A note on : An Invisible Poetry : exhibition at Poetry Society

….so this is pretty great. For the month of July I’ll be presenting a mix of new works made specifically for the Poetry Society Cafe space, including window poems and sculptural pieces, alongside a selection from my five poem brut books. I will also be curating a group show alongside my solo show, as the exhibition space has two floors. Both shows, but especially the group show, will firmly be a part of what I’ve tried to do with Poem Brut as a project - that is to make available ideas and methods of poetry is a way that is liberating and not judgemental to those who perhaps don’t find mess and play so appealing as I.

The Poetry Society, especially Michael Sims, have been hugely generous and supportive, and accommodating, and it bodes well that this summer month can be spent in the space, which is open six days a week, nearly 12 hours a day.

AN INVISIBLE POETRY : JULY 1ST TO JULY 27TH
a new solo show of paint and sculpture poems at The Poetry Society Cafe in Covent Garden 
https://poetrysociety.org.uk/poetry-cafe/exhibitions/future-exhibition/

The Poetry Society Cafe : July 1st to 27th / 22 Betterton St, London WC2H 9BX
Opening Hours 11am to 10pm everyday bar sunday. www.stevenjfowler.com/invisible

"A visual poem should be visible, yet it seems it’s often not so. In this solo exhibition of new painterly poems, SJ Fowler asks questions so manifest they are almost indiscernible. What is in the shape of a letter and what images do words recall? What is the meaning of colour in poetry, and where went the handwritten word? Where is mess, notation, scrawling and material? Why is composition strange to an art-form that is as visual as it is sonic? An Invisible Poetry presents new sculptural poems and original visual literature alongside a selection from Fowler's Poem Brut project and its accompanying series of publications from Hesterglock Press, Stranger Press, ZimZalla and Penteract Press. These are poems exploring handwriting, abstraction, illustration, pansemia, scribbling and scrawling." 

Special View Performance Event - July 8th 2019 : 7pm doors for 7.30pm start. Free entry. & // This is a split exhibition, as in the basement gallery of the Poetry Society I am curating a group show - The Poet's Brut www.poembrut.com/poetrysociety

The Poet’s Brut : A group show with Chris McCabe, Paul Hawkins, Astra Papachristodoulos, Karen Sandhu, Simon Tyrrell, Imogen Reid, Vilde Torset and Patrick Cosgrove www.poembrut.com/poetrysociety

Brand new works exhibited by seven of the UK's most exciting contemporary poets. Poem Brut project has generated over a dozen events since 2017, alongside multiple exhibitions, workshops, conferences, publications and over 1000 submissions to it’s 3am magazine series. It advocates for an artistic creative writing, a visual literature, a concrete poetry - poetry that embraces colour, the handwritten, the composed, the abstract, the scribbled, the noted, the illustrated. Poem Brut affirms the possibilities of the page, the pen, and the pencil (and the crayon) for the poet in a computer age, and celebrates these ideas in the live realm alongside the two dimensional. This group show evidences a new generation of poets working in old traditions often forgotten or nudged into the realm of modern art. http://www.poembrut.com/exhibitions

All we need is rest - Nov 18th for the Hubbub at the Wellcome centre

http://www.wellcomecollection.org/events/all-we-need-rest Very happy to be part of the Being Human festival in my very first event related to the Hub residency at the Wellcome trust, where I will be hovering around for the next two years and in intense residence from January through to April. This event will be a drop in session from 12 noon to 2pm at the wellcome trust Hub space itself, near Euston. I'll be there with Patrick Coyle and James Wilkes doing some martial arts demos and performances.

"What does 'rest' mean to you? When, where and how do you rest? Rest can seem hard to find, whether in relation to our exhausted bodies, our racing minds or the hectic city of London. Should we slow down, or should we embrace intense activity? What effects do each of these states have on the health of our bodies and minds? How have people at other times and in other places thought about and practised rest?

Join Hubbub, an interdisciplinary research team, at the start of their two-year investigation into rest and its opposites. The new Hub space at Wellcome Collection will be specially opened to the public for a free, drop-in lunchtime session. Try out interactive demonstrations in poetry, neuroscience and the history of medicine, and hear mini-talks on state-of-the-art research into rest. Find out more about the experiments in the arts, humanities and sciences that Hubbub will be running over the next two years and how you might get involved.

The Hub is a pioneering location for creative work that explores what happens when medicine and health intersect with the arts, humanities and social sciences. Its first residents are Hubbub, an interdisciplinary team investigating the dynamics of rest and its opposites, as they operate in mental health, neuroscience, the arts and the everyday."

Revolve:R exhibition in Lugano, Switzerland

I'm a very small part of this group exhibition in Switzerland http://www.choisi.info/eventi.php#27 with some poetry of mine included in the remarkable Revolve:R collaborative project led by Ricarda Vidal and Sam Treadaway. 

"Focus: “Revolve:R”
Revolve:R is a project in visual correspondence, by Sam Treadaway and Ricarda Vidal, in collaboration with a number of international artists, writers, and curators.
Revolve:R culminates in the publication of hand-made limited edition bookworks and giclée prints.
The project explores the possibilities of an exchange of ideas via a visual and tactile, rather than virtual, form of communication. Each cycle of the project we call a Revolve. After six Revolves the work is published as a limited edition bookwork.

Edition one, inspired by chaos theory, was initiated in late 2011 and published in 2013. The second edition will be published in early 2015.

Edition Two. Works by: Alastair Whitton, Ricarda Vidal, Linnea Vedder, Sam Treadaway, Kate Street, Clare Thornton, Emily Speed, Solveig Settemsdal, Matt Rowe, James Rigler, Bernd Reichert, Domingo Martínez, John Matthias, Anna Mace, Antun Maračić, Julie McCaldon, Sharon Kivland, Hayden Kays, Alice Hendy, Verena Hägler, Patrick Galway, Steven Fowler, Stephanie Douet, Todd DiCiurcio, Emma Cocker, Anna Cady, Oscar Bandtlow, Diana Ali, plus special guests."

5x7 group show at the Hardy tree in December! my animal calligrams for sale

Very excited to be in the latest group show taking place at the Hardy Tree gallery, running for three weeks across December. The concept is that around 15 artists provide 15 artworks around postcard size, which are hung in the gallery and sold for 25 quid each.http://hardytreegallery.com/

My 15 artworks are all original calligrammatic representations of animals. Each one is essentially a drawing of an animal in handwriting. Ive played with Calligrams for awhile, pretty much directly following Apollinaire. I've deliberately made them somewhat illegibile, so the handwriting, in places, allows for multiple, interpretative readings of the poems. They are all poems, pre-existing poems, written for the calligram, which will never see the light of day in their non-calligrammatic form, but I want the search for the meaning to be primary in the readers experience. The reader can make their own poems as they have to fill in the gaps between what is legible to them and what is not. Each time the poems are read, they are anew.

& Erkembode is also in the group show, my frequent collaborator and continuous inspirator. His work includes originals from our collaboration, Jurassic Strip, about Jurassic Park in the middle east. All the poems and paintings in this collaboration have been published as an ebook to be viewed for free belooow.