent faultlessness, their stinking of alcohol, their altered speech, their desperate attempts to harm me remain in my memory, and have altered my opinions of humanity, and ethics, permanently. What stays with me too is what I did to them, as sober as anyone has ever been, unfairly advantaged against them, vindictive, frightened, excited and swaying in the palm of liquor.” cont;d…

A note on: The black music box performance for Franz Baermann Steiner

At 2pm on May 2nd, knowing i had to perform something to celebrate Franz Baermann Steiner that evening, for the Illuminations VI event at the Austrian Cultural Forum, i realised the poem I had written for him wouldn’t do it. Such was his unbelievable range of interests and abilities, and such was his intelligence, and influence on friends like Elias Canetti and Iris Murdoch, and generations of students, and British anthropology in general, that I realised the poem would be lame and curt and not enough. Seriously, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Baermann_Steiner

So I thought why not throw the babay out with the bath water and do an oblique performance instead. The music playing was recorded in 1909, the year of Steiner’s birth. The Yiddish songs are from over 100 years ago. This is maybe my first pseudo dance? Han Smith was a star to help me. To let me sleep on her feet, and when is a hug not a good idea? When does it not pay tribute to a loss, a lost, an intelligence so immense it cannot be worded back into history? I have only one regret, that there wasn’t someone on the street I could’ve coaxed up to the event when I went outside, entirely improvised, mid saunter. I could’ve told them about Steiner, and kept it, as I wanted it, between me and them.

All the vids from the night are http://www.theenemiesproject.com/illuminations

A note on: Greatist Hits II with Harry Man and the Torriano Camarade on July 14th

A lot of people think Harry Man hates me, and he does. But what I say to people is this, you can’t take it personal. This is just how Harry operates. It’s what is in his heart. It’s not necessarily about me (despite what he says). Basically, if you have to work with Harry, because of a blood debt, which I’m not going to go into details about, then you have to make the best of it. And that means preparing yourself for someone constantly trying to wind you up, releasing fireworks into your pockets, touching your face ( a lot) and shouting at random points in conversation. I am proud of myself that I’ve managed to stick with it and produce a book with Monsieur Man.

It is entitled GREATIST HITS II and it is the selected collaborations of Harry and I. Harry and I have made this book from the dozen or so works we have made this book from, from performances and publications stretching back at least 3 years. It is to be published by Kingston University Press and released July 14th 2019.

Here is a sample work from the book https://www.wazogate.com/nemesia-3-man-finds/

It will be launched at a special Torriano Camarade, which will be part of the very long running Sunday night Torriano Meeting House reading series and feature new works in pairs from poets who have collaborated for the night. So far folk like Russell Bennetts, Callie Michail, Astra Papachristodoulou, Maria Sledmere are confirmed, with many more to be added. Come along, it will be at 7pm in Kentish town http://www.theenemiesproject.com/torriano

A note on : Illuminations VI - celebrating the unfairly unknown

A resonant, intimate, unexpectedly reverent night at the Austrian Cultural Forum this past May 2nd. This was the sixth event in the series I’ve been lucky to do with the ACF, asking contemporary writers and artists to respond to a major figure of 20th century Austrian letters. This event was different as it aimed to illuminate seven Austrians, bound together by the fact they lived in the UK during the 20th, often fleeing Austria because of the Nazis, and all of whom are absolutely remarkable humans whose work is not known here as it should be. This sense of the artists being advocates for the forgotten permeating through the evening, powerfully so. It was impossible not to feel that the vagaries of history and thought and literature are random and strange throughout the works witnessed, as each of the authors celebrated seemed obviously important in their thinking and output. / All the performances are now available here http://www.theenemiesproject.com/illuminations

The event owes itself entirely to my dear friend, Stephen Watts. His knowledge stems from decades reading, attending readings, developing friendships with authors from around the world who have populated London. I had come across some of the authors we celebrated but Stella Rotenberg, Franz Baermann Steiner, Theodor Kramer and Alfred Marnau were new to me.

