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.’

New film : Dryden in Soho

The third in the new ‘How to Hide Anything in London’ series of short poetry-films that I’ve been making as we in the UK peek out of lockdown about the city of London and the poet ghosts who inhabit it.

New film : Mallarme and Harriet Live Underground

The second in my new series of short poetry films centred on London and the poets who littered its streets has been released! It’s been included in the online video poetry festival hosted by KULTkolteszetnap in Hungary, edition 30, closing that program, which was curated by the brilliant Kornelia Deres. https://www.kulter.hu/2021/04/kultkolteszetnap-10-resz/

The film was shot in Kensal Green Cemetery, at the grave of Harriet Smyth https://www.mylondon.news/news/local-news/kensal-green-grave-hid-story-5965815 and in Knightsbridge where Mallarme stayed. / you can see it on youtube here for KULTköltészetnap https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IPbAN2SgZM or below on me new vimeo channel

A note on: Writers Kingston poetry films back online

After an inexplicable struggle with youtube deletion, which has led me to archive every video i have on my youtubes for the stores of the National Poetry Library, I am happy to say the Writers Kingston Online poetry films - over 40 of them commissioned this year - are back in the land of the semi living online world. Worth checking a set of new ones now up, from Sylee Gore, Stephen Sunderland, Charlie Baylis et al. And this, from the legendary Bohman Brothers… https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2LmXtC6HArB9k2QSLWQGJA/videos

More on the series https://www.writerskingston.com/online

A note on : an interview with David Spittle

oo i don’t half go on… the person encouraging me here, a friend and peer, david spittle, an expert no less in cinema and poetry, interviewed me for the specific purpose of helping me share context and knowledge on my new book COME AND SEE THE SONGS OF STRANGE DAYS : POEMS ON FILMS www.stevenjfowler.com/comeandsee

however we talked not just on that but on many things, and my history of publishing particularly, drawing back to my book fights, from ten long years ago. if you’ve a spare hour, well parts may entertain

A note on : Writers Kingston Online - new poetry-films #21 to #39

#WRITERSKINGSTONONLINE

New poetry films and video-literature to start 2021 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2LmXtC6HArB9k2QSLWQGJA/videos With the usual new year’s program of events unable to take place I’ve been happy to commission a brand new set of poetry films.

This is the third set to be released with the full list here
https://www.writerskingston.com/online

Published : Light Glyphs by David Spittle

Really happy to be one of 10 respondents in a new book of interviews conducted by David Spittle and published by Broken Sleep books, entitled Light Glyphs https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/david-spittle-light-glyphs

“Light Glyphs is a series of interviews with filmmakers on poetry, and poets on film. Featuring interviewees such as John Ashbery, Iain Sinclair, Lisa Samuels, and Guy Maddin, this intriguing set of interviews delves into the connections and shared interests of creatives behind the camera, and holding the pen. Light Glyphs seeks to explore 'ways of thinking, writing and seeing opened to new and changing possibilities [...] or in where the light escapes and how it obscures, in what is missing from the frame or smudging the lens.' I’ve been reading and following this series for years, David is a brilliant poet and am really pleased to be in such company. Our chat covered my film The Animal Drums amongst others thing.

A note on : Film with Thomas Duggan at Montreal and Venice

I had a glut of film work and collaborations in the latter half of 2020, due to obvious reasons. Trying to avoid the ubiquity and pseudo deadness of zoom teams skype, though it has its uses for chats, film is the best way to make work that can be shared at a remove. One of the films was made with my long-term collaborator Thomas Duggan, an artist, architect, designer based in Cornwall. He took a 16mm old camera up to the highlands and cut the footage into a poetic montage, this just at the time I was teaching tonnes of poetry film stuff, and so having pushed the more experimental potentials of the medium, I decided in this case, an separated exchange was the best route, where I write and record poetry to go with the images. When I teach I often mention this form as the standard for poetry films but its that for a reason.

The film is called HERE YOU WERE NEVER A CHILD. It has a soundtrack by The Dirty Three, which is remarkable, and a connection through Thomas. Happily, already, the film has been accepted for screening and competition at the Montreal Independent Film Festival and the Venice Short Film Festival.

A note on : Limbo screened at London Short Film Festival

This first screening of Limbo, Lotje Sodderland’s new short film which I co-wrote, was supposed to take place this January 2021 in the Curzon cinema, either in Soho or Mayfair. Unfortunately, not possible, and so the London Short Film Festival premiered it online, in a program of excellent shorts. Nice that the film has been aired once, and hopefully many more festivals to come.

THE SWEDISH BEEST - a poetry film : EPF Digital #4

From a lonely London a figure calls out for the lost poets and three Swedes will answer, each in their own way, with poetic precision and desolate northern sensibilities. The Swedish Beest is less than a cry for help and more than a poetry film; it is a documentary of those who are not there, a gathering of readings out of time and place.

