I’ve so enjoyed working with the brilliant artist Rebecca Kamen for many years now, often taking her writing and winding it into found poems. Recently her work was profiled on Penn Today, and really captures her recent and general output and it’s remarkable complexity, and I was fortunate to get a small mention, clipped below. https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/through-lens-digital-depiction-dyslexia
An amazing experience for me! Visiting Japan, hosting Japanese poets, a couple of small tours, nearly ten collaborations, many adventures had and friends made. Below are videos of my performances in Japan, during January 2023, as well as a travelogue, and photographs. Here can be found all the info and documentation www.stevenjfowler.com/japan
Fukuda pero at BUOY in Tokyo : We worked to the abandoned Onsen we happened to be in, with nothing planned but a vague concept of spiritual healing. Pero and I grew into this, from our first collaboration in London, and his reiki was a grand touch.
Kyoko Yoshida at the temple in Kyoto : Based on the concept that I was a Tengu, a mountain goblin spirit, and I hid behind the shrine before the event in order to emerge after Kyoko’s prayers. She was so good at improvising this one out, and the audience was quietly confused while being supportively receptive.
Miya and Yoshi Hogyaku at Whiz Cafe in Tokyo : Having met the wonderful Miya and Yoshi the day before, and their being very experienced improvisers, in music and poetry, we had no plan at all. I asked them just before we went on if it was okay if we walked around. That was it, apart from the fact some of the things I said were things said during our first meeting lunch.
Corey Wakeling at Whiz Cafe in Tokyo : As you can see from the footage, Corey asks me to collaborate with him as I’m sat there filming him, with no notice, and I also didn’t quite understand what he whispered to me as I stood up. All the better
Bajan Fujisawa at the temple in Kyoto : During the intermission of the event Bajan asked me, through Pero translating, if I’d improvise some talking as he played the tabla. I said yes. And watching him open, I felt a responsibility to be sincere.
Got in January 4th after leaving January 3rd. Always strange how it isn’t generally a given that long flying is a kind of fear, a closure, a brief reminder, as you leave all you have behind, that it’s not far off disappearing. More than stress it seems to me a little death peep.
My bodyclock is switched, I’ve stayed up, so I’m out before 5am. I watch the sun rise over Ueno park. I walk from Nezu through Uneo to Tsukiji fish market, as I see it on the map. I have done so much research before this trip, the first long haul away since the lockdowns for me. I have unlimited sim, and can audio message and phone, it keeps me one foot in home. I walk through Chiyoda and around the Imperial palace, around the moat, past the British embassy. The fish market is touristy, and I walk on towards Shibuya. These are long city distances but normal for me. I have the sensation of being pushed and then being left alone. I like it a lot. I am in my own small world. Everything is new and exciting, but also I’m not overawed, there is servility everywhere. I accidentally walk to the Tokyo tower, and up through Roppongi, and cross the grave of Hachiko the dog, and into the Shibuya crossing, and then up to Harajuku. I see Colin, my collaborative poet partner here, Herd for dinner in a chain restaurant.
Another day follows up at dawn, again in Ueno park. It’s still dark when I come across the temple. I’ve not done any research on things, on places, just on how the systems work. So I have never heard of this place, or any of these places, really, so I can stumble on them. A monk is asleep in a shop window? He wakes up and buy some pouches from him. I walk to Asakasa, see another temple, talk to anyone who’ll talk back. Go to Ueno zoo, won’t queue for pandas. For some reason my right eye leaks and I can’t close it without feeling something inside it. Again dinner with Colin. The amount of salt in the food makes my face red.