A note on : Unfinished Memmoirs of a Hypocrit – coming this summer from Hesterglock Press

I’m chuffed to have my next Poem Brut visual literature book arriving this summer, in July, with the remarkable Hesterglock press. It is entitled Unfinished Memmoirs of a Hypocrit and has actually been gestating and growing and shrinking and morphing for many years, going through many shapes and titles.

The book is about environment affecting writing. The book is about Spain, contextually.

The book is about writing affecting environment. The book is about notation, the notebook as practise, drafting, sketching and illustration, contentually. It draws from literary quotes, book covers, figurative artworks, Chinese supermarket collage and other strange sources.

To get a flavour, a few poems from the book have been published online at https://partisanhotel.co.uk/S-J-Fowler as well in Perverse magazine and soon with Tentacular.

The book will have two releases, the first at the next Poem Brut at Rich Mix event on July 13th, and the second, a proper launch will take place on July 25th at the May Day Rooms. This event will celebrate the wider list of Hesterglock. http://www.hesterglock.net/

The work Paul Hawkins and Sarer Scotthorne have done over the last number of years is really a source of encouragement, validation and hope for many poets writing around the edges of the Now (in the UK) because they are looking for the future. It is hard work, as it must often feel like digging a trench that fills with water, but their enthusiasm, sincerity and selflessness gives fuel to those like me, mining a weird and committed seam. I’m lucky to count them as friends, collaborators and supporters, as are brilliant folk like Thomas Havlik, James Caley, Arturo Desimone, Matti Spence and others.

Published : On Optioning Cannibalism – a poetry article on Versopolis Review

Another in my series of poetic essays / essayistic poems / surreal narrative articles has been published by the Versopolis Review, spreading its tentacles across the European webways. This one is about eating, well the monthly theme set by head editor Ana Schnabl, is about Food. So I wrote about the temptation of cannibalism, both literally and otherwise.

https://www.versopolis.com/times/essay/756/on-optioning-cannibalism

You are what is eaten. The food before you, where did it disappear to? Once fresh, now packaged, possibly tinned. Possibly eternal. Now within, lost inside of you. Allowing to move, to crawl, to cry. Never to be seen again. Can you eat choice? What are the boundaries of selectiveness? How the gluten intolerant must have once suffered, throughout all of human history.….

A note on : The European Poetry Festival Sampson Low Publication Series, and working on Orbiting the Yellow Ball

A little lost in the immense shuffle of the European Poetry Festival was the project’s debut publications, released in limited edition, in partnership with Sampson Low Ltd. and Kingston University. This series of four new books, half original works of visual literature and half new translations from the Norwegian, presents four of Norway’s most considerable contemporary poets. For more info visit https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/sampsonlow

I had the personal pleasure of editing these books, working closely with the poets, and in the case of Jon Stale Ritland’s Orbiting the Yellow Ball, working very deeply with the translation process. I don’t have usable Norwegian so my role was to reform crib translations, which I’ve been asked to do many many times but rarely have said yes to, as that process is inherent fraught. This case different because Jon Stale’s English, as with most Norwegians, is better than mine. So it was much closer to a collaboration, and Jon Stale generously made me feel a part of the final poems were connected to my own often oblique poetics. I’m proud of the book, and that I had a role in it

Moreover working with the remarkable Alban Low, as I’ve had the opportunity to do often over the last few years, was a joy. He is as selfless as publishers come, working extremely hard to make the publications something special, a gift, for the poets. You can buy the whole series here https://sampsonlow.co/wck-pamphlets/european-poetry-festival-books/

A note on : Poem Brut returns on July 13th at Rich Mix

July Saturday 13th - 7.30pm - Free : in the Mix, at Rich Mix, London https://www.poembrut.com/events

The 11th event in the Poem Brut series returns this summer with another night of performances. As ever before, the Brut series aims to transpose what the series is exploring on the page (the possibilities of written language itself, as a material, and how it is formed, inscribed, messed, understood) to the live space. Something perhaps profoundly underdone in poetry. These events have been beautiful occasions and this will be too, undoubtedly, as the line up is already powerhouse.

