Published : Crayon Poems - Penteract Press

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Available penteractpress.com/store/crayon-poems-sj-fowler

2020 - £10.00 Full-colour, Perfect-bound Paperback, 210 x 148mm, 60pp

Produced to a remarkable standard, a volume of 50 original art-poems, written entirely with crayons. The books is closed with a new essay, explaining why it exists. An excerpt = “There is a part of me that wants to be messy, dumb, clumsy, childish, ape-ish and impatient because I am quite naturally these things and these things are preferable to pretense. I never wish to be a child again, and will be granted this wish, but I’d rather be one than a fraught, bourgeois adult, and so robbing the techniques of infants seem a valuable, if petulant, path to safety. What better reason than childishness, amidst the recreations of mortality, animalisms, literacy and colourfulness, could there be for me to author and labour a book of poems made exclusively from the wax crayon?”

From the publisher “Crayon Poems is the poetic equivalent of a cat gifting its owner a dead bird, only it’s done with greasy, gentle colours on the page. In an intrepid interrogation of what it is to write, SJ Fowler’s art poetry collection offers a take on childish play and death’s tenacity that is compelling in its abjection. A cheeky nod to the unknowable, it is a gift you don’t want but should be grateful for. Fowler’s colourful crayons, like the bird’s intestines, are bodily, fascinating and undeniable.”

These poems overflow the pool and belch broken pinwheels and algae blooms. They originate the faces and traces of those dreams that wake me. The ones I cannot describe to the adults around me. My lack of words or the words they have over me. Hold a crayon one day and convey. Here there is no illegible or illiterateKim Campanello

SJ Fowler's Crayon Poems enter the realm of hauntology, a special place in which the sensible child finds expression in the day-dreaming adult. This line of Electronic Voice Phenomena is sketched into cardiogram in shaky and colourful wax. Who says the colours of Crayola are just for the under-tens? Chris McCabe

The fifth book in my Poem Brut series. www.stevenjfowler.com/artbooks The book was released with a special podcast by Penteract Press, between editor Anthony Etherin and I. https://penteractpress.com/p-p-p/2020/7/5/episode-10-sj-fowler-crayon-poems-launch

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Launching "Vikings: the Whale Hunt" a new publication with Annexe

Really pleased to be publishing some new work, a lovely illustrated pamphlet, another in my Vikings series (which will continue to be released segment by section) with the amazing Annexe and its fine editor Nick Murray. I really respect the energy, the quality and the breadth of the work Annexe puts out, and really happy to be under its umbrella. More so that the publication will be launched alongside a new work by Tom Chivers, a close friend and a really good poet. www.annexemagazine.com
The first Annexe event of the year is an exciting one as we launch new pamphlets from two exceptional writers. 

Tom Chivers & SJ Fowler - Double Launch - Candid Arts Trