A note on : Korean Literature Night - Kim Yideum on Sept 29th

The Korean Literature Night (KLN) is a monthly discussion group that explores various themes and topics relating to that month’s chosen book. We will read the book ‘Hysteria' by Kim Yideum in September.

The Poet Kim Yideum and the moderator Steven J. Fowler will join us for a live virtual talk about her poem ‘Hysteria' . Following the talk, Kim Yideum will respond to questions from the audience.

• Event Date: Wednesday 29th September 12:00PM-1:30PM (UK time)

• Venue: ZOOM Webinar

• Apply to info@kccuk.org.uk with your name and contact details by 15th September 2021

https://kccuk.org.uk/en/programmes/korean-literature-nights/hysteria-kim-yideum-conversation-steven-j-fowler/

A note on : A poem for Rebecca Kamen's The Art of Reimaging Scientific Discovery at the American University Museum

I am really so fortunate to have a collaborator like Rebecca Kamen. She has been an inspiration for many years, since we met at the salzburg global, both as a friend, correspondent, artist and human being. She has a wonderful new exhibition and as part of the catalogue I have a poem, responding to her work and the exhibition - specifically her silent spread installation. All details are here https://www.american.edu/cas/museum/2021/reveal-scientific-discovery-kamen.cfm

Inspired by an unexpected brain tumor and the pandemic, the artwork in this exhibition investigates curiosity and the creative process in art and science. The work has also been informed by research and collaborations with scientists at the American University and the University of Pennsylvania where I am currently an artist in residence. The exhibition culminates in the meditative Silent Spread, a graphite on mylar, wall-mounted installation where 28 diaphanous sculptures inspired by the coronavirus reflect and trace the migratory pattern of COVID-19. 

An opening excerpt from my poem here, and a small glimpse of Rebecca’s silent spread too.

A note on : Poem Brut at Open Ealing

A remarkably fun night at Open Ealing, and a second exceptional poem brut event in the month of august, 2021/ https://www.poembrut.com/thepast

Lots of friends and folk I’ve not met before, many of whom had done my online courses, and all of us, coming out of lockdown realities, were joyed to be communal, and take the chance to perform to a warm, and surprisingly full, audience. Chris Kerr, Beverley Frydman, Vicki Kaye, Mikael Buck, Lynette Willoughby, Bob Bright, Richard Marshall, Kayleigh Cassidy, Simon Tyrrell, Paul Hawkins and Susie Campbell. Everyone brought their A game.

This was the London launch of my Bastard Poems book, my selected collage https://www.steelincisors.com/product/bastard-poems/2?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=false&q=false as well as a sneek preview of a new anthology Ive edited called Seen as Read, with many visual poets within… coming in october.

Published : a tool to express bafflement, an interview for Shuddhashar

An interview with the brilliant Tutul, otherwise known as Ahmedur Rashid Chowdhury, whose work I got to know running the English PEN festival, hearing of how he had to flee Bangladesh. I was obviously really happy then to be asked to provide a selection of my poems, that I considered political, alongside an interview, with questions standardised for the many excellent poets featuring in this special edition of Tutul’s online magazine - Shuddhashar. The entire issue can be seen here, https://shuddhashar.com/magazine/issue-25-political-poetry/, with some great poets involved.

My interview specifically is here, and below, https://shuddhashar.com/a-tool-to-express-bafflement/

As mentioned, it includes 7 poems, taken from the collections A Guide to Being Bear Aware, The Rottweiler’s Guide to the Dog Owner, The Wrestlers, {Enthusiasm} and Minimum Security Prison Dentistry. It’s a mini selected poems, drawing from those five books.

A note on : European Poetry Festival Manchester Camarade - Oct 1st and Creative Tourist article

Very pleased to be returning to the Burgess Centre in Manchester, thanks to the support of the Manchester Poetry Library, for a standalone Camarade event as part of the European Poetry Festival.

