A note on : The Printed Poetry Project

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.

A note on: Talking Yi Sang with the brilliant Jack Jung

So great of the Korean Cultural Centre UK to ask me to talk with Jack Jung about the brilliant Yi Sang : selected poetry recently for an online event. And even better, they recorded it and made it readily available to the world on youtube. I learned so much from this event, Jack spoke so generously, it was a pleasure all round. And what a poet Yi Sang was

THE HUNGARIAN VACUUM - a poetry film : EPF Digital #5

Four talking heads. Three Hungarians. One vacuum cleaner.

They are poets, they are miserable, and they are cut off from the world. United by sardonic pride, they come together to represent their country and wage war on the dust bunnies of the mind in this poetic deepdive. A daring poetry film, The Hungarian Vacuum is part gripping mystery, part arthouse project, part literary podcast, part poetry reading, and part utter failure. You will have questions, but you’re not likely to get any answers.

Supported by Hungarian Cultural Centre, London. A film by, and starring, Steven J Fowler, Kornelia Deres, Kinga Toth, Peter Zavada. Music by Benedict Taylor. Edited by Botond Bartha. https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/hungaryfilm

A film as part of the European Poetry Festival Digital program. With no physical events in 2020, EPF digital reveals 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.

A note on: my Asemic Poetry talk online for CFPR and Arnolfini

Part of a brilliant online summer festival organised by UWE’s Centre for Fine Print Research and Arnolfini, I was asked to talk about Asemic Poetry for a bit https://cfpr.uwe.ac.uk/book-and-print-summer-festival-2020/

Never easy to do it from the top of your head but that’s how I prefer to teach, obviously leaping from idea to idea but hopefully being more immediate / engaged for that leaping. Asemic work is important to me and the feedback I’ve had suggests this has bled through.

A note on: Writers' Centre Kingston programme for 2018 / 2019

I'm very pleased to announce the programme for the second year of Writers' Centre Kingston at Kingston University. Themed events with guest speakers including Max Porter and Joe Dunthorne feature alongside unique standalone projects like the English PEN fest, European Poetry Festival, the annual Museum of Futures exhibition and collaborations events at Rich Mix in London. Each event will be opened by student readings and performances and the Centre will also host workshops, release new student publications and aim to bring together staff and students alike from a wide range of specialities.

Visit https://www.writerscentrekingston.com/schedule/ or click on the event below for more information.

October Thursday 4th 2018 – The Rose Theatre, Kingston : 7pm Free Entry
On the theme of Becoming, with Damian Le Bas, Tina Chanter, Christoph Lueder

October Thursday 18th – Kingston University, Penrhyn Road campus, PRJG0003 : John Galsworthy building : 7pm Free
On the theme of Gambling, with Revital Cohen, Tuur Van Balen, Isabella Van Elferen, Ghazal Mosadeq

November Thursday 8th - Kingston University, Penrhyn Road campus, PRJG0003 : John Galsworthy building : 7pm Free
On the theme of Purpose, with Joe Dunthorne, Éadaoin Agnew and Matthew Cunningham 

November Saturday 24th 2018 – The Kingston Camarade : Rich Mix, Venue 2. London : 7.30pm Free Entry
New collaborations in pairs from Kingston Uni students and staff including Nick Foxton, Mark Harris, Alison Baverstock, John Hughes & Mandy Ure, Catherine Humble, Diran Adebayo, Janice Miller, Joanne Addison, Andrew Benjamin.

2019
January Thursday 17th - The Rose Theatre, Kingston : 7pm Free Entry
On the theme of Mythologising, with Max Porter Winsome Pinnock

January Thursday 24th - English PEN Modern Literature Fest : The Bishop. 2 Bishop Hall, Kingston. 7pm Free.
with Sam Jordison, Ellen Wiles, Gareth Evans, James Miller, Helen Palmer, Adam Baron, Sara Upstone and more

February Saturday 9th – The University Camarade IV : Rich Mix, London : 7.30pm Free
Students from Kingston University and other institutions across the UK present brand new collaborations.

February Thursday 21st : Visual Literature Exhibition opening - The Museum of Futures, Surbiton : 7.30pm Free
(The exhibition runs February 19th to March 13th 2019.)

