A note on : Hipoglote sound poetry podcasts ends with 200 editions

There’s been nothing like the Hipoglote podcast / interview series run by Tiago Swabl out of Portugal. It’s had 200 editions covering the history, and the current state, of sound poetry. I had the chance to chat to Tiago a few years ago for an edition, then in the summer of 2020 produce a special program discussing the way I got into sound poetry, and covering a full decade of work. Tiago has got a radio show now and Hipoglote has come to an end after 200 editions, please listen to the final show which features lots of clips from his guests. https://www.mixcloud.com/Hipoglote/200o-hipoglote-_a2h-43_2020-12-27_-o-%C3%A9ter-%C3%A9-aqui-ao-lado/

EUROPOE : a new online course on European Poetry

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An online course beginning January 23rd 2021, running for seven weeks. £200. 
All information & booking at www.poembrut.com/courses

The character of European literature remains a hotbed of innovation – a constant remaking of what we know poetry to be. This ambitious course seeks to introduce the English-language poet, or anyone captivated by a wide understanding of what poetry is, to the European tradition in all its richness.

Over the course of seven weeks, we will trace a line from the aftershocks of modernism, to the arrival symbolism, futurism, surrealism, and more. We explore the constraints that emancipate in the OULIPO movement, the collaborative asemic poetry of the CoBrA group, the onset of conceptual poetry, the birth of Concrete Poetry, the emergence of Sound poetry, leading to the current movement of Performance Literature. We explore electronic poetry and digital literature, and vitally, we present what is happening now – with contemporary poets working in the 21st century. 

We will also dip into the ‘grand’ post and pre-war literary poets across the continent, focusing in on their technique to inspire new works. From Mayakovsky to Akhmatova, Brodsky to Dragomoshchenko, Celan to Sachs, Brecht, Miłosz, Herbert, Szymborska to Różewicz, Ritsos to Elytis to Seferis, Popa to Jozsef, Salamun, Isou to Queneau, Cendrars, Pessoa. Ekelöf, Handke, Saariskoski.

Alongside the dozens and dozens of contemporary poets, EUROPOE will situate the anglophone poet with roads into an often occluded European tradition that will hopefully last long into the future... When the course finishes, an event and publication will consolidate that which everyone has produced. All info www.poembrut.com/courses

Published: an article on Mummery for Versopolis

I was very happy to be asked to write a new article for the Versopolis Review, where I was co-editor a few years back. It is part of a brilliant e-book edited by Ana Schnabl called the European Reliquary - collected texts about European Customs. I wrote about Mummery. The article is part of an ongoing interest of mine in English idiosyncrasy which lies beneath what is official or branded art, and historically too. I’ve been interested in going beneath what is designated as art and poetry to the weird things English people have always done in one form or another, creatively, to find a thread into my own work, and its flippancy, strangeness and intensity. This exploration has taken me into tonnes of folk songs, old manuscripts, visual poetries, theology, religious texts and rituals, local festivals and even into things like Nonsense Verse, which I discussed on Mischa Foster Poole’s podcast in 2020. Perhaps things people take for granted, those who know them, but stuff I wasn’t aware of when younger, having no interest in anything creative. This article then, while I'm sure naive and inaccurate in parts, is a dip into some of that research and I was delighted to write it. // To receive a free copy, you simply go to this link and fill in your email https://www.versopolis.com/multimedia/ebook/1043/european-reliquary

Published : Sabotage film for Ida Börjel

http://www.audiatur.no/festival/?lang=en I got commissioned by swedish poet ida borjel to make a new short film response to her brilliant collection of poetry about sabotage - entitled, in english, Miximum Ca' Canny the Sabotage Manuals - and made this film here, which was just published online by audiatur in norway, a festival and publisher which is releasing ida’s book.

the film was shot in kensal green cemetery, where i was once in residency, and was cinematographed and edited by david spittle with music by benedict taylor.

the film is one of a dozen made by poets around the world responding to ida’s ideas and poems. more on the book and to buy it in english in england here


Published : CROWFINGER

Crowfinger, by Bård Torgersen and I, is now available from Sampson Low sampsonlow.co/2020/11/23/crowfinger-sj-fowler-and-bard-torgersen/

36 pages of full colour photopoetry printed in a limited edition of 200. £4.99.

From the publisher “The boldest take on photopoetry and corvids of the last decade, Crowfinger is a book that offers more than meets the eye. Juxtaposing Torgersen’s candid and striking photographs of Norwegian forests with Fowler’s precise and unrelenting poetry, it comes at you like evening fog between the trees." www.stevenjfowler.com/crowfinger

“This is menacing and funny and antic and accusatory and gorgeous and just the best kind of collaboration. It gives us a new way into ekphrasis and a new maze to lose ourselves in. Were you having beautiful thoughts in the beautiful place? Can you just be f*cking honest for once in your life?”  Luke Kennard, poet

“The only thing I could compare this book to is going for a run in the forest in the middle of the night. Surrounded by pitch black you hurtle yourself into a little pocket of light whilst trying your best to ignore whatever it is that’s watching you from the shadows. I’m not sure if I read the book or the book read me.”  Mikael Buck, photographer

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Below, the launch of CROWFINGER, at Kingston Quaker’s Centre on December 3rd 2020, as part of Writers’ Kingston’s celebration of Sampson Low press.