20 poets in 10 pairs sharing new works for the night will mark this welcome return to curating events in Manchester for me. The five or six similar events I’ve done there in the past have all been brilliant, and I’m especially chuffed to work with Tom Jenks once again. https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/manchester21

There has also been a really excellent and generous article written about the event for the Creative Tourist by Sarah Clare Conlon https://www.creativetourist.com/event/european-poetry-festival-european-camarade/

A note on : Launching Bastard Poems in Bath

Quite the way to release my latest book, my selected collages, Bastard Poems from Steel Incisors, into the world. In the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific society, surrounded by dinosaur fossils, a dozen friends and co-readers, and a surprisingly full audience, who were game, and generous, and receptive. The other readers were uniformly on, everyone was really great, and enthusiastic. Got to see some old friends and collaborators - Max Porter, Lucy English, Carrie Etter, Angie Butler, Dave Spittle - and travelled to Bath for this. It was also satisfying to have this night as a chance to say thanks to James Knight, who has worked so so hard on Bastard Poems and done such a great job. The book can be bought here https://www.steelincisors.com/product/bastard-poems-by-sj-fowler/2

All the videos from the launch, performances and readings, are available here https://www.poembrut.com/thepast

And below some great pictures of my performance, a live collective collage, and more, by Madeleine Rose Elliott.

A note on : An interview with James Knight, for Bastard Poems launch

To celebrate the release of my selected collages, Bastard Poems, the editor of the brilliant steel incisors press, James Knight, and I, had an online chat. About the book, about many things. To celebrate the thing. It is here in its entirety https://www.steelincisors.com/s/stories/bastard-poems

& on, please have a read…

Published: Poems in Verseville

Edited by the brilliant Estonian poet Mathura, I’m happy to have two poems from my book ‘Come and See the Songs of Strange Days : Poems on Films” published this year by Broken Sleep, in the summer issue of Verseville.

Check out the full issue http://www.verseville.org/issue-xxxii-august-2021.html with friends Forrest Gander, Erik Lindner and more. Great selection.

The poems are on the Ghost and the Darkness, and the Estonian film, November http://www.verseville.org/s-j-fowler.html

Published : Mercurius' 1st anthology

Thomas Helm's work with Mercurius is something I am very pleased to say I have been involved in since close to its beginnings. I felt in Thomas' enthusiasm and taste, a kinship, and it reminded me of my Maintenant series – as a project that not only supports others, but aims to actively connect to them. To amplify. I felt a responsibility to then pass the connections I was given then on to Mercurius, and I'm happy to see links have blossomed since then, to lots of poets and presses.

This anthology marks a significant first light in what I'm sure will be a distinct and brilliant future for the journal. And though I say I have been keen to support Mercurius, realistically, they have supported me far more. And this anthology, containing my excerpts from two of my books, furthers that generosity. It's buyable here, with an impressive list of contributors. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mercurius-No-dreams-Mercuriuss-Poetry/dp/B097STF19V/

Published : BASTARD POEMS from Steel Incisors press

Now available for pre-order https://www.steelincisors.com/product/bastard-poems/2?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=false&q=false

Really happy to be sharing this new book from Steel Incisors press edited by James Knight. It brings together years of collage, includes an essay of mine and 80 plus full colour works. It’s a sister to Sticker Poems and Crayon Poems, it’s my fifth publication of 2021, and the last this year and it’s launched on August 2nd in Bath.

From the publisher : An unprecedented take on collage as poetic medium, SJ Fowler’s Bastard Poems is a book that defies description. Combining the found, the handwritten, the abstract, the irreverent and the archival, and the occasional text camouflaged as commentary, Fowler has devised a new form of poetry standing on the shoulders of a grand tradition. Here are labels and book pages, monkeys and footballers, self-help instructions and informational leaflets, plus lists, letters, tickets, drawings, maps, barcodes, birds, bears, and (!) more. Reading it is the equivalent of exploring someone’s abandoned attic only to realise they have been watching you the whole time.

This volume is SJ Fowler's selected collages, collected from works made 2013 to 2021, and includes an essay by the author.

92 pages, full colour, paperback, perfect bound.

