This is a really marked issue of a excellent online poetry journal, Tentacular, edited by Jonathan Catherall.
These three poems are from my new collection of poems celebrating notation, handwriting, inarticulation as a means of articulation (by trusting the reading to have subjective, generous responses, as well as dual visual / semantic responses) due in just over a month from Hesterglock Press.
Some brilliant poets in this issue overall too.
https://www.versopolis.com/times/essay/778/the-word-slayer
Another in my series of poetic articles for the Versopolis Review. This one on Cruelty, and revealing my surprisingly deep knowledge of torture. This book here began my research into the human creativity of creating unimaginable pain.
“Did you know, for example, the Roman’s had five variations of the crucifix? This is nothing. They did so much more with suffering.
Did you know, for example, Plutarch describes The Boat thus, “The execution is performed like this: two boats are used that exactly fit. The prisoner is put on his back in one of them. He is offered food and he is drenched with a mixture of milk and honey. It is poured across his face. They keep his face turned to the sun and it becomes covered by the swarms of flies that settle. Then the other boat is laid on top. He is left for the rats and insects and vermin to prey upon him and slowly eat him away, from the bowels out. It took Mithridates 17 days to die. When the upper boat was lifted his body was a mass of maggots.” But this is something like dubious historical record.
Did you know, for example, a human skull from nearly 3000 years ago has been found to have been scalped, ritually? A knife drawn across the forehead and the skin of the head ripped off with a grip of the hair. But this is something like dating technology.
Did you know, for example, that Timur would behead those who resisted his sieges and make towers of their skulls? An eye-witness counted more than 28 towers constructed of about 1,500 heads each after one siege. But this is nothing, there is one story, probably apocryphal, whereby he ordered his chief architect to build a minaret of living human bodies, to be cemented together, with the bottom body still alive when the top was laid in place.
Did you know, for example, in Ernst G. Jung’s A small cultural history of the skin notes that the typical causes of death due to flaying was shock, critical loss of blood or other body fluids, hypothermia, or infections, and that the actual death after being skinned alive was estimated to occur from a few hours up to a few days after the flaying itself. Already from the times of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) the practice of flaying was displayed and commemorated in both carvings and official royal edicts.
A really fun second entry into my new series of events celebrating Hungarian authors with the Hungarian Cultural Centre, who, as before, could not have been more hospitable, laid back or funny. / We had six new performances from 8 artist writers reflecting on Jozsef - that powerful emotional archetypal poetic presence - and a lovely pretty much full audience for a soft early june night in the heart of Covent Garden.
You can see all the performances at the link below, including some amazing work by Bettina Fung, Stephen Watts and Astra Papachristodoulou.
https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/europeanwriters
It was also the first reveal of a new project I’m editing with Dominic Jaeckle - Hotel Cordel - ‘A House on Fire’ (Translations After Atilla József). For more info visit partisanhotel.co.uk/Hotel-Cordel-A-House-on-Fire
For my own performance I did another black box music movement work. I have tried to make these entirely irreverent, lively, playful, weird, improvised. This time I threw out distracting possible performance ideas before playing three songs legitimately made of Jozsef poems, while black bagging myself. One was country, one 70s prog, one was death metal. Good finds. I also opened a window and shouted at some people in the street in a nice way. I asked them if they were hungarian. They said they were from cambridge so I shut the window.
Spring 2019 stuff Before the semi-glorious summer begins, a recounting of some things I've done since March, with nearly 20 performances, amongst articles, anthologies, events et al (more on each at www.stevenjfowler.com/blog)
Fokus Lyrik Frankfurt - Apparently the biggest poetry festival ever organised in Germany, I gave a 'powerpoint' talking performance for the opening night of the Fokus Lyrik fest conference to an audience of 500 or so, though you can't see them so... I ate flowers and they all thought I’d die. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19Nx1g8J_o8
The Hope Slayer, alcohol - an article on despising the drunk for The Versopolis Reviewwww.versopolis.com/times/essay/771/the-hope-slayer-alcohol
The Next Step, a performance with Fabian Faltin : Male retreats, kickboxing, intimate diaries and friendship. At the Austrian Cultural Forum.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MM0cWDDpbM&t=1068s
La Voix Liberee - Sound Poetry exhibition at Palais de Tokyo, Paris exploring the entire history of sound poetry www.stevenjfowler.com/blog/2019/5/19/a-note-on-visiting-the-la-voix-liberee-exhibition-at-palais-de-tokyo