March Thursday 7th :  Poem Brut - The Museum of Futures, Surbiton : 7.30pm Free
with Nise McCullough, Lisa Kiew, MJB and Patrick Cosgrove.

April Thursday 4th : European Poetry Festival - The Rose Theatre, Kingston : 7pm Free Entry
with Maja Jantar and many more poets from across the continent.

EPF2018 #11: Hitting Manchester with the European Poetry Festival

The International Anthony Burgess Centre in Manchester is one of the best literary venues in the UK I think, I’ve only ever had grand events and performances there, audience and enthusiasm wise. It seems to distil the cities energy for more innovative work into concentrated form. This is in no small part to the staff there, and to the work of poets like Scott Thurston and Tom Jenks, and many others, who have led the decade long resurgence of avant-garde poetry in the city. I brought the European Poetry Festival north in the second to last event, after running 8 events in 8 days, nearly all of which involving over 10 performances 20 poets and sell out audiences. No one was flagging. Poets from Norway, Lithuania, Germany, Italy, France, Latvia and elsewhere in European travelled with us and were mostly paired with locally based poets. Everyone was kind, generous, full of life for the project of the festival. The positive feedback from both poets, supporters and audiences has been the most consistent of any project I’ve ever done. As ever the atmosphere in Manchester was friendly, unpretentious, and the performances were varied in tone, the collaborations ranged from the conceptual and satirical to the intense and reflective. Robert Sheppard’s The European Union of Imaginary Authors was celebrated alongside 10 brand new performances for the night. As has been the case for every event of the festival, the poets were buoyant afterwards and stayed out into the night. There has been a palpable sense the festival, beyond my control or intention, has created a community of sorts, transitory but concrete. Friendships have begun, and I’ve had the chance, through the poets and the audience, to meet so many new people I'd like to work with again.

EPF2018 #1: European Poetry Festival 2018 begins at Writers Centre Kingston

The start of my first foray into festival directing ended my first foray into Writers’ Centre directing, whatever either of those things mean. In practical terms it began a remarkable 10 days for me, the most satisfying curatorial / organisational patch of my life. For this event, held in a slightly blanched upstairs room in the otherwise lovely Rose Theatre in Kingston, near the Uni I teach within, I was able to bring together around a dozen poets, some visiting, some local, some students. Old friends like Dublin’s Christodoulos Makris and Venice’s Alessandro Burbank read alongside soon-to-be-new-friends like Paris’ Frederic Forte and Amsterdam’s Erik Linder. I was particularly proud of the young poets I’ve had the pleasure to work with in my teaching like Olga Kolesnikova and Synne Johnsson, and the performances ranged from translated readings to performances, Fred Forte and Astra Papachristodoulou both presenting particularly entrancing conceptual live poetries. Everyone piled into the olde market square afterwards, talking late into the night.

See videos of every performance on the night and pictures too at www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/kingston
www.writerscentrekingston.com/europe

A note on: Poem Brut at Writers' Centre Kingston

One of the things about curating an event is that you are fundamentally responsible for where it takes place. So when you arrive at a venue and it's locked and dark and down an alleyway next to the Thames off Kingston's market square, and it remains so for an hour, right up until people start arriving, you are aware that it might irk those who have made the effort to come out on a thursday night. That being said, as the event was a Poem Brut performance, it did seem to some that it was a deliberate act on my part, a conceptual investigation of what a literary event is. Some thought I planned it so performances would happen in the dark, in the cold, by the river. They were thrown when I walked the entire audience across the town like a grumpy pied piper to a new venue I had rustled up on the spot. To the endless credit of the audience, it seemed to do something positive to the proceedings, bonding people, creating a peripatetic unity. The performances that followed were brilliant, five new works in the poem brut style - challenging and inventing upon the possibilities of literature made live. Ink spitting, dog translations, mannequin pinning and canvas shredding. The poem brut events I have been running have restored my excitement for curating events, which I perhaps do too often, and it was grand to bring this energy to Kingston Uni for the Writers' Centre and the students. I'll do it again for the next year of events, as I realised, as the night unfolded in a rather clinical lecture theatre, that Iris Colomb gobbing ink onto a page and then reading it was perhaps the exact antidote to the lectures that had left there trace in the room. All the videos www.writerscentrekingston.com/poembrut