Published : Crayon Poems on Mercurius

Crayon Poems is the poetic equivalent of a cat gifting its owner a dead bird, only it’s done with greasy, gentle colours on the page. It is a gift you don’t want but should be grateful for. https://www.mercurius.one/home/crayon-poems

One of the highlights of the year, publishing my book CRAYON POEMS, with the brilliant Penteract Press. Thanks to Thomas Helm, over at Mercurius, a few more of the poems have been published online

EPF Digital #8 - Messages from the Other Side

Thanks to everyone who has supported our digital festival over the last two weeks! To close European Poetry Festival 2020, we’re delighted to partner with the longstanding public video poetry project "Messages from the Other Side", founded and curated by Max Höfler. www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/messages

Six poets from Graz and London each have written short poems for public screening in both cities. These video-poems or kinetic texts are styled as literary "news" for the other city, London to Graz, Graz to London. Projected onto the side of the Forum Stadtpark in Graz and Hardy Tree Gallery in London, passing civilians have witnessed the ludic newscasts of Natascha Gangl, Ghazal Mosadeq, Stefan Schmitzer, Vik Shirley, Thomas Antonic & Steven J. Fowler. The films have been screened publicly November 18th to December 11th 2020 and are available to view at the link above and vimeo.com/channels/nachrichtenvondrueben with German language versions.

The entire digital European Poetry Festival 2020 can be viewed www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/2020 and we will return, in physical proximity, in 2021.

EPF Digital #7 - Three Norwegian Poets

Really some of favourite interviews I’ve conducted, with my friend and collaborator Bard, and the amazing Hilde, below, who will name two lambs after me. Worth a listen to all three pieces here, they are all very interesting, I think anyway.

EPF Digital 2020 presents two remarkable new long-form video-interviews with poets from Norway - Hilde Myklebust, discussing the darkness of nature from her remote farm and Bård Torgersen, chatting about transgression and ritual, amongst many other things! Plus a brand new video-poem commission by Norwegian writer Bjørn Vatne, a musical collaboration with artificial intelligence. More on their work can be found www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/norway

Supported by NORLA - Norwegian Literature Abroad and The Norwegian Embassy in the UK.

A note on : Museum of Today launched - Space Bananas

http://themuseumoftoday.org/2020-44-space-bananas/

“The Museum of Today aims to give people an opportunity to become part of a collective project at this time of extreme isolation when many of our physical gathering spaces are inaccessible. The Museum of Today invited individuals or households to select an object from their home that has a particular resonance for them, now, and to tell its story.  After all the objects had been collected our ‘Curator of Now’ categorised and collated all the items and our team built the magnificent cabinet of wonders which houses all the items, stories and narratives submitted as part of the project.” 

A note on : Dusie Tuesday poem #401 - Messiah

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Messiah https://dusie.blogspot.com/2020/12/tuesday-poem-401-sj-fowler-messiah.html

I have died of my planning
Jackson Mac Low

feel sorry for those who survived, not for those who did not
for what solar measurements what sun burn
remains for the arithmetical? what complaint forms?
I have measured engine stars, they are wide enough
for a child to reach with a broken back
where bots walk upright when I Crawl
things will have finally to change
with some dismay in there but
with me the one cutting down, all lucy

The NSA says pull this fanny away                 
he doesn’t realise we can die too
but what if you’re the one
who codes the other in NON space by coping?

I don’t doubt, nor tend to think we were meant to be freed                

it powers over entire networks 

Messiah is taken from the upcoming collection 'That What Don't Concern You' from Kingston University Press, a conceptual-narrative poetry collection that centres around a programmer in the UK's GCHQ internet surveillance department, who publishes poetry online and gets in trouble with his employers.

From the publisher “Confiscated in secrecy and leaked for poetic intervention, device #0 is as much a poetry collection as a sardonic belly tickle for the rank underside of our online reality. SJ Fowler’s “THAT WHAT DON’T CONCERN YOU” considers the paradoxes of life lived in the age of the internet, when the line between public and private disintegrates and inexorable intelligence surveillance is a given. Sinister and playful, ambiguous and precise, Fowler’s poems ponder the consequences this has for the self, for the watchers and for the watched.”

EPF Digital #6 - Three Lithuanian Poets

https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/lithuania EPF Digital 2020 presents presents new long-form video-interviews with poets from Lithuania, featuring Rimas Uzgiris, Dovilė Bagdonaitė and Aušra Kaziliūnaitė. View the full EPF 2020 online program here europeanpoetryfestival.com/2020

Supported by Lithuanian Cultural Institute and featured as part of the Maintenant series at 3am magazine.