Supported by supported by The Embassy of Sweden, London. A film by Steven J Fowler. Starring Aase Berg, Jonas Gren and Ida Börjel. Music by Benedict Taylor. Photography by David Spittle. www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/swedenfilm

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.

WHERE IS EVERYONE AUSTRIA - a poetry film for EPF Digital

Realistically, I conceived of this maybe a month ago. We shot it a couple of weeks ego. It’s a pure furious burst of work. A real collaboration, with David, Max, Franziska, Robert. The Austrian Cultural Forum are amazing people to work with. At times, a lot of work, but now out, already worth it. This is what I wanted to do if we are online. Not a simulacra, a new piece of work. A friend wrote to me, in response to the film, ‘you’ve squeezed the blood from the stone of online events’ and I replied ‘we tried to make a new stone.’

Supported by Austrian Cultural Forum, London. A film by David Spittle. Written & conceived by Steven J. Fowler. Starring Franziska Füchsl, Max Höfler, Robert Prosser, SJ Fowler. Director of Photography and Editor : David Spittle. Music by Benedict Taylor. www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/austriafilm

An empty house and the people who should have been there. 

As three Austrian poets come to terms with the prisons of the now and their host is forced to confront their absence, Where Are You Austria documents their poetic descent into madness. What follows is as uncanny as it is unlikely, and, ultimately, inevitable. An epic poetry film about the consequences of that which does not happen, the intimacy of isolation, metal work and Erwin Schrödinger.

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.

The Writing Eye - Online course on Photo Poetry and Film Poetry

An online course. Begins November 8th 2020, running for 7 weeks. www.poembrut.com/courses

The potential of image and text is an endless field of creative exploration. Yet, despite the ubiquitous access we have to cameras, it remains underexplored and underappreciated as its own medium. This course traces the history of photopoetry and filmpoetry and draws it into the 21st century, rooted in making over theory, method over all else - it aims to provoke questions while exploring examples from a variety of fields - from conceptual art to surrealism, collage to concrete poetry, from modernism to collaborative practice.

We ask what makes up the essence of photography, film and poetry, and how might they interact to move beyond traditions in both fields, as something new, a true photopoetry or filmpoetry? We ask what is hybridity, truly, and simultaneity, and photoliteracy, and illustration? What is a poem in time, on film? How has the technology needed for the cinema and video evolved what a poem might be? What is the line between documentation and artwork?

Poet-photographer-filmmakers featured on the course will range from the historical to the contemporary, from canonical modern figures to "outsider" artists, from Laszlo Moholy-Nagy to Barbara Kruger, Francesca Woodman to August Strindberg, Peter Greenaway to Hamish Fulton, Blaise Cendrars to Martha Rosler, Susan Hiller to Yamamoto Kansuke, Paul Muldoon / Norman McBeath to Paul Eluard / Man Ray.

A note on : Writing on the film Limbo, by Lotje Sodderland

A few years ago I was asked by the film-maker Lotje Sodderland, whom I met and worked with many years ago on our A World Without Words project, exploring the brain, neuroaesthetics and aphasia, to write a draft of a short film screenplay for an idea she had about the care of the elderly in London and the kind of people who do that work. I spent a summer toying with the work and learning a lot about the process, submitting lots of drafts, working with the producers and we were even shortlisted for a big BFI scheme. As ever with film, the process has been knotty and lengthy, but Lotje has perservered and the film has been shot and is close to being finished. In these stages some really world renowned filmmakers have been helping Lotje work on the last touches and I’ve spent some of my lockdown time doing rewrites, playing with ideas on the script with Lotje. Having seen snippets of the work, and given the affect of the recent plague on the very people this film celebrates, the isolated elderly in the city, its a powerful piece.

Published : I Stand Alone by The Devils, and other poems on films

I Stand Alone by The Devils, and other poems on films
Broken Sleep Books : 33 pages : £5 www.stevenjfowler.com/istandalone
www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/sj-fowler-i-stand-alone-by-the-devils-and-other-poems-on-films

A book, though lean, I have been working on for years. It’s been a pleasure to bring it into life with Aaron Kent, editor of Broken Sleep. From the publisher = "26 new poems celebrating 26 cult films of the 20th and 21st century, I Stand Alone by The Devils is a slim volume of cinematic poetic ekphrasis. At play is an aberrant intersemiotic translation between the mediums of popular or arthouse cinema and contemporary, modernist poetry. The poems aim to re-imagine moving image in language, often cutting in tone, taking on the dark, symbolic and sardonic on film. Each poem is a single film, interpreting, reflecting, embodying and transposing, exploring both films familiar to many, and digging out, often from 20th century European cinema, more unorthodox motion pictures. From Querelle and The Baby of Mâcon, to American Werewolf in London and Don’t Look Now. From Aguirre and Festen to The Fly and Breaking the Waves, these poems are a strange and playful musing on cinema’s impact on poetry and language and a useless thinking through of how films are actually consumed."