Water Rituals, a performance with Krisjanis Zelgis : It is actually quite difficult to drink a litre of water in one gulp. It is easier to have one's hair washed on Kingsland road, during a poetry thing. At Burley Fisher Books. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzfyIpsfk3E
We’ll Never Have Paris A brilliant new anthology ed.by Andrew Gallix, from Repeater Books. www.stevenjfowler.com/blog/2019/5/20/published-new-fiction I've new fiction in the volume, alongside folk like Tom McCarthy, Will Self, Brian Dillon, Joanna Walsh, Eley Williams, Max Porter
Nature - Special to be in one of the world’s most important scientific journals, given I’m a blurt. But I have been working around an interest in neuroaesthetics the last five years or so, and my focus here, my collaborations with Thomas Duggan.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-019-0450-x
Utsanga, a conversation with Tim Gaze – covering my poem brut book series in depth, an interview with the Australian vispo legend on the Italian Utsangawww.stevenjfowler.com/blog/2019/5/6/published-an-an-interview-on-utsanga-with-tim-gaze
Neutrality Questionnaire, with Patrick Savolainen – Swiss elephants, mimicry and a live poetry questionnaire at the Poetry Society https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbepZOaU_Yo
The Word Slayer, on Tortuous Cruelty and Human History – a fun new article on the Versopolis Review evidencing my surprising deep knowledge of torturehttps://www.versopolis.com/times/essay/778/the-word-slayer
Black Box Dancing – Yiddish music and window escapes, a performance for Franz Baermann Steiner at Austrian Cultural Forum www.stevenjfowler.com/blog/2019/5/6/a-note-on-the-black-music-box-performance-for-franz-baermann-steiner
On Optioning Cannibalism – an article on future eating.https://www.versopolis.com/times/essay/756/on-optioning-cannibalism
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group – a note on working with composer Robert Reid recently for the BCMG www.stevenjfowler.com/blog/2019/4/29/a-note-on-working-with-robert-reid-allan-w-the-birmingham-contemporary-music-group
Eurobear performances – in Kingston and Kildare I spoke to bears, live. The latter bear was particularly cruel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iraBdtF_1vk
a performance for Laszlo Krasnahorkai with a spider and I became a pirate!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRZYAoya0DI
a performance for Queens Mob Teahouse anthology launch with a roboto toy!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzGZXl2Nneg
a performance for Battalion anthology with bat dancing and echolocation!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Edxxm6E3og
a performance at Burgess Centre with Tom Jenks on post-brexit apocalypse techniques! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUfS5FOgvw8
a performance at Dragon’s Hall Norwich reading amazing poetry bios!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVyRYdNjlTk
a performance at Rich Mix with Maja Jantar unveiling mega papers and singing and dancing again! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or9Ah09PhQw
Thanks for making it this far down, bless you bless you
Hungarian Lit Night: tributes to Attila József
June Wednesday 5th 2019 : 7pm at Hungarian Cultural Centre
10 Maiden Ln, London WC2E 7NA : Free Entry but registration is required! Please email bookings@hungary.org.uk or register here
www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/europeanwriters
The event will feature Ellen Wiles, Stephen Watts, Bettina Fung, Gareth Evans, Astra Papachristodoulou, SJ Fowler, Dominic Jaeckle, Serena Braida, Han Smith & more.
Lyrical, idiosyncratic and impassioned, the mature works of Attila József have been celebrated throughout the world since his premature death in 1937. His self-conscious, concise, ambitious poetry contains within it a unique insight into poverty and suffering. Gone before his 33rd birthday, the short, intense life of József spawned an outpouring of poems that seems, as much as any other, to represent the tumult of the European 20th century at large.
This event celebrates the iconoclastic Hungarian poet through brand new commissions of contemporary artists, writers and musicians, who respond to József - his poems, ideas & life - with new performances, recitations and readings. / This event will also see a performance to celebrate the new Hotel Cordel project - ‘A House on Fire’ (Translations After Atilla József). For more info visitpartisanhotel.co.uk/Hotel-Cordel-A-House-on-Fire
Supported by http://www.london.balassiintezet.hu/
A brilliant new anthology edited by Andrew Gallix, from Repeater Books. https://repeaterbooks.com/product/well-never-have-paris/
We’ll Never Have Paris explores this enduring fascination with this myth of a bohemian and literary Paris. Edited by Andrew Gallix, this collection brings together many of the most talented and adventurous writers from the UK, Ireland, USA, Australia and New Zealand to explore this theme through short stories, essays and poetry, in order to build up a captivating portrait of Paris as viewed by English speakers today — A Moveable Feast for the twenty-first century. We’ll Never Have Paris has contributions from seventy-nine authors, including Tom McCarthy, Will Self, Brian Dillon, Joanna Walsh, Eley Williams, Max Porter, Sophie Mackintosh and Lauren Elkin.
