A note on: my collaborators for European Poetry Festival 2019

As part of the oncoming European Poetry Festival I have the opportunity to collaborate six times with six poets from six places. With Maja Jantar, Patrick Savolainen, Fabian Faltin, Morten Langeland, Krisjanis Zelgis and Tom Jenks. From April 6th to April 13th, one week, I do six new performative collaborations. It is one of the most exciting parts of the fest, this constant collective creative output, in live settings, making new things, writing them, negotiating in cafes, changing plans minutes before the event starts, having to also announce the lineup, help all the other poets, work the venue, then perform too. Making new friendships also, I have never worked with Patrick, Krisjanis and Fabian before. Cementing friendships too, Tom, Maja and Morten are all very close and dear friends. It is obvious terrible for them they have to work with me but sacrifices must be made on the altar of poetry.

Check out when and where here www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/programme

A note on: Performing at Ledbury Poetry Festival 2017

Ledbury Poetry festival is an internationally renowned fest, one entering its 21st year in fact, and for my first time attending I was happy to perform and organise a small Camarade with poets local to the festival or tied to it in some fashion. Set in the beautiful Malvern hills its very much a festival aligned with the more formal in British poetry than myself and the Enemies project, but as I’ve repeated a lot -my tastes and work is what it is for my own ends but that can only exist within the range and width and panoply of traditions, and it’d be hypocritical to not seek out difference in poetry, to not always be open to generous invitations, and be ready to listen and learn and discover what people are writing. I found the festival to be utterly welcoming, hospitable and full of interesting work. Myself and 11 other poets in the Camarade were treated so well, we had a lovely audience in the Market Theatre, a great space and in fact were asked to be the very last, 87th, event of this 10 day incarnation of the festival. My work with Harry Man, one of my closest friends in poetry, went down well and though my visit was brief, it was a really positive experience.

new Veer books website

http://www.veerbooks.com/ Delighted to see a beautiful new website for Veer books, who generously published my collection Fights in 2011 http://www.veerbooks.com/filter/veer-books/Steven-J-Fowler-fights & edited by a collective of extraordinary poets, have put together one of the most important lists in 21st century poetry, including poets from around the world. I sincerely recommend you checking them out and buying their wares.
Plus there is a sale! 

updates on the Enemies project website : www.weareenemies.com

Recently added is a revamped About section detailing future plans and past happenings, an updated 2014 schedule with event information and videos and the beginnings of the 2015 schedule.
http://weareenemies.com/about.html 
http://weareenemies.com/events_14.html 
- an example from the about below

The future
As the Enemies project moves into 2015 there are five key points of its future program:

​​​​Innovative event curation: trying to genuinely break new ground in the form and structure of events and exhibitions and programmes between poets and artists. Events include the Kiddy Kamarade, a family poetry day including a creche and children’s pedagogical poetry activities, a collaborative residency with an award winning and innovative landscape architecture form to explore how language can shape the very literal but endlessly complex physical shaping of urban environments and new forms of collaborative poetry readings with established partners like the Hay-on-Wye festival.

Innovative collaborative connections between mediums: marrying poetry with sculpture, with England’s folk music tradition, with sound art and avant garde music, with film and film language, with animation. The new year of Enemies seeks new ground to break across artforms.

a continued increase in our International outlook: an emphasis on bringing other cultures and languages to collaborate in England, and to explore the possibilities of translation as a practise, and what this means to language but also to different artforms, to whom the word is not so familiar and provides unique challenges. Wales, Austria, Norway, Germany, Finland, Mexico and many others are on the slate.

Radical translation: a long term partnership with the Translation Games project, curated by Ricarda Vidal, following on from back to back appearances at the British Library's International Translation Day, situates Enemies at the forefront of experimental translation practise, and events and anthologies will further this pursuit in 2015.​​

Co-curating collaboration: setting up events that are built on a collaborative partnership in the curating of those events, and exploring how that mediation of exchange in the actual programming of artistic exchange affects, and enriches that practise. The Enemies website will evidence and discuss this process with a series of co-curators for the many projects lined up throughout the year, through video interviews and blogposts and interviews.

Collectives: exploring the notion of collective collaboration and how it differs from binary collaboration, and how it inherently bleeds across mediums in an organic and social manner. Through three recently established and contrasting collectives, involving some of most exciting names in contemporary art writing, performance art, poetry, visual art and electronic literature, the Enemies project will explore whether the Collective is a mode of collaboration still relevant to the 21st century.