It will feature Lisa Kiew, Patrick Cosgrove, Mischa Foster Poole, Harry Man, Vilde Valerie Vilde Torset, Paul Hawkins, Simon Tyrrell, Michael O'Mahony, SJ Fowler, Rushika Rush, Maria Sledmere and more poet-artists to be announced soon.

I have now also consolidated every single former Poem Brut event at Rich Mix into one page of glory www.poembrut.com/richmix

This event will also be the first chance for me to share two brand new publications, though it is an official launch for neither. On the night my new visual literature book, the sixth in the poembrut series I’m doing, will be available from hesterglock press, entitled ‘Unfinished Memmoirs of a Hypocrit’, alongside my next collaborative publication, Greatist Hits II - The selected collaborations of Harry Man and I. Harry and I will be doing something dark together, like dancing or crying or frogging.

Published : Maintenant #101 with Maja Jantar

The Maintenant series was an enormously important stage in my autodidactic education in poetry. It not only opened up to me the extraordinary potential of contemporary European poetry in the 21st century, it gave me the chance to learn through direct contact with the poets I approached. Many became close friends, and still to this day educate me on the possibilities of my own work.

The first series of Maintenant run for 98 issues on 3am magazine. I left 99 and 100 free and empty in homage to two poets who were completing interviews at the time of their death, Anselm Hollo and Tomaz Salamun.

I have started the series up again, though it will run quietly and infrequently, on Versopolis - the European Review of Poetry, Books and Culture, and have begun the new century with the incomparable Maja Jantar.

https://www.versopolis.com/people/conversation/763/i-ve-always-believed-in-a-very-open-meaning-of-the-word-poetic

f we are to be able to create a discourse about European cultural and artistic traditions, practices we can speculate upon, historicise, and draw inspiration from, while avoiding nationalism, we eventually have to settle on something concrete to not lose ourselves to amorphousness. We need to think regionally, or perhaps equally banal though it might be, continentally. We have more reason to do this in 2019, being in Europe. What then, with poetry, might we consider European? Again in a reductive way, we might speak of a poet who speaks numerous languages but often performs in none, or all, depending on one’s perspective. We might speak of a poet who has lived in a dozen European nations, who crosses borders with her work as much as her person. We might speak of the best of European tradition being the ability to be critically minded but generous in action, being able to incorporate all that is decidedly not poetry (be that mark or fragment or gesture or other artforms, music, theatre, performance and visual art most distinctly, in this case) in order to make works more poetic than most can conceive. We are left with a poet like Maja Jantar, who for the past generation, has been performing, singing, fashioning and building her poetries across the continent, constantly shifting, reforming, transforming and collaborating, to the point where she now stands for a 21stcentury poetic tradition. One that is sensitive to the real material of poetry, a poetry that knows its past to be future facing. In the first interview of the Maintenant series second act, conversation #101, we present Maja Jantar. https://www.versopolis.com/people/conversation/763/i-ve-always-believed-in-a-very-open-meaning-of-the-word-poetic

Published : an an interview on Utsanga with Tim Gaze

https://www.utsanga.it/flower-intervista-a-tim-gaze/ They once called me Flower, which is beaut, but for now, this interview is a really generous act by Tim Gaze, a brilliant visual poet pioneer in his own right, as it allows me to consolidate and consider much of thinking and output around my Poem Brut publications

1 considering the variety of styles in Selected Scribbling and Scrawling, do you create in waves of similar work? Do you deliberately try not to repeat yourself?