And me. And it’s new fiction in the book, not poetry, which is beautiful. It’s a piece I wrote somewhat riffing on the style of patrick modiano, connecting different incidences i may of experienced in paris with other humans through incidental details and without narrative tissue
Well it’s pretty spiffy to be part of a group show at Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Maybe the top institute Ive been involved with exhibition wise, certainly up there with V&A et al. It was cool to be there in person and listen to sound proper sounds and duke about paris like a proper artiste https://www.palaisdetokyo.com/fr/evenement/la-voix-liberee
Fondazione Bonotto presents a new exhibition project in collaboration with Palais de Tokyo. As the result of research lasting over a year, the exhibition has been conceived as a non- exhaustive journey through sound poetry, from the end of the Second World War until contemporary developments. Intentionally trans-historical and international, representing over thirty countries covering all five continents, this project has been conceived as a place to be listened in, a transmitter creating a frequency that passes outside the walls of Palais de Tokyo thanks to an application providing an open, free-of-charge download of the exhibition’s sound programme, as well as a multitude of sites, radio stations or reviews which will extend this experience of sound poetry during the entire spring of 2019. / In the 20th century, phonetic and then sound poetry always stood as an act of emancipation. Sometimes ready to abandon semantics, the avant-garde turned it into a spearhead of a struggle against systems, beliefs and dogmas. What is now left of their heroic combats? Myths and legends. But times have changed. Combats too. Utopias no longer have the same look. / New technologies have now invaded the space of language, for the better or the worst. For the worst, by imposing a digital rationalisation of words and sounds. For the best, by providing language with an infinity of sources and tools. Since the 1950s, technological progress has allowed phonetic poetry to become sound poetry. https://www.fondazionebonotto.org/en/news/1-events/164-la_voix_lib_re_e_-_po_sie_sonore.html
This was a charming evening in the Westminster Ref Library just next to Leicester Sq to celebrate the launch of the Battalion anthology from Sidekick Books. It’s a beautiful book and Sidekick are a really original, enthusiastic and purposefully innovative publisher. They should be celebrated more, we would miss them were they not active, Kirsten Irving and Jon Stone.
You can buy the book here http://sidekickbooks.com/booklab/books/battalion/ Do buy it, it’s really beautiful. The bat is a liminal thing, and goes by many cultural identities: aviation expert, clandestine committee member, victim of superstition, delicate contraption, beautiful mishap, miniature aristocrat, occultist, conjuror, ninja.
Battalion is your alternative, unregistered guide to bats – a live, writhy cave colony of findings, fixations and sonic experiments. Add your own inky skitterings to the mix, bring it on your evening flit. Take after its denizens: open your mouth and listen to the sky.
For my performance for this night I decided to continue a new series of live works using a Black Box Speaker and some Dancing. I first emerged from behind book shelves and read, hooded, to bat squeaks. I didnt realise how dark this seemed, it was meant to be funny. But luckily I had the song Echolocation in my bag and made a bat fool of myself. / It was good to see some other brilliant performers too, Andre Bagoo, Yvonne Litschel, James Coghill et al also
A fixture of my summer, all the way to 2015 now, to spend time with my friend and long-term collaborator Tereza Stehlikova, shooting footage for our film Worm Wood, about the private and disappearing wonder of corners of west london, its unique and unpretentious character, from out across kensal green cemetery to wormwood scrubs and the grand union canal. Our plan is to have no plan, to keep shooting in sections, with poetry and text responding, in many different cinematic aesthetics and compiling, as years go by, and the film grows, into an artwork but also a document, as its made through our friendship and the joy of its being made. The work has been really rewarding, offering insight into where I once called home as an active, absorbing, inspiring space and Tereza is really an artist whose mode I admire.
The film has been screened across London in chapters, and our previous iterations of this long term work has taken in readings, pamphlets, walks, exhibitions from the Garden Museum to Crypts full of the dead. We are working towards a screening of the film in a new over 60 minute version this autumn or winter, in London. http://terezast.com/ / www.stevenjfowler.com/wormwood
I’ll be doing two events at the Greenwich Book Festival this June 15th. The first will be a panel on writing and teaching creative writing, and university environments, and the second will be a special edition of the marvelous English PEN modern literature events I’ve been doing for many years now. It’ll have a half dozen authors presenting new works in celebration of a Writer at Risk supported by English PEN. Both these eventsare down to the wonderful Sam Jordison www.theenemiesproject.com/englishpen
Visit up on https://greenwichbookfest.com/ and here is the performance I did for Sentsov this January
It’s a special thing to be in Nature, one of the world’s most important journals, given I’m a blurt. But I have been working around an interest in neuroaesthetics the last five years or so, with the Hubbub wellcome residency, the Salzburg global fellowship and perhaps most importantly, my focus here, my collaborations with Thomas Duggan. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-019-0450-x
Thomas and I wrote a piece about our years of work together and how we night negotiate the obvious knowledge hierarchies when science and art interact. This has been a big interest of mine too, how people pretend they are equally useful, or that scientific and artistic ‘knowledge’ are the same etc… Or being asked to essentially translate complex scientific ideas into simple artworks for the public to consume etc complex issue complex issue… https://www.nature.com/nnano/
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…
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 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 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.
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.
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 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/
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.
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.
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