A note on: Museum of Futures: Scribbling & Scrawling exhibition ends

Another magic engagement with Surbiton's Museum of Futures, a unique community gallery that I've been able to work with through Writers' Centre Kingston and Kingston University. Students, local artists and writers, and those able to travel to the gallery nearby contributed to a brilliant month long exhibition of writing art, aligned with my poem brut project, on the theme of scribbling and scrawling. The work was uniformly good and once more, by taking on the labour of an open submission process, I had the chance to meet a load of talented new people, from Nicole Polonsky to Denise McCullough, there was some real discoveries for me. Moreover my students had the chance to see their work walled for the first time, and help me, significantly, in the curation of the show and it's events.

www.writerscentrekingston.com/futures lots more about the exhibition on the site, as well as the launch event here www.writerscentrekingston.com/making

A note on: The University Camarade III was brilliant

A very special evening at the rich mix, the third time ive put this event together, with students from all over the UK. As ever, collaboration absolutely engenders friendships while producing challenging, idiosyncratic poetry. The students involved were universally excellent, brave, bold and the evening left a real impression on the audience, and I think, I hope, on the rest of their poetry / writing / performing lives. I believe sincerely that opportunity is what shapes people's journey and growth, and this event gives people young in their experience a real urge to go into new spaces. 

I was especially content with the showing of my students, who we and are markedly their own, which is all I want from them, to expand and explore their own paths, with some erratic guidance www.theenemiesproject.com/unicamarade / www.writerscentrekingston.com/richmix

A note on: editing the Sampson Low Poetry Pamphlet series in 2018

The Sampson Low Poetry Pamphlet Series is designed to evidence the remarkable contemporary and innovative poetry being written by current and recent Kingston University Creative Writing students. This series of beautifully designed pamphlets each features a suite of poems, most often on one theme or in one style, by a solo author. Visit https://sampsonlow.co/wck-pamphlets/ to purchase from the series.

New releases in the series, debut works by Olga Kolesnikova, Yvonne Litschel and Silje are now available to purchase. Click on the title and author to read more about each publication so far and buy a copy!: Click on the title and author to read more about each publication so far and buy a copy!:

• #1 : Future Dentist by Molly Bergin
• #2 : Event Horizon by Zakia Carpenter-Hall
• #3 : Soft Teeth by Dacy Lim
• #4 : Chronicology by Olga Kolesnikova
• #5 : E∩Nby Silje Ree
• #6 : m o t h  d u s t  by Yvonne Litschel

“Kingston University brings together students from all over the world, from as wide a range of backgrounds and cultures as can be found in the UK. It creates a community that cross pollinates influences and ideas, and this is inevitably reflected in the work the students create. The university does not get enough credit for this – it is, I have seen, a vibrant, harmonious environment where originality and difference can be transformed into exciting and innovative expression. The students are hungry for that which is innovative, that which allows them to express the true size and complexity of their experience and their community at the university. This series of poetry pamphlets reflects that. The work is utterly contemporary, it is exciting and energetic. It is, I hope, the best kind of representation of what Kingston University stands for – intelligent, unique and various in its character.”  
Series editor, SJ Fowler

Writers' Centre Kingston blog #6 - Remembering was good

My short time so far as direktor of Writers' Centre Kingston has been smooth sailing, the challenges are different, but the remit is clear, and I've been lucky to have friends I've been able to ask to be guest speakers on quite short notice after my summer takeover. Our first few events were all about trying new formats, working student readings next to newly commissioned talks, and trying new venues, but this was all straightforward, the issue has been in a very different event culture in Kingston than in London, or in the other big cities I normally work. What I take to be relatively given and maybe even mundane is perhaps a little startling for others, so that's interesting. But having Iain Sinclair, Tom McCarthy and our beautiful pamphlet series, for example, tends to produce interesting events.

The third event was on the theme of Remembering and saw the best trio of talks I think I've ever been able to commission for a similarly faceted event. Between them Winsome Pinnock, John Stuart and Nell Leyshon produced genuinely remarkable reflections. It was so lovely to see Winsome, who is responsible for me being at Kingston, John, whom I look up to, being an avid history reader interested in the legacy of empire, and Nell, who has really got me writing fiction, and has become a close friend, after we met in Mexico and Peru, and had mad adventures over the last few years, speak together. 