A full list of films featured - Angel Heart, Querelle, Last Year at Marienbad, Ali : Fear Eats The Soul, The Fly, The Devils, Breaking the Waves, American Werewolf in London, Don’t Look Now, I Stand Alone, A short film about Love, En Coeur En Hiver, The Baby of Mâcon, Nightwatch (Nattevagten), Silence of the Lambs, Satan’s Brew, Aguirre, wrath of god, The Long Good Friday, Stalker, Salo, Festen, Three Colours Blue, Yojimbo, Possession, Beau Travail, M.

LAUNCH : August Thursday 29th 2019 at the Cinema Museum, London, alongside a screening of Peter Greenaway’s The Baby of Mâcon
http://www.cinemamuseum.org.uk/
7pm doors for 7.30pm entry. £8 (£5 concessions)
Readings, featuring Jonathan Catherall, Yvonne Litschel, Chris Kerr, David Spittle and more, alongside SJ Fowler, will mark this unique celebration of cinematic poetry, before a screening ofThe Baby of Mâcon, Peter Greenaway’s remarkable and challening 1993 film. More details to come soon.

A note on: a film by Emanuella Amichai translating my poem

Emanuella is an amazing film maker and artist who I’ve had the pleasure to correspond with for years. She made a film of my poetic sequence - Meditations on Strong Tea - which was in my 2014 Rottweiler’s guide to the Down Owner book, and written for tom and val raworth. It’s a beautiful example of abstract intermedia translation, a removed but potent form of collaboration. Her work is wonderful, worth seeking her out.

A note on: WormWood film collaboration with Tereza Stehlikova continues

after a beautiful summer in kensal green cemetery in 2017, tereza stehlikova and i have continued collaborating on our overall longterm project - a film that explores the hidden corners of industrial west london and its oncoming disappearance beneath the old oak development thing. we've been shooting extended scenes in certain locales on the grand union canal and ive been writing texts. the new films, chapters, will be screened later in the year, as the first was at the garden museum and other venues over the last 12 months. http://terezast.com/

Willesden Junction is the same. Goodbye ozone layer.
One bridge, a concentration on small vanishing places.
An example is the bridge over the canal, the grand union canal. that leads to the hythe road estate. they have 300 cctv cameras roaming, 24 hours a day.

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A note on : South of the River conference at Greenwich University

Thanks to Emily Critchley I got to premiere one of my new films made with Joshua Alexander (the animal series about london and menace - this one was Canalimal about the grand union canal around willesden junction and its soon disappearance at the hands of an ugly development) at the Uni of Greenwich for a conference entitled South of the River.

It was a lovely long afternoon with peers i respect in a little troupe - amy cutler, tom chivers, edmund hardy - speaking to each other and academics about south london. I admitted i had something against south london, half joking, and its a place that hasnt featured too much in my 11 years of walking miles upon miles of london streets. I learned a lot from everyone else through the day, it was communal and generous.

A note on: footage from Milosz festival with Tom Jenks & Weronika Lewandowska

Beautiful to have this footage from a great collaboration in Krakow this past June. Performance art, video art, poetry, theatre, it was a grand pleasure making the work with Tom and Weronika. For more info www.stevenjfowler.com/krakow

Exhibited: Manners Maketh Man, my commission for Graz Forumstadtpark Glory Hole series

So happy to have been commissioned by the amazing pioneering Forumstadtpark in Austria, curated by the equally groundbreaking Max Hofler, to produce a videotext work, part of their Glory Hole series. This series has been going for years and involves a video with text projected against the side of the Forumstadtpark itself, blown up like a bat signal, in the middle of a huge, beautiful park in the middle of the city. Loads of people see it, and for my work, which runs throughout April, this is true as its being screened while a film festival goes on. Really i had fun making it too, they promote my kind of work. You can see all the glory hole commissions here : https://vimeo.com/forumstadtparkgraz, some great ones, and my edition, the 31st, below

A note on: collaborating with Tereza Stehlikova on a film about Willesden Junction

For nearly a year I've had the pleasure to collaborate with the artist Tereza Stehlikova, who works in moving image. Our collaboration is about an area of London where we both live, in separate ends, enclosing, one of the few spaces I've really felt as home. Willesden Junction, Wormwood Scrubs, the Grand Union Canal, Kensal Green cemetery... And so far, all we have done is talk, allow the exchange of ideas to be as it should be, exploratory in friendship as well as ideas.

We recently began shooting the film, urged into action because of the plans to completely redevelopment this brilliant, beautiful, industrial, rarely-visited part of London. The Old Oak Development will be one of the biggest in the cities modern history, thousands of new flats, and people. What we are witnessing, the places I walk everyday, will disappear forever.

Here's Tereza's post on our beginning https://cinestheticfeasts.wordpress.com/2016/03/31/nw10/