I think I’m trying to consider the method of scribbling or the mode of scrawling, the hand-line, as an entire form, or creative universe. Something that is not an adjunct of poetry or text art but a way of making poems that one might spend a lifetime refining. I’d like to teach a course on scribbling. It would be more therapeutic than one about writing poems. So the selections for the book are from different periods of time, where differing concepts were prominent in my writing and so absolutely your question is well considered, these are bursts re-ordered, re-considered post facto. My favourite works are the intricate scribs, done usually on trains in London, with an hour journey given to each line, and then reworked over weeks. But others were done walking in Gdansk, upright with my eyes closed, for example.

2 how did you get into making things which are completely left of the field of vision of many readers who think they’re into poetry?

Pure chance, no childhood influences, parents who still don’t know what poetry is, working class people who didn’t even read for pleasure, and then in my early adulthood, randomly. This is the greatest gift to me, that I was already a half formed human before considering what poetry is and what it isn’t. And that I am still, 9 years in, plagued by questions unasked by most in the field but still strange and unanswerable to me. For example, surely, to separate poetry from text or conversation or opinion or prose or fiction, a poem needs only be language referent and then to seeking an answer to a self-situated paradoxical question. A poem aims then to be stating or saying the inexpressible. This seems the beginning of the medium to me. Why would just say something in a poem if we can say it anywhere else? Anytime, in any language chunk, any conversation? Advertising does this, speeches – why poem at all if one is going to state or lecture? From this comes many hundreds of natural follow up questions. Why are almost no poems published handwritten? Is there no meaning in the handwritten letter? Only if letters and words are secondary to emotion and opinion. But if this is the case then why poem? I bore myself saying this stuff.

3 is there an ideal reader who really “gets” what you’re doing, or is any response a good response?

Definitely the latter. I hope for negative aesthetics and so negative reactions, as we need to allow for that in what we’re doing, and I wouldn’t ever presume to know the endless strange idiosyncratic contents of another mind and therefore what they might think of the irrelevant doodles I throw out. That they respond at all is all.

etcccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc. https://www.utsanga.it/flower-intervista-a-tim-gaze/

Published : EUROPOE - an anthology of European poetry

EUROPOE Groundbreaking poetry by sixty of Europe’s most original poets, translated into English, brought together for one remarkable anthology.
Kingston University Press (May 2019) Available to buy here enemiesproject.bigcartel.com/product/europoe 143 pages. Paperback.

This was a labour of love. Perhaps the word labour might flash red here. It has been designed to be connected to the European poetry festival I run and to be fundamentally ephemeral, as I’m not really into being an anthologist, as I believe it’s a vocation, a real commitment (see Jerome Rothenberg) and I don’t have that in me at all. In this case I choose the poets from my own tastes and contacts, so they are (obviously not, but in a deeper way) not representative of anything but that and I asked each poet to negotiate their own choice of poems / translations / translators / languages / methods / appearances with me. I hope the book proves exciting to those who read it, that’s all I’m after. https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/europoe

“Celebrating the grand resurgence in literary and avant-garde poetry that has marked the 21st century in Europe, poets from over forty nations present works developing the lyric, sonic, visual, abstract and conceptual traditions. A volume that seeks not to offer a taxonomy but a brief glimpse of the brilliance of so many poets working at the forefront of the language arts, this is a book unified by a fidelity to that which is truly contemporary, amorphously continental and generously innovative.