You can see all the videos and pictures here www.writerscentrekingston.com/remembering

Here is a picture Nell sent me after the event, a year old but just developed from film, of us sitting in an event abandoned train carriage in Peru. This event is what I'm trying to do with the centre, inspire students, and anyone interested, anyone in this part of the world, with programmes which feel friendly but have a core of something challenging, something defiant and intellectual.

Writers' Centre Kingston : blog #4 - a performance, Dying

The first few months of running the new literary centre at Kingston University have been really interesting, and our first few events have been as good as I could've hoped for. The second, the official launch, at Rose theatre in Kingston, featured Iain Sinclair, Andrew Teverson and myself speaking on the theme of Dying, to a full house.

Find out more at www.writerscentrekingston.com/dying

I had to give a performance for the event as a speaker dropped out in fact. I did an improvised talk, the kind I've been focusing in on the last year. Lots of speed talking, lying, comedy rhythms. As a condition I write them on the day, a few hours before, as bullet points and then just work them out live, frightening but satisfying. I wrote tonight's on toilet papiere while waiting for the audience to arrive.

Writers' Centre Kingston : blog #1

I'm very pleased to have been named the new director of Writers' Centre Kingston - Kingston University's literary cultural centre. A brand new year of events, projects, festivals and initiatives will begin in October. 

The core programme consists of a dozen events – each themed, with three speakers responding to that concept with a new reading or talk or performance. The speakers are both guests to the Centre, including Tom McCarthy, Stella Duffy, Nell Leyshon and Iain Sinclair, as well as those drawn from the academic staff at Kingston University. Student and alumnus readings often accompany this main programme. 

The Centre will present brand new initiatives including a programme of adult education courses, a bookclub curated with Stanley Picker Gallery and a publication series for student poets with Sampson Low.

Please see www.writerscentrekingston.com for more details on the centre and the year ahead.

A note on : European Poetry Night Norwich 2017

As part of three days of European poetry celebrations last week I had the pleasure of accompanying four Scandinavians poets to Norwich, to read at an event I organised, which also drew in local Europeans, in the camarade model, in pairs. The night was brilliant, full of energy and warmth. I met lots of poets new to me, and reconnected with many friends. We had a grand turnout thanks to the Nordlit seminar on translation which had been taking place that day, hosted by those who had kindly hosted us, Writers Centre Norwich and the International Litcase Showcase. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/norwich

I collaborated for the fourth time with Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir. We’ve only known each other for just over a year, but our collaborative magic feels many years deep. We put on a kind of Eurovision Poetry Contest, or hosted something to that effect. As ever, Asta’s rare energy and invention told, it was a weirdly beautiful piece of poetry theatre.

We were shown great hospitality too, with Dan, Endre, Martin, Asta and I taken to dinner, and then out on the town for many hours after the event. Always wonderful people to work with, Jonathan Morley, Sam Ruddock and everyone involved made sure the beginning of EPN was memorable.

A note on: European Poetry Night! May 6th in London

European Poetry Night : London
Rich Mix : May Saturday 6th : 7.30pm
www.theenemiesproject.com/epn

An opportunity to see some of the most exciting contemporary poets from all over Europe, as over 20 poets travel to London to share new collaborative poems, premiered on the night, in pairs, across languages, styles & nations. These are some of the most dynamic literary and avant-garde poets of the 21st century, celebrating the potential of collaboration to generate truly innovative poetry and work firmly against the divisive idea of a reduced closeness of spirit across our continent. Curated by SJ Fowler. 

European Poetry Night 2017 in London. May Saturday 6th: Rich Mix
7.30pm - Free Entry. 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA

Bas Kwakman & Jen Calleja  /  Kinga Toth & Simon Pomery  /  Endre Ruset & Harry Man  /  Alessandro Burbank & Max Hofler  /  Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir & SJ Fowler  /  Theodoros Chiotis & Vanni Bianconi  /  Tom Jenks & Weronika Lewandowska  /  Henriette Støren & Astra Papachristodoulou  /  Livia Franchini & Maarten van der Graaf  /  Frank Keizer & Dan Aleksander Ramberg Andersen  /  Damir Sodan & Tomica Bajsic  /  Iris Colomb & Serena Braida 

The European Poetry Night is supported by Arts Council England, NORLA, The Royal Norwegian Embassy, Dutch Foundation for Literature, Institut Francais London, Austrian Cultural Forum London and many generous others. www.theenemiesproject.com/epn

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Presented by The Enemies Project, European Poetry Night is actually one of three events in three nights on the European theme, creating a mini-festival of sorts. This begins in Norwich Writers Centre on May Thursday 4th before going on to Libreria Bookshop on May Friday 5th. All events are free. Details below.