Saturday January 7th, the day of the first event, the Tokyo Camarade, twenty poets. I walk the Kanda river to Ikebukuro as the sun comes up, again. Colin and I train muay thai on pads in a park. I kick Colin’s elbow and my shin swells up to match my eye. It seems to suit Tokyo, and balance my body and its clock. We head out to kitasenjyu, to the venue, BUOY. It was an onsen for the 1960’s Olympics, then disused for decades, now resurrected into an avant garde theatre. I see Lola Nieto and Silje Ree, two European friends who happen to be living in Japan at this very time. I see Yasehiro Yatsumoto, unexpectedly – he has been invited Pero Fukuda without me knowing. I saw him last at a festival in Tbilisi, Georgia, years ago. It’s a small world. The event is packed, in a basement, haunted, with over 100 in the audience and ten performances. Pero and I first. Improvised spiritual health. I dance over the onsen and Pero gives me reiki. We open up the fun in the event, allow people to push a bit, mess. Lola and Yasehiro are incredible. Many are. It’s an epic three hours. Colin and I try to walk back to our flats, it’s over eight miles, at night.
Sunday January 8th, I am walking myself into the floor with my big leg and fat eye. We then take the bullet train to Kyoto, all four of us poet curators, Pero, Colin myself and Kyoko Yoshida. Kyoko and Pero live in Kyoto. Getting in, I’m staying in an Airbnb in a Reiki school, so I book a session, not really knowing what it is. Colin and I walk the market, have such grand fun, but again, we are both removed and alien and happy and common and unusual and unremarkable. So much is barriered because the visitors tap at Japanese culture? Because cult culture is not cult here? Because people are private. I notice what London is. Kyoto is so vivid.
Monday 9th, dawn this time climbing the hills around Kyoto, up to the head of Mount Inari, through hundreds of red gates. Drink from the fountain of while it’s still murky dark. All walk. Our Kyoto event, at the temple! Unbelievable. It’s like night time to me. Izumi Ukai is our host, a buddhist monk who later spits fire. Everyone is so supportive and kind. I hide behind the temple before the events begins so I can emerge my collaboration with Kyoko. I do so, and I am a tengu, a mountain goblin spirit. The event is one of the best I have ever done. Mad amounts of mad, and so much in each, and in a temple. We have a big feed afterward, again in the temple.
The following days in Kyoko, I do reiki, I climb a mountain and see some monkeys, I walk the bamboo forest, I drop my wallet and find it an hour later, I do my best to see all I can see and walk everywhere, and I have done this so much, it’s starting to invert me a touch. Colin and I return to Tokyo and he’s going but I’m staying for one last gig. We do Muay Thai together, a few times, in the hotel. We go and watch sumo! I see the dawn come up so bright over a breakfast buffet. We both are disturbed by akihabara. It isn’t the same after Colin goes.
Last days are more alone, and that is okay. I meet my friend Benedict Taylor’s friends Miya and Yoshi Hogyaku and I can’t believe how hospitable they are, cooking for me and showing me around small things and giant buddhas. I explore shinjuku and shibuya having moved to my seventh accommodation. I like it less than Ueno, especially the bits I’m supposed to see. I’m getting a bit inevitably ill.
The final gig is in a metro hotel and very corporate and it’s a bit confused whether I’m welcome. But it works out so so well, and thanks to Corey Wakeling, an ex pat local poet who goes far out of his way, and Silje Ree, a friend from London who has just moved, and Miya and Yoshi again, who work with me, and we flute and walk into a lobby while performing. It ends really high, really one of the highest.
I have time after this but I am alone and so careful and prepared but I can’t believe nothing has gone wrong and it’ll take me time to process how good.
really kind of yessica klein to feature me, and of alexander kell to take these snaps of me in my studio https://thatpoetrything.substack.com/p/16-steven-j-fowler-poet-writer-and
Herri, founded and edited by Aryan Kaganof, is consistently one of the most complex, best designed and interesting online journals in the world. I read the issues with great attention, as they emerge from South Africa. I mean seriously, just leaf through this
I am very pleased then to have the latest issue feature a feature on my asemic writing and visual poetry.
https://herri.org.za/8/steven-j-fowler/
In my feature there are two brand new collaborations with Mikael Buck, him using AI.
