Very likely the last burst of poems to be published in a journal from my 9th collection, out recently in April 2021, Come and See the Songs of Strange Days : Poems on Films, with Broken Sleep press.
Published by Anthropocene, edited by Charlie Baylis, this selection features an asemic poem celebrating John Milius’s surfer classic Big Wednesday, Bela Tarr’s adaptation of Satantango and Andrew Kotting’s This Filthy Earth.
https://www.anthropocenepoetry.org/post/3-poems-by-sj-fowler-1
New poetry films and video-literature to start 2021 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2LmXtC6HArB9k2QSLWQGJA/videos
With the www.writerskingston.com usual new year’s program of events unable to take place I’ve been happy to commission a brand new set of poetry films, hosted on the Writers Kingston youtube channel, themed and released as premiered events online. I’ve asked writers, poets and artists, connected to institute and the events that were planned in the flesh, to present new works of film poetry, video literature or digital reflection on the nature of the moment, around loose themes. I hope, in creating a new body of work, to create a kind of creative time capsule, that will have a legacy beyond that which is hopefully soon passing. Works from Laura Davis, Agnieszka Studzinka, Sara Upstone, Meg Jensen, Anna Johnson, Stephen Sunderland, Susie Campbell, Chris Kerr, Robert Sheppard and more.
Very generous of Ghareeb Iskander to take a new poem of mine for publication in the Belgium based journal Eurolitkrant. https://eurolitkrant.com/OneBook.aspx?Id=81
The journal has featured some great European poets recently - Peter Zavada, Ida Borjel, George Szirtes, Kornelia Deres - and I’m particularly happy to have this poem up as it’s taken from my new collection, which is due March 2021, in two months time. It is entitled COME AND SEE THE SONGS OF STRANGE DAYS poems on films with Broken Sleep.
The film the poem is about is an intense one, but also from Belgium, so some synchonicity jiggling.
EPF Digital begins! After two cancellations, I’m happy that I bit the bullet and decided to lean into some proper online content. Masses to come, 9 interviews, 3 films, and more. This opening is just the beginning of stuff coming out over the next two weeks…
An eight part online festival, presenting long-form video interviews and entirely original poetry films. Unable, finally, to take place in the flesh this year, the festival will present poets from Switzerland, Austria, Latvia, Sweden, Hungary, Lithuania and more, leaning in to 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 full program is available to view www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/2020 and the 'events' will be released via this newsletter and online every few days November 23rd to December 10th. To begin, we are very happy to present three new long-form video-interviews with Swiss poets to kick off EPF Digital 2020. More on the work of Laura Accerboni, Rolf Hermann and Linn Molineaux is available at www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/swiss with videos below and on YouTube. These interviews are supported by Pro Helvetia and are part of the Maintenant series at 3am magazine.
I moved my festival, which was the be the biggest yet www.europeanpoetryfestival.com from April to October to November and now entirely online. Spilt milk, inevitable, fine. What I am excited by is that my suggestion for how it goes online have been met with great generosity by the various poets, friends, institutions and supporters who make it what it is. By the end of November I shall have multiple poetry films, zoomcasts and publications to share from poets across Europe and I look forward to barraging people’s inboxes with the stuff, currently being shot, edited and prepared. This all before I slowly, optimistically begin to begin planning a face to face festival in April 2021, which I will do, if it can be done.