European Poetry Night : Norwich - Writers' Centre Norwich
May Thursday 4th : Doors 6pm for 6.30pm start. Entrance Free. 
Dragon Hall, 115-123 King St, Norwich NR1 1QE www.theenemiesproject.com/norwich

EPN Norwich features brand new collaborative works of poetry from pairs of poets drawn from different European nations visiting for the event and as well as many local to Norwich too. Supported by Writers Centre Norwich and the International Literature Showcase. Featuring:

Martin Glaz Serup & Jeremy Noel-Tod  /  Endre Ruset & Rebecca Tamas  /  Jonathan Morley & Dan Aleksander Ramberg Andersen  /  Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir & SJ Fowler  /  Alison Graham & Matthew Gregory  /  Chris Hamilton-Emery & Richard Lambert  /  Zein Sa'dedin & Sarra Said-Wardell  /  Doug Jones & Sam Jordison  /  Andrew Wells & Nathan Hamilton  / Emily Willis & Olivia Walwyn

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May Friday 5th : European Poetry at Libreria
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm / Free Entry / 65 Hanbury St, London E1 5JP
http://www.theenemiesproject.com/libreria
Readings from some of Europe's most innovative and dynamic poets, visiting London from a half dozen European nations. This event will celebrate the shared literary tradition of our continent with truly contemporary readings and performances in one of London's most beautiful bookshops. 

A note on: Lightwave, performing with Lithuanian poets in London

If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them.
 -Andrei Tarkovsky

A memorable night at Free Word centre, bathed in a dirty UV light I had associated with searching for bodily fluids in hotel rooms transformed a literary house meeting hall into a space for real performance literature. I was performing alongside Lithuanian poets Zygimantas Kudirka and Gabriele Labanauskaite and thanks to Zygi's suggestion we themed the evening around the Lightwave, all presenting new live works thanks to an invitation by the Lithuanian Cultural Centre tying into the London Book Fair.

I've known Gabriele for years now, she has always been a peer whose work I find motivating, one of dozens of folk beyond the UK doing the work I think we should be doing on the island, blending heavy skill in theatre, poetry and sound. She has an immense presence too, calm, clear thinking, warm. And Zygimantas was a revelation, having never seen him perform before, he was unique, capitivating, authentic, very funny. He made my improvised speaking performance, which involved rope lights nosed around my neck, flames held under my palm and rambling engagements with the theme of light, seem conventional.

The Free Word was kitted out differently too and there was a sensitive, engaged feeling in the audience. It all emerged from the intent, mindful curation of the Lithuanian Cultural Institute, Rūta Nanartavičiūtė and her colleagues were a joy to work with, with an unusual sense of play and a taste for the contemporary and strange. The intense feeling of post performance energy, of soft relief, was permeated this time with a sense of hoping hospitality had been shown to the visiting poets, and it felt as thought they had shared an evening with myself and others that would be long in the memory.

A note on: Lightwave: New Performance in Lithuanian Literature

Wednesday March 15th / 6:30pm doors for 7pm start / Free Word Centre
60 Farringdon Road. EC1R 3GA : Free Entry but online booking requested here

A unique event celebrating Lithuanian’s new generation of literary artists, featuring brand new readings and performances by Gabrielė Labanauskaitė-Diena, Žygimantas Kudirka and SJ Fowler, a British poet connected to their innovative, collaborative practise.

Both Labanauskaite and Kudirka have carved out reputations across Europe for remarkable writing and live performances to match. This is a rare chance in London to witness poets who are breaking ground in the new European scene.

From Lithuania’s powerful lyrical and formal tradition has grown a culture of experimentation and in this event curated for the London Book Fair, the Lithuanian Culture Institute brings to light the best of Lithuania’s new generation of poets and performers.