A note on : The Maintenant series back on 3am magazine

I’ve decided to make the latest European Poetry Festival interviews, a big part of EPF 2020 digital, part of the Maintenant series, which I ran to 101 editions from 2010 to around 2012. This means the interviews go up on 3am magazine, which originally supported the series. For the history of Maintenant, please visit www.stevenjfowler.com/maintenant

To see the latest Maintenant interviews https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/index/poetry/maintenant/

A note on : Subverse on Hotel, features Great Apes and more

Excerpts of three books of mine, from BEASTINGS, I WILL SHOW YOU THE LIFE OF THE MIND (ON PRESCRIPTION DRUGS) & THE GREAT APES, have been remixed and mashed and edited by Diamanda Dramm for her new solo show, Subverse. Hotel magazine, edited by Dominic Jaeckle, have published the parts of the texts used alongside a video of Diamanda performing. https://partisanhotel.co.uk/Dramm This clip below is from my book The Great Apes, which is due from Pamenar press in 2021!

you know that life for a minute?
let’s pretend. we’re in the jungle.
the jungle, where ugly finds itself.
but you get used to it, because it is you, that smell
worried about things you can’t change

and while you were worried about your mother’s drinking
and what kind of poetry is going on, and AI
it was chimp who landed on your shoulders
and stuck his middle fingers into your ears
like a medieval helmet covered in oliver oil
and made two fists and ripped your ears off down
and as your hands came up to cup your lost ears
chimp grabbed your fingers in a flower bunch
like it was the brakes on your fancy city bicycle for the green future
and squished them together with strength you didn’t know
and then broke them back against themselves
and tried to pull them off
and partially succeeded
and put some of them in Chimp mouth
and chewed
and looked around and looked at you and waited and couldn’t tell
what species you were even ?

A note on: Writers Kingston, first event in 9 months

The longest period in a decade where I haven’t organised an event. I didn’t miss it really, too obvious the wider context of why. But it was still fun to do an event, the day after the winter lockdown ended in the UK. It was for www.writerskingston.com which im lucky to direct. It was celebrating Alban Low and his Sampson Low Publishing house. We were in the Quakers Centre in Kingston, in a circular theatre, where the Quakers devolve hierarchy by sitting in the round. There were 18 of us, 7 readers. I felt nerves, I felt social awkwardness. I felt the feeling of thinking 8 things at once, performing and organising. I felt the strange minor elation afterward. https://www.writerskingston.com/sampsonlowcelebration/

A note on: Sampson Low Pamphlet series and Maria Celina Val

This Thursday, December 3rd 2020, will see the 13th edition of the Sampson Low Writers Kingston Student Pamphlet series. It’s supported by Kingston University and its designed to evidence the remarkable contemporary and innovative poetry being written by current and recent Kingston University Creative Writing students, with beautifully designed pamphlets each featuring a suite of poems, most often on one theme or in one style, by a solo author. https://www.writerskingston.com/sampsonlow

Low key, it’s one of my favourite editorial projects. I get to work with poets early on in their writing, support them in their own originality, and the results have been amazing. It’s perhaps not had the recognition outside of the university and community around Writers Kingston that it deserves, with 12 debuts out of 13 pamphlets, 12 young women too, all so so high level in their quality, production and conception. The work standard is so high, and the 13th issue is remarkable. Maria Celina Val is an artist + poet + architect and her ‘children draw fivefold stars’ is really such a unique book of visual poetry. I mean, it’s quality is way beyond me, the design, the care, the samples above show. Please buy it here https://sampsonlow.co/2020/11/23/children-draw-fivefold-stars-maria-celina-val/

I have to thank Sara Upstone and many others at Kingston Uni who support this project, my idea, and it also has to be said that Alban Low is a gem. A rare thing. So generous, consistent, reliable, professional, insightful. I’m not being hyperbolic. That’s why we have an event celebrating his press this thursday, for the launch, please come by https://www.writerskingston.com/sampsonlowcelebration/

EPF Digital #3 - Four Latvian Poets...

EPF Digital 2020 presents presents new long-form video-interviews with poets from Latvia, featuring Inga Pizāne, Krišjānis Zeļģis, Marija Luīze Meļķe and Lote Vilma Vītiņa. More on their work can be found www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/latvia

Supported by Platform Latvian Literature / EPF Digital is an eight part online festival, presenting long-form video interviews and entirely original poetry films. Unable, finally, to take place in the flesh this year, the festival will present poets from Switzerland, Austria, Latvia, Sweden, Hungary, Lithuania and more, leaning in to what can be created without proximity, generating new insights into poetic practice in continental Europe and creating ambitious film-poetry collaborations especially for this two week e-fest. www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/2020