Featuring poems by Pierre Alferi, Tomica Bajsić Aase Berg, Volodymyr Bilyk, Cecilie Bjørgås Jordheim, Ida Börjel, Serena Braida, Kristian Carlsson, Sophie Carolin-Wagner, Theodoros Chiotis, Iris Colomb, Efe Duyan, Federico Federici, Orsolya Fenyvesi, Mária Ferenčuhová, Frédéric Forte, Lies Van Gasse, Pavlo Grazhdanskij, Ana Gorria, João Luís Barreto Guimarães, Max Höfler, Niillas Holmberg, Zuzana Husarova, Maja Jantar, Ragnhildur Jóhanns, Aušra Kaziliūnaitė, Frank Keizer, Anatol Knotek, Amadej Kraljevič, Gabrielė Labanauskaitė, Morten Langeland, Luljeta Lleshanaku, Léonce W. Lupette, Christodoulos Makris, Maria Malinskovskaya, Ricardo Marques, Immanuel Mifsud, Simona Nastac, Bruno Neiva, Eugene Ostashevsky, Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, Daniele Pantano, Astra Papachristodoulou, Cosmin Perţa, Jörg Piringer, Inga Pizane, Tomáš Přidal, Monika Rinck, Cia Rinne, Jon Ståle Ritland, Ekaterina Samigulina, Martin Glaz Serup, Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir, Muanis Sinanović, Morten Søndergaard, Esther Strauß, Kinga Toth, Nadia de Vries, Krišjānis Zeļģis.

EUROPOE, edited by British poet SJ Fowler and presented by European Poetry Festival in the UK, showcases those who are often on the margins of their own nations literary culture, precisely because their work is forward-looking and challenging, alongside some of the most renowned names in Europe. EUROPOE is an anthology as a unique document of poetry, marking a moment in time for a modern, and thoroughly European, means of experiencing literature.”

A note on : working with Robert Reid Allan w/ the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

Over the last few months I’ve had the pleasure to work with composer Robert Reid Allan for a new piece he is making with the BCMG, entitled Physical Education, as part of their apprentice composer in residence programme. The final piece he is making is performed in June:

https://www.bcmg.org.uk/Event/physical-education  A new work by BCMG Apprentice Composer-in-Residence Robert Reid Allan - Friday 21 June 2019, 7.30pm - CBSO Centre, Birmingham

Physical Education is a new work by BCMG Apprentice Composer in Residence 2018-19 Robert Reid Allan, in collaboration with filmmaker Sasha Balmazi-Owen and actor/dancer Richard Court.

My role is beautifully amorphous, and I hope all the more useful for that fact (certainly it is for me, I’ve learned considerably from Robert and the process, building on contemporary music work I’ve done with Philip Venables, Diamanda Dramm, et al). What Robert has been doing extends beyond his considerable work in composition and into text, poetry, language arts, and their fusion, with music, to themes of violence, cruelty, the adolescent body and institutional aftershocks (school in this case), and this is something I’ve been thinking / writing about for years. So it’s been a serious exploration between us, often about concepts and ideas, and pivotally, also about methodologies, about what music and poetry actually do, together and alone. I’ll have the chance to visit Birmingham for the performance and watch the final version of something I’ve had the privilege to watch gestate throughout 2019. http://www.robertallanmusic.com/

A note on : Recent Poem Brut publications on 3am magazine

I’m very proud to be the poetry editor of 3am magazine still (which was started in 2000) after many years in the role, and I’ve turned the doom inbox of open subs into a joyous time with the constraint of making all incoming work Poem Brut suitable. Some of the poems that come in are inspiring, and so encouraging it is to know so many folk all over the world are exploring the material, the liminal, the handmade as a vital and necessary means of their poetics. I was not the only one confused at the absence of handwriting, colour, motleyness and so on. Here are some of the most recent works I’ve had the pleasure to publish, where we’ve been on a tear as of late https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/index/poetry/

poem brut #64 – a f briony published 27/04/2019 by Oliver Tong
poem brut #63 – an alphabet published 21/04/2019 by Susan Connolly
poem brut #62 – tape samples published 19/04/2019 by Jeff Bagato
poem brut #61 – estate published 03/04/2019 by Tony Rickaby
poem brut #60 – static gifs for broken musicianspublished 31/03/2019 by Nick Potter
poem brut #59 – forever now published 30/03/2019 by Kathryn Hummel
poem brut #58 – a house a silhouette a coco nutpublished 10/03/2019 by Suze de lee
poem brut #57 – coach house / belong published 08/03/2019 by Paul Hawkins
poem brut #56 – archive of disquiet published 03/03/2019 by Theo Chiotis
poem brut #55 – dogtags published by John Mancini
poem brut #54 – father published 02/02/2019 by Dovydas Laurinitis

