https://artofjazz.blogspot.com/2026/07/norwegian-poetry-celebration-st-olave.html
As has happened many times before, the remarkable artist, publisher and dear friend, Alban Low, has created an extraordinary memento from the opening event of the EPF 2026, with sketches of the collaborating pairs who performed on the night.
The festival began with a Norwegian poetry celebration event. It allowed me to collaborate with Norwegian renaissance singer, researcher and performer, Sean Bell. I hired a costume that was (I was told) 100% historically accurate for Samuel Pepys, who was a local to the venue - St Olave church in the City of London and mentioned it often in his diary, attending as a parishioner. I read Claire Tomalin’s book about his life, and his diaries, and then researched the accent most common in London of the 1660s, which was similar to contemporary Devonian. Then Sean and I met on the day, he brought some prepared songs that were of the time too, and we slotted things together, and pretty much improvised. It ended up as something wonderfully strange and atmospheric. I resisted a neatness, shall we say, so it was a little awkward for the audience, but all the better. Sean is incredible too, as talented as he is amicable.
Margento has launched a brilliant new online journal (of sorts, it is very high tech!) and kindly hosted a unique in dialogue interview I have done with poets that are at the root of my festival and it’s ethos - Julia Rose Lewis, David Spittle, Lavinia Singer Krisjanis Zelgis and Zuzana Husarova. They reflected on the festival and then asked me a question.
“It was around the lockdown that I realised the festival had become sustainable because it was interpersonally sustaining. Or rather, my approach of putting collaboration first, rather than translation or singular solo readings, had led to people being put first, as everything was being created for the events, and communities and friendships spiralled out from this model. As such, in the absence of people getting together for one night to share new collaborative performances I realised the festival was sustainable for me for an individual as all extraneously reflective consideration, including goals or even curatorial visions, had drained away and I was just doing it, wanting to do it, to see people and see their work. I wanted to get a few hundred good people together, connect them, and have a lovely few weeks in their company, and all else could flow from that, because of that, often oblivious to me. Since then this has increasingly been the case, that I am able to be in the moment of the events and not mind the admin and effort it takes to build up to these moments, for they are just less nice but neutral moments in the service of me seeing and meeting and working with people.”
The publisher World Poetry, edited by Matvei Yankelevich, are putting out some extraordinary contemporary poetry. It is really in my area of interest, high quality work, new translations, and beautiful designs too, and with a significant grounding in European poetry. Due to my festival I am asked often about publishers people should follow to access some quality contemporary European poetry, and so I’m sharing https://worldpoetrybooks.com/ which feel in the tradition of Peter Owen, where I worked briefly when I started out in writing (an experience which shaped me massively) You can see their titles and sign up for their quarterly newsletter and recently I’ve been reading their new translations of Boethius, Sodergran and Seferis, evidencing their eye on the past as well as the future
Thanks to the brilliant curation of Andrea Mason I had the chance to launch Barabus at Avalon Cafe in London during this all day event. Apart from the reading, everything I did was 100% improvised on the spot and it somewhat went my way. Thanks to the unknown pianist. I read from my novella Barabus after rolling in the theme and finding a friend.
A wonderful launch, for me, to share my book with a few dozen friends and kind ears in the brilliant Brick Lane Bookshop. Luke Kennard was really kind to come and talk to me for nearly an hour about Barabus and it’s themes, and big thanks to him and Dominic Jaeckle for being ever present behind the book. https://tenementpress.com/BARABUS
https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/nottingham
My first time organising in Nottingham, and an extraordinarily resonant experience it was working with Hannah Trevarthen and the team at UNESCO Nottingham City of Literature, to whom basically I owe the whole adventure. Nottingham Contemporary was our venue, really a stunning space, and the process of curating allowed me to connect with a new scene of poets as well as old friends. In the end it came together in the spirit of community and newness that I’m trying to make synonymous with my festival and the Camarade model. 7 performances, 14 poets, a good audience and a proper range of approaches to poetry, collaboration and liveness. Everyone seemed happy at the close, with small creatures in hand. Well worth a look at the videos and photos at the link above.
For my own part I did an improvisation of talk poetry and dance poetry with my old friend and collaborator Colin and it came out good I think. We used the space, we made it from what was there, what had been said, the depth of what was happening. He is an extraordinary poet and performer.
Mentoring is one of the most important things that I do, for me. It allows me to reflect on my own approaches to writing living as an entire mode in the act of being responsible to another person who is taking or beginning that journey. A number of years ago I began working with Bie Yining, remotely, between my base in the UK and hers in China. It has turned out she is one of the most gifted young poets I’ve had the pleasure to encounter and this summer she is able to attend my festival and launch her debut publication, from the brilliant Sampson Low Ltd, edited by Alban Low, who has helped me and so many others too. It is called Canton Mute and is available here https://sampsonlow.co/2026/06/05/canton-mute-bie-yining/ It is truly unique, of genuine originality.