Published : London found sound poems on Clouds and Tracks

Good to share a first excerpt of a weird found sound / sound poetry album I've been working on over the last year in London. I spent many days recording the sounds of the city, and then rambling in various accents, and then making sound poems next to London spaces close to me. This excerpt is an edit together of three separate tracks about birds, wind and a cockney cat buying a postcard https://www.mixcloud.com/Clouds_Tracks/sj-fowler-almost-no-poems/

It has been published as part of the brilliant Clouds and Tracks curated by John Hughes, Volker Eichelmann and Jenna Collins. Clouds and Tracks’ first iteration collates sound works conceived and realised since the spring of 2020. Contributions chart participants’ thoughts, feelings, driftings and wanderings since the onset of the Covid 19 pandemic, providing a sonic snapshot of the strange and unsettling times we are living through. https://cloudsandtracks.net/

A note on : Robert Sheppard Interview, Maintenant #107

A huge influence on my work, and on hundreds of poets in the UK and beyond, it's great to share this near 7000 word interview with Robert Sheppard on 3am magazine, as part of my Maintenant series.

Robert's writing has been important for four decades plus and our chat ranges over an enormous amount of terrain. https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-107-robert-sheppard/

European Poetry festival - summer 2021, a mini documentary

Nice to have this small documentary as a kind of gentle summation of the EPF summer 2021 program, which presented a quartet of events in London, returning to live happenings across the city. From our showcase Camarade, with 20 UK-baed European poets presenting new works in pairs at St Johns on Bethnal Green, to an outdoor reading in Richmond Park and events held in collaboration with the Scottish Poetry Library, Peer Gallery and more. All events were free to attend and socially distanced.

The EPF will return in winter 2021, November 18th to December 3rd with events featuring international poets from across the continent, with events celebrating Austrian, Swiss, Spanish, Latvian, Hungarian, Swedish, Norwegian poets and more. https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/

A note on : Talking Crowfinger for Photo Poetry Surfaces at Bristol Photo Festival

https://www.photopoetrysurfaces.com my chat with David Solo for the SURFACES Opening Night on June 17 2021, where I talked a lot about my approaches to photopoetry and my collaborative work with Bard Torgersen CROWFINGER https://www.stevenjfowler.com/crowfinger

Published : Flowers Won't Grow, with Karenjit Sandhu

Flowers Won't Grow, by Karenjit Sandhu and I, is now available from Sampson Low https://sampsonlow.co/2021/06/21/flowers-wont-grow-karenjit-sandhu-sj-fowler/

35 pages of poetry printed in a limited edition of 150. £4.99.

From the publisher “A unique epistolary poetry collection and a collaborative feat of rare acumen, Flowers Won’t Grow contemplates mundanity and gratitude with a mix of polite curiosity and tender contempt. The lettered, prose-ish poems of Sandhu and Fowler speak to a luminous private public exchange, and the writeable unspeakables of a long London summer. These are playful, complex poems, of a city, of soap and fizzy water, of a search for commonality in quiet, of paper birds and hardened workers. www.stevenjfowler.com/flowers

“‘Exchanges, transfers and transferrals of intimacy and stark urgency – a work of posed questions, thumbed noses and drawn blood’.
Eley Williams
‘This is a nurse’s attention on a knife edge. A pin-prick of address, a poem that says “let’s get out of here” to and about itself. Everything is external, but you can’t get outside, even if you don’t what to know what’s inside. It’s a hostile take over of mundane objects and day-to-day experience in a language that asks us to settle for fruit syrup but reaches beyond to the universe’
Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain

The book was written across 2019, in what seems now a fever of activity and exchange, for this collaboration and in my work in general, and then revised in 2021 for publication. Karenjit is a really excellent writer and performer and I think the text is really good – playful, ludic, knotty.

It's the third in a series of collaborative pamplets with Sampson Low, following Beastings and Crowfinger, and as ever before, Alban Low has done a remarkable job bringing this to life.

Karenjit and I had two launches, following two performances of the text in late 2019. The first was in Richmond Park and the second in Hoxton Trust Gardens, both as part of the European Poetry Festival. Both performances included an exchange of reading and action between us, with very loose suggestions beforehand, and much completely improvised. For both I did forward rolls and some leaping and running, why I did this is a mystery.