A note should be made that when I published Tony Rickaby, whose beautiful work I took last year, I heard from his family that he recently passed away. He was a brilliant poet working for many decades to expand what we know to be poetry and it’s a grand and sad thing to have published his last work

A note on : Dramm violioning before my Scribbles in Indonesia

My ongoing and inspiring and feverish collaboration with the musician performer violionist Diamanda Dramm continues to bear prickly fruit. Recently Diamanda played at the Rewire festival and in Indonesia and utilised some of my Scribblings (poems taken from my Poem Brut book The Selected Scribbling and Scrawling published in 2018 by Tom Jenks’ Zimzalla press) as projected walls of backdrop in front on which she violioned, singing some of my hard words too, in the midst of sense. No larger compliment could be paid to my penning. https://zimzalla.co.uk/051-sj-fowler-selected-scribbling-and-scrawling/

A note on : The Streetcake Magazine prize and free workshop in London (May 29th)

Nice to have been invited by Nikki Dudley and Trini Decombe to be a judge for the upcoming debut prize for experimental poetry and fiction, connected to their magazine, Streetcake. https://www.streetcakemagazine.com/streetcakeprize.html

Streetcake actually published me in my first year of writing, 2010 I think, and so how gratifying to be asked to be a judge for under a decade later. Nikki and are as open and industrious to new work and new ways of working in literature as I try to be, so it’s great to be involved with the endeavour, which feels really purposeful (though not necessary as prizes are perhaps weevil).

The submission period will be open from March 4th 2019 and close on 14th June 2019. There will be two age bands (18-21 and 22-26) in each category of short fiction and poetry, but go the link for more

Whitechapel Idea Store on 29th May (1:30-3pm) workshop

connected to the project, completely free and open for all, with a focus towards to those new to poetry, or to avant garde poetry, I suppose (though not necessarily).

The content will be multi-methological, built around four experiments / exercises that aim to explore how context can inform (if not emancipate / elucidate) content. Participants will be asked to create a poem using OULIPPEAN constraint based methodsbefore putting this poem through four iterations / versions / translations / drafts that engage with asemic / pansemic writing, visual / concrete poetry and sound poetry. These processes, lightly done, playfully explored, will be used as a means to discuss the history of these traditions and the reasoning behind them.

Performance #9 - I am a puppet, the bear is real

My reading in Ireland featured a bear, who castigated me for reading and not performing, and told me some truths I needed to hear, and then a poem I had written that day, which listed out most of the poets who had been a part of the festival. A small snippet of the text below :

how like Maja Jantar to bring nobility back leaning forcing dignity back into the act of screaming at you

how like Fabian Faltin to bankwit, to make thorough masculinity as important too, you bibbles

how like Léonce Lupette to soul giant with a head of hair made of Drinking blood

how like Ida Börjel to ask me to choke her on stage without any warning whatsoever

how like Olga Stehlíková to be eyes alive all times and love audio video with winky pause

how like Inga Pizane to make everyother ape like mean while giving me chocolate truffles, thanks and on……………..