A wonderful night at The National Gallery, with Toby Jones, Yemi Dipeolu, Nadia Jordan and I presenting new works of poetry and writing in response to paintings we chose from Room 32. The 11th in the series, which has run since 2023, it was grand to have so many people turn out in one of the grandest rooms in the gallery. I worked with both Yemi and Nadia at Kingston University, and getting to meet their families and friends, they did everyone proud. It was a pleasure too to work with Toby Jones for the first time; he was as generous, curious and brilliant as his reputation suggests. His presence certainly elevated what has consistently been an outstanding series of events. https://www.stevenjfowler.com/nationalgallery/ I wrote poems on works by Caravaggio and Gentileschi, the latter of which is on video below.
Please join me on June 5th, 7pm, at Brick Lane Books for the launch of my new novella Barabus from Tenement Press. After readings I'll be in conversation with Luke Kennard about the book. bricklanebookshop.org/product/book-launch-barabus-by-sj-fowler-5th-june/
Tony White was one of the first authors I met when I started wanting to be a poet and writer, I attended a workshop he did in London in 2009. He’s someone I’ve long admired, and so it was extra special to feature on his return to Resonance radio, in the first episode of a new run of his Literature Live show, alongside the brilliant Andrea Mason. I had the chance to read from my new novella Barabus and talk about the show and more. Full episode here https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/literature-live-4th-may-2026/ and a cut for my youtube
Really pleased to conduct a conversation with Sarah Hemens, who heads up New Books in German, about the upcoming 9th edition of the European Poetry Festival https://www.new-books-in-german.com/the-european-poetry-festival/ An excerpt here below
I was struck by the breadth of partners involved in the festival, both international organisations as well as national initiatives. What does this suggest about the relevance and resonance of European poetry today?
I’d be cautious to draw any wider conclusions on relevance, just as a mode. I believe the festival has been sustainable, psychologically or emotionally, shall we say, being run by one person, because I am not trying to create any utopian or over arching impact. I’m just trying to create singular evenings, where people create unusually dynamic collaborative live poetry in an environment where it is friendly, funny, hospitable and down to earth. I want to meet people, connect them and put literary and avant-garde poetry in an open space. European poetry carries such powerful traditions in this regard, so it all fits together. The volume of partners is due to their generosity? Their trust? And maybe our consistency? Or the energy of the thing? My desire to reach out? To make more of what we have? I hope so. It’d be lovely if this speaks to a resonance for European poetry here in the UK, but I think it’s not for me to say, but for me to do, if that makes sense. Naturally I personally believe fervently in the resonance of European poetry today.
The Austrian and Swiss celebrations both feature poets working in collaboration with British counterparts to present new work. What stands out to you about the poetry scenes in Austria and Switzerland, and what is distinctive about these collaborative exchanges?
Yes these are two of the fest’s most generous and consistent partners. They really believe in what we are doing and we’re grateful for that because it means audiences get to see what is happening in these two nations in the UK every year. Some audience members do follow the work of these poets after the events and they become a way into to things happening in these nations that might otherwise be opaque. I wouldn’t want to make generalisations about the scenes in these countries but I’ve found the poets I work with often are really affable as people while being very complex in their texts, and I would say it’s because the traditions are different than in the UK, and certainly ideas around modernism and language are more fundamental, and casual, and discussions are accessibility and readability are different. My work is more aligned with the scenes I’ve experienced in Austria and Switzerland and I am jealous the people who seem to win prizes in these countries are doing really intense, complex work. I could write 50 pages on this, but I’ve bored too many people too many times to do that. In addition I think performance and the tradition of experimentation in literature is more common.
Silence: A Literary History by Kate McLoughlin has recently been published by Oxford University Press. It comes in at 720 pages and is described, properly, as ‘A majestic literary history, revealing the power and possibilities of silence found in literary works… It traces silences over twelve centuries of English literature, from the solitary states of exile on icy seas described in Anglo-Saxon poems to searches for silence in our own Age of Pings.” https://www.amazon.co.uk/Silence-Literary-History-Kate-McLoughlin/dp/019285562X
Rather unusually, it includes my work, and one of my asemic poems at that. Pretty remarkable really, and an honour. The work in question is taken from my Selected Scribbling and Scrawling from Zimzalla press https://zimzalla.co.uk/051-sj-fowler-scribbling-and-scrawling-2nd-edition/
”Illuminating the intellectual and cultural influences shaping our relationships with silence and explores the paradoxical ways in which authors create silences through words. Medieval lyricists express complex theological notions through simple lullabies shushing babies to sleep. Renaissance sonneteers protest their tongue-tiedness in dazzling displays of verbal ingenuity. Shakespeare creates silences that stage violent misogyny, calculating statecraft, the hurt of having to grow up and hard-won equanimity. Out of political favour at the Restoration, Milton dreams of a silent paradise. Wordsworth and Coleridge are dumbfounded by the sublimity of God's creation. Jane Austen deflates pomposities with perfectly-timed pauses. Tennyson composes a three-thousand-line poem about the death of his best friend leaving him lost for words. Virginia Woolf repeatedly writes a novel about the things that people don't say.”