A note on : August 2nd, launching Bastard Poems in Bath

Poem Brut in Bath : Bastard Poems - August Mon 2nd 2021 : Free entry

Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution www.brlsi.org/ 16-18 Queen Square. BA1 2HN
Doors 6.45pm for a 7pm start - Free entry with a booktable with books for sale

WITH READINGS / PERFORMANCES FROM ANGIE BUTLER, MAX PORTER, LUCY ENGLISH, PETER JAEGER, PAUL HAWKINS, JAMES KNIGHT, CARRIE ETTER, DAVID SPITTLE

To celebrate the launch of SJ Fowler’s ‘Bastard Poems’ from Steel Incisors press, a Poem Brut event will see readings and performances by an extraordinary group of poets, writers and artists, all based in the region.

Expect an evening of new experimental literary performance works, made for the night, alongside readings of poetry and prose. This event will present a true range of what’s possible in contemporary British-based poetry and prose, celebrating collage, liveness and textual play.

EPF 2021 : Event #4 - Scots and Irish poets

An event long in development, excellent to work with the Scottish Poetry Library and Asif Khan on this for many months, this one saw Irish and Scottish poets produce new collaborations for the night. Some last minute changes saw us hosted by the remarkably hospitable Austrian Cultural Forum in Mayfair, and the poets put on four brilliant, concise, clever, charismatic performance.

Unlike the normally exhaustive mode of my events, this was rapid and memorable for that. We had a good time post readings in the chandeliered ballroom of the ACF, enjoying what we had all missed for the previous year.

All videos https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/irishandscot

A note on : Limbo at Cannes Court Metrage, Manlleu Film Fest, Dokufest Kosovo

A few years back I co-wrote a short film called, LIMBO, originated and filmed by Lotje Sodderland. Thanks to Lotje and the films producers, it has been doing festival rounds recently, after being screened the London Short film fest it has upcoming screenings at Cannes Film Festival Court Metrage, Manlleu festival in Catalunia and Dokufest in Kosovo.

“LIMBO is a true-fiction short following the story of Witold, a young, Polish Londoner who takes a new job as a care worker. Under-trained and underpaid, he speeds from home to home on his bicycle, feeling the enormity of his responsibility as he enters hidden worlds to administer care to a delicate but dynamic assortment of elderly men living alone.” https://www.lotjesodderland.com/portfolio/l-i-m-b-o

Ken Loach said of it ‘This is a film of compassion and tender observation of lives we rarely see – it’s in the performance of the routine tasks made by one person for another that we start to grapple with meaning, dignity and what it is to be human.’

EPF 2021 : Event #3 - with Peer gallery, in Hoxton Trust Garden

Another outdoor event, this time adjacent to Peer Gallery in Hoxton Trust Garden.

A little rained on but well worth it and brolly prepared, four pairs of poets followed Stephen Watts, whose program of happenings made this event come to be. Swirl of words / Swirl of worlds, worth checking out https://www.peeruk.org/swirl-of-words

I performed with Karenjit Sandhu - doing forward rolls and running round the garden, celebrating our new book - and it was good to see Fabian Peake, Clover Peake, Kristina Kuneva, Susie Campbell, Vik Shirley and others.

All videos are up https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/peer

A note on : Ten years of 3am magazine poetry editorship

I took over the role of poetry editor from Darran Anderson in July 2011.

In ten years, working with the brilliant Andrew Gallix and other remarkable colleagues, I have kept open submissions most of the time, at least 8 of the 10 years, and fielded often up to 5 submissions a day. Sometimes more.

It has been an immense privilege. It has actually started friendships for me, making contacts with poets kind enough to send their work, from around the world. It has been a way to discover what is happening now with people and places I wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to encounter. And I’ve had the chance to keep up a continual correspondence with many making their first submissions, helping them work up their work for publication.

Moreover, with the literary / experimental publications of 2011 to 2017, all listed here https://www.stevenjfowler.com/3ammagazine followed by the Poem Brut series https://www.poembrut.com/3am (both pages need updating) I believe I have created a recognisable aesthetic for my editorial choices, and attracted practitioners working in that style.

I also think, without being arrogant, it is a space like no other online magazine for poetry, that supports brilliant work that wouldn’t find a home elsewhere. Or something akin to that. Over 300 publications and 100 interviews. More than that even. From Jerome Rothenberg, Iain Sinclair and other established names, to I would estimate at least 80 first ever publications, it’s a list I’m proud of, and I have no plans to give up the mantle soon.

A sincere thanks to Andrew Gallix for making 3am magazine what it is. http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/