Speakers Žygimantas Kudirka is a writer, artist and performer of interactive poetry, artificial languages and electronic music. Kudirka’s first poetry collection, XXI a. Kudirka (The Twenty-first Century Kudirka), is made up of interactive verses, literary remixes, internet poetry, and texts of unusual graphic forms and content. He is also a performer of avant-garde rap and one of the pioneers of poetry slam in Lithuania, representing the country in European slam poetry championships. His works have been translated in different languages and part of them can be found online here, here or here. / Gabrielė Labanauskaitė-Diena is a text producer. She combines poetry, drama, essay and other texts with interdisciplinary arts, enjoying her roles as writer, performer and organizer. Gabrielė also appears in classical forms – as a playwright in theatre, lecturer at Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy, human being in everyday life. Find out more here and here.

Published: an article of "The Poetry Reading, Literary Performance & Liveness" for Norwich Writers Centre & ILShowcase

http://litshowcase.org/content/reading-in-public-is-always-a-performance/

"READING IN PUBLIC IS ALWAYS A PERFORMANCE

SJ Fowler explores the role of poet as performer and artist

Cautiously declaring a desire to be severed from the tendon of smugness often associated with the avant-garde, be it in writing or performance, I will begin rather by saying my interest in this kind of writing is really not about literature first, but about three things, two of which seem relevant to the notion of liveness and poetry.

The first is the future – a desire to be future facing, in a moment where the world is so different than it ever has been before, so much so that it is beyond previous imagination. By this I mean the world population of human animals doubling in the last forty years, climate apocalypse, the internet as a language based human nervous system emerging in the last three decades etc… No more on this, but to me the avant-garde gives poets more in the way of preparatory strategies than the classically fascinating, formal, history-facing poet. I’ve been asked why it is important to be future-facing. To know the past, as I try to do, reading as much classical poetry as I can (ought to?) is useless without having a stake in the future. It is undeniable that the default mode of contemporary British poetry is conceptually, theoretically and methodologically facing backwards, over its shoulder, resisting what might lie ahead.

The second is potential. What is the possibility of the page? Does it stop at times new roman size 12 left aligned grammatically correct first person narrative anecdotes of emotional insight, as most poetry books are? No. White space, paper stock, colour, font, language as material - this is the domain of the poet, if any kind of artist. The poet is a language artist, and these material concerns are not just for the graphic designer, or text artist etc… This is all a frame of mind, a mode.

The third, most importantly to me, is my naiveté as it relates to poetry. I have only been writing, performing, painting, for a sixth of my life, or thereabouts. It all, for better or worse, flooded in at once. Before, and since, I am fundamentally confused, about most things, about poetry. Why is what might be taken for a normal, everyday sentence, describing an event or incident or anecdote, but given line breaks, called a poem? And speaking most generally, I find existence relatively adversarial, within the comfort I’m lucky to have (again I mean macroanalytically thinking, life is adversarial as its fundamentally degrading before expiry etc…) And this is often the state of avant-garde work. It is confused, can appear inexact, or exacting, it is equal to life, it does not control the uncontrollable, it mirrors it. It presents questions to questions, not unlikely answers......."

A note on: work in Test Centre magazine 7

Very pleased to be in the always brilliant Test Centre magazine. Generously the editors accepted work from three of my upcoming projects, a range of approaches, with poems from my next collection The Guide to Being Bear Aware, poems from a limited edition book with Pyramid editions about cinema and my debut art book, from Stranger press, entitled I fear my best work behind me - which is a series of brutalist illustrations. http://testcentre.org.uk/product/test-centre-seven/

The magazine is released in a limited edition of 250 copies and includes work from Allen Fisher, Holly Pester, MacGillivray, Pierre Guyotat, Daisy Lafarge, Joseph Persad, Rachael Allen, Sam Riviere, Francine Elena, Erik Stinson, Chrissy Williams, Wayne Holloway-Smith, Jen Calleja, Vahni Capildeo, Iain Sinclair, Ralf Webb, Angus Sinclair, Paul Buck, Caleb Klaces, Stephen Watts, Laura Elliott, A. K. Blakemore, Nick Thurston, SJ Fowler and Ahren Warner.