Please join Toby Jones, Yemi Dipeolu, Nadia Jordan and I on May 22nd, 7pm and free, in Room 32 of The National Gallery.
www.nationalgallery.org.uk/events/friday-lates-tour-and-poetry-readings-sj-fowler-and-guests-22-05-2026
This event will present new poetic texts and performances responding to paintings chosen by the performers in one of grandest rooms in the gallery, led by art historian Jo Lewis. A unique walking tour event as part of the Friday Lates program, this is the eleventh commissioned in the series since 2023. All previous 10 are documented here www.stevenjfowler.com/nationalgallery/
The EPF returns for it’s 9th year with a summer festival of events celebrating collaboration, literary liveness and cross-linguistic inventiveness. Over 100 poets, many visiting from across Europe, will present new works at a series of ‘Camarade’ events. Celebrating the poetry of Cyprus, Switzerland, Estonia, Austria, Poland, Latvia, Norway, Flanders and more, these communal, playful, energetic events are free to attend. Please see below for that which is confirmed so far and mark the dates in your diary!
June Weds 17th - Norwegian Poetry celebration at St Olave Church, London
June Thurs 18th - Cypriot Poetry celebration at Cypriot High Commission
June Sat 20th - Swiss Poetry celebration at Hundred Years Gallery, London
June Mon 22nd - Flanders Poetry celebration at Flanders House, London
June Weds 24th - Estonian Poetry celebration at National Poetry Library
June Thurs 25th - Austrian Poetry celebration at Austrian Cultural Forum
June Sat 27th - Polish Poetry celebration at Hundred Years Gallery, London
July Weds 1st - Latvian Poetry celebration at National Poetry Library
July Thurs 2nd - EPF : The Kingston Camarade at Town House Kingston Uni
Another great night at The National Gallery. Very proud of Mia Hale McLeod and Cerys McVea, who I’ve worked with at Kingston Uni for the full term of their degree (and they’re about to graduate) who brought their families along. Brilliant to watch Damian Le Bas work again, he’s extraordinary. And such a special connection I’ve developed with Fiona Alderton over these past four years, culminating in her chopping some of my hair off here. I read on Rubens, twisting Samson and Delilah a bit, and Jordaens, for his stare heavy Holy Family portrait. Nice crowd too, supportive and engaged as ever. One of the best things I’ve ever done this series. More to be found at https://www.stevenjfowler.com/nationalgallery
The best teaching experience outside my normal gigs for many years. An extraordinary thing Jacob Sam La Rose has done setting up and running Barbican Young Poets for nearly two decades. And in the spirit of expansiveness he has created, he invited me, on April 8th, a bit outside of the norm perhaps, and new to the set up, certainly. The poets led by Jacob and his team were uniformly alive to ideas. Really advanced in their work, they were all motivated, supportive, enthusiastic, and it seemed, very keen to hear ideas around innovative live literature. Again a massive credit to Jacob for creating such an incubator for curiosity as a means to development. I shared a lot of my own development in live literature, from talking performances and improv to sound poetry, and how I think through context and time and space and audience and things like that. I focused in on Performance Literature as a specific thing too, rooted in live literary traditions, something separate from other live mediums. I taught with a kind of meta-example at one point, leading an improvisation while dissecting the decisions I might make. It was a lovely environment and the whole experience left me inspired. I made a lot of connections too, and hope some of these really exciting poets will feature at future things I do
David and Lizzy Turner have done an amazing job with this unique set of zines on boxing and I’m really happy to have a poem in what I believe is the final issue, which you can download here https://writersonboxing.com/the-spit-bucket-a-boxing-fanzine/
Thanks to Thomas Ballhausen an excerpt from my long poem cycle The Great Apes has been translated into German and included in a great tradition in Austrian literature - The Poetry Flyer from Podium Literature.
“Since 1973, the "Poetry Leaflet" (a leporello) has been published annually for "Poetry Day" in early March, featuring around 25 poems by Austrian poets. "Thousands of multi-page poetry leaflets were distributed, often in bitter cold, on the streets of Vienna and other cities, primarily in Lower Austria, and later sent to schools." (Alois Vogel). The poetry leaflet was distributed free of charge in large print runs, mainly to schools (for German lessons) and cultural institutions. Since 2006, the editors have rotated annually.” https://www.podiumliteratur.at/das-lyrikflugblatt/#gsc.tab=0
Once again Alban Low has rendered one of my events and performances in his own brilliant art. A wonderful tradition, valued by all whom he captures.
https://artofjazz.blogspot.com/2026/03/versopolis-camarade-2026-poetry-society.html