Then 4 works from Unfinished Memmoirs of a Hypocrit, my visual book
Then 1 work from I fear my best work behind me, my art poem book
Then 4 works from my Selected Scribbling and Scrawling, my selected asemics
Then essays from that same book, from David Spittle, and an interview between myself and Tom Jenks https://herri.org.za/8/steven-j-fowler/#text1
The design of this feature, and the whole enterprise, is remarkable, and to connect with Aryan and his colleagues is uplifting.
Gorse is one of the most remarkable literary journals in the world, in print, and recently dormant, and now back in the world, and I’m very lucky to have a collaborative piece, with Rike Scheffler in the 11th edition, just out, miraculous
here is a piece by christodoulos makris on the journal’s release http://yesbutisitpoetry.blogspot.com/2023/01/gorse-no-11.html
gorse No. 11 has been produced as a tête-bêche (meaning 'head-to-tail', where a publication is printed in two halves, upside down and back-to-back, so you can read one half then flip it over to start reading the other) and which reflects the issue's guiding concept of 'Borders', with a North/South (Whins/Furze) editorial structure.
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1356694271/living-with-other-people-an-anthology?
Alongside some great poets, and edited by the Corrupted Editions team, Fiona Larkin, Michelle Penn et al, I’m happy to have a poem in this new anthology.
The poem is an excerpt from my 2022 book The Great Apes, but it has been graphically designed into a concrete poem of sorts
Deeply pleased to start 2023 with an online publication of some of my favourite poems from my poems on films collection from 2021, Come and See the Songs of Strange Days. Congo is a terribly wonderful film that I watched a lot as a child and these poems are peak level weird. I like also how the journal, entitled SYNCHRONISED CHAOS, has listed me as a photographer. Yes yes
https://synchchaos.com/photography-from-s-j-fowler/
Some of my best photo poems? My best photoshop poems
If you happen to be in Tokyo on January 7th https://express.adobe.com/page/5A9iHji3GpHkU/
or Kyoto on January 9th https://express.adobe.com/page/wo05oAojFRvea/
Please come to the first ever Camarade’s in Japan! Should be an extraordinary few nights of poetry and collaboration, with Japanese and Gaijin poets presenting new works.
I am happy to be doing more gigs in Japan too, a tour of sorts, and to be working with Fukuda Pero, Colin Herd and Kyoko Yoshida once again. More soon on this.
A new poetry film. One that documents a walk led by Stephen Watts, a great poet and person, across East London, earlier in 2022. It is another short film in the London I series I have been doing over the last few years, leading to a full feature in the next few years. It features an appearance by Babs too.
I owe Penned in the Margins a great deal. Electronic Voice Phenomena, Enemies and Dagestan were all firsts in fields for me, and they lifted my work, taught me loads. Sad to see Penned quiet, but an amazing legacy. Thanks to Tom Chivers.
Check out, from the heyday of Penned foray’s into experimental literature
The Electronic Voice Phenomena performance tour https://www.stevenjfowler.com/evp
My selected collaborations Enemies https://www.stevenjfowler.com/selectedcollaborations
My debut play Dagestan https://www.stevenjfowler.com/dagestan
Anthologies with my work including Mount London, Marginalia and Adventures in form https://www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk/index.php/category/books/books-anthologies/
A podcast on performance hosted by Tom Chivers https://soundcloud.com/pennedinthemargins/sets/penned-podcast-1-poetry-and
https://www.berfrois.com/2022/12/we-dont-surf-and-excuse-me-rocks-by-sj-fowler/
Berfrois has been around since 2009, before I even started writing poems. I’m sad to see it go, but as a parting salvo Berfrois kindly published two poems from a new 2023 publication entitled
Recently Attracted Reality Influencers : the selected screenshot and meme poems of SJ Fowler
coming in spring from Overground Underground Press, edited by Michael Sutton.
5 times they published some of my weirdest work, helping me in many ways, as they did for many many writers. All here https://berfrois.com/tag/sj-fowler/
This is going to be a special start to 2023 for me https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/events/talks-and-conversations-friday-lates-tour-and-poetry-readings-writers-kingston-20-01-2023
Poet and performer SJ Fowler brings together writers for a unique evening of readings around the Gallery. This event is part of Friday Lates.
Friday, 20 January 2023. 7.15 - 8 pm Room 22
About For centuries, the artforms of painting and poetry have been in dialogue with each other, with each informing the other, or attempting to translate what makes them unique as their own media into another. In this unique event and across future Friday Lates, poet and performer SJ Fowler will read new ekphrastic poems about chosen paintings in our collection, offering alternative interpretations of their meaning, history and standing.
Fowler is joined by Gallery Educator Katy Tarbard alongside invited guests from Writers’ Kingston, students and staff from Kingston University, as well as further afield, for a tour and poetry performances around the Gallery.
A miraculous reading by Stephen Watts ended a really beautiful evening in Kingston.The last wk event of 2022, people gathered to mark the launches of books by Lucy Furlong and Martin Wakefield with Sampson Low and to celebrate the poetry and person of Stephen with his book from Prototype.
So many of my events are so structurally experimental and playful perhaps in a sense to escape the rote of poetry readings and then in this moment I realised what is lost. Stephen's reading is without hyperbole one of the best I've ever witnessed. In a crowd of friendly cynics there were visible and invisible tears at being moved. Stephen can easily be called the greatest living English poet.His life's work over the last four plus decades speaks to that. as does every poem he writes and reading he gives.Im lucky he's my friend and I've learned so much from him.
The event reflected all this, modestly and sincerely. All the readers were grand and few will forget those few hours in the courtyard space at Kingston uni. In addition Alban Low did some amazing sketches of the readers in action http://artofjazz.blogspot.com/2022/12/stephen-watts-celebration-poetry.html
For the last year or so, after many years of close collaboration, David Spittle has begun shooting a film that explores the work I’ve been doing in and around poetry over the last decade or so. The film is built around a cinematic exploration of my books, my poetry collections and their themes and often hidden concerns. But it also explores my performance work, international projects, teaching and organising and other more ludic, weird and marginal things.
It’s really humbling to have a film-maker and poet I respect so much give attention to what I’m trying to do and after our first film collaboration - Where is everyone austria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmUylSMGNrw its going to end up memorable.
Part three of the serialised audio book of my novella has now been published on resonance extra https://extra.resonance.fm/series/tenement-press-presents-sj-fowler-s-mueum
My mind was a little bit off so I didn’t know, from the inside, why this would get such a response, but it did get a big response. I’d have to thank Benedict, who is so talented and enjoyable to work with. It was our second outing as a duo the onion boys, as part of my european poetry festival winter camarade at iklectik artlab. It was entirely improvisation, we planned nothing. I just tried to listen to what happened before us and to listen to Benedict, and I have been working hard on the technique of talking poems over the last two or three years, so that’s a positive, my experience is growing. It felt this one had its own miniature life unfolding. In the end, I don’t like it, but a lot of kind words on the night and via email since have been appreciated.
A few more great days working with Angie Butler and Pat Randle at the amazing Whittington Press in the Cotswolds. Our publication Guillaume… is coming along, this time proofing and I made a small film that shows and explains here
https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/camarade22
Third event in five days and all of them have been completely full, slightly mad. This maybe the most mad. A really rangey weird mix of literary european poetry collaborations and pure improv roaming play. Fantastic. Exactly what Id want, such an expansive idea of what poetry is, couched by lovely, generous people from all over. 9 performances, 19 poets.
All videos and pictures at this link above and that’s a wrap on the festival for 2022. It will return, Im happy to say, in April May 2023!
https://www.writerskingston.com/camarade22/
A fun night in the ancient market sq of kingston upon thames! 20 poets, 10 pairs, a standing room only of audience with all chairs full and a xmas market vibe wafting up from the st. Really pleasing to be bringing european poets living in the uk in alongside some british poets and some of the best students Ive ever worked with
For my own performance i did a conceptual experimental interview with milo thesiger meacham. Turned out good i think, blending his field recordings with a satire of some literary interviews maybe. Worth checking out the other performances at the link too.