EPF 2019 Event #9 : at Riverside Arts Centre, Co.Kildare, Ireland

The final event took place at the beautiful Riverbank Arts Centre in Newbridge. It was curated by Christodoulos Makris, with my supporting role not really needed, and put together thanks largely to his residency with Riverbank and Maynooth College. The venue was lovely, a theatre space, and the staff made everyone feel at home after we bussed in from Dublin. This was solo performances, a mix of locals and Europeans, and was something I had hoped to design into the finale - a calmer, more literary, more intimate event. I’ve done these absorbing intensive touring projects before and found myself closing them out sad and tired. I wanted, knowing this fesivalt to be so ambitious, to finish with something more careful and considered, with a lot of my goodbyes done, proffered out over the final days. The festival was designed to be roving, picking up and putting down as it goes along, with poets jumping in and out throughout, rather than within a block structure everyone has to attend. This was another concept which I think was proofed out, as the energy was always high, and the greetings and farewells added unsentimental poignancy to almost every day.

The readings were a mix of styles and standards, but some real highlights, Christodoulos himself was excellent, reading from his new book with Dostoyevsky Wannabe, and Damir Sodan, my old friend from Croatia, Endre Ruset, my old friend from Norway, and Sophie Carolin Wagner, who had been with the festival for the entire duration (the only one besides me) and did a mashup of all her collaborations, were also excellent. The final performance of the fest fell to Serena Braida, who, as ever before, was quite brilliant and lifted the energy before the final farewell.

EPF 2019 Event #8 : at Burgess Centre, The Manchester Camarade (april 13th)

It was great to be back at the Burgess centre, where I’ve performed many times, once sniffing Anthony Burgess’ ‘ashes’ from the stage floor. It began to feel like a tour, travelling to manchester from norwich with leonce lupette, sophie carolin wagner and the other portable europoets. We were given a warm welcome, not least by martin kratz and the other folk from the new manchester poetry library who helped make this event happen. The pairings worked very well, there was some remarkable collaborations, truly collaborative performances. Subjects included sycophantic poetry blurbs, obscure norwegian footballers, the human splits and spam emails, fruit destruction, handwritten t-shirt poetry, competitive collaboration and dire warnings about the future of england beyond europe.

All the videos and more https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/manchester

The only small downside was the relatively disappointing attendance – probably chance Saturday with easter holidays beginning – and that this led, organically, to a small sense of the poets, us, reading a bit to each other. This is cool, but when it becomes defining, it’s offputting. When readings or scenes are defined by their insider jokes it makes me feel I’m part of a secret society congratulating itself, which is the very opposite of what I want. I want everyone, sincerely, to feel welcome, included, even if they know no one in the room, and to be exposed to difficult, complex, ambiguous, amusing and often volatile work, all the more because the context of the content is warm and open. And in fact it was like this in Manchester, it just whiffed past the other feeling to me. On the Sunday following, as I was flying to Dublin, I reflected that I had probably finally gotten a little tired, a little less present and alive, for I was surrounded by real friends – Tom Jenks, Colin Herd, Christodoulos Makris, Harry Man, Leonce Lupette, Kim Campanello – people I’ve known well and deeply for many years, whom I respect greatly and it was an exceptional event.

Performance #8 - a post-europe guide for english poets with Tom Jenks

Tom has had to collaborate with me so many times now he has lost his marbles. This time, following our last explorations of the genius of danny dyer and nigel farage, we presented a helpful and practical guide to english poets once the eurocalypse happens. For poets have loved ones too, despite what people think.

Tom was really on fire, completely merked me with wit and charisma, and one must learn when to get out of the way of talent, as I did, and was pretty pleased with this. The interplay between the visual and the poetic, and the written and the improvised was neat.

EPF 2019 Performance #7 - everyone loves the bios

My dear friend morten langeland and I did a version of this once before and had planned to maybe work this out for norwich until, unfortunately, he missed his flight like a cheeky poet. So I furiously spent the afternoon nicking and tidying the idea into a piece I could do solo. It was alright. What I really aimed to do was to open up a perhaps slightly more cautious audience than those we faced in London. I knew some of the poet performers who followed my opening remarks would be playing hard with what some people take to be live poetry so if this conceptual poem intro could set a tone, that would be a success for me, as an organiser poet. In the end, it seemed to land fine and was glad I did it, though I nearly didn’t right up until the last second.