A new page dedicated to the PPP www.stevenjfowler.com/ppp

Aiming to create overlaps between poetry and letterpress, as well as publishing and book arts, I’m lucky to be the poet at the centre of this project so far, thanks to Angie Butler and Sarah Bodman. Evolving organically over many months of correspondence, the PPP is creating a generous, generative space for real collaboration between those with the expertise to realise printed matter and those who might write the poems within.

Supported by the Centre for Fine Print Research at UWE, Bristol, the current form of the project is really the brainchild of Angie Butler and has taken in, so far, a short residency at The Whittington press working with Pat Randle of Nomad Letterpress in May 2021.

This will be followed with a limited edition publication, entitled 25 poems, which was written during, and about, the project, before being collaboratively typeset and printed by Angie and Pat. This will be followed by an ambitious symposium in October 2021 and more happenings into the future.

A full diary of my time in Bristol is a available too, www.stevenjfowler.com/ppp, an excerpt here “The process then was a whirl. The evenings in my airbnb, doing long runs through Bristolian suburbs, the sharing of ideas with Sarah Bodman and the the postgraduate students at UWE, and the conversations with Angie, both for an online event and in her motorcar - these all fed into the poems I wrote, that were to be finished in this week so they could be printed there and then! We found an old cast in the press that said ‘25 poems’, next to an image of a cock and bull, and i leapt on this as the title. So 25 poems. A perfect chance for me to exorcise a desire to write one word poems I thought, following Aram Saroyan and 16 were created, for the opening and closes pages. Then notes, fragments, overheard conversations, things I thought when I was not thinking, these began coming together for the remaining 9 poems - with a sense always of the vernacular of letterpress and printing, of the terminology, the vocabulary, the intense sense of workable knowledge.

I am very lucky indeed to have been working on a project with Angie Butler and Sarah Bodman at UWE in Bristol over the last number of months, since the summer of 2020 really, that will come to fruition in multiple instances throughout this year 2021. The Printed Poetry Project will see some collaborations, teaching, publications, conversation, conferences and the like, and it begins with my going to Bristol next week and working with Angie at the Whittington Press in Cheltenham https://whittingtonpressshop.com. What we create is ahead of us, but it’s the kind of project I really love, where i get to learn and work collectively and drain other people’s experience to open up new avenues in my own work. As part of my time in Bristol, I’ll be chatting with Angie in this online talk, which anyone can watch!

Print in Conversation: The Printed Poetry Project with Steven J Fowler: poet, writer and artist (13 May 2021)
https://cfpr.uwe.ac.uk/the-printed-poetry-project-with-steven-j-fowler/

Thursday 13 May 12.30pm – 1.15pm A free, open session for anyone to join. Part of the Art of the Maker event series : An informal lunchtime public engagement session, talking candidly with poet, writer and artist, Steven J Fowler about his collaborative research project-in-progress with the Centre for Fine Print Research (CFPR), UWE, Bristol. We will discuss Steven’s experience so far, in terms of the development of our project ideas and how the work has developed during the course of the week. We will explain how we are using the craft of type-setting and the process of letterpress printing in relation to the haptic production of the printed word within contemporary publishing activities. They’ll be time for Q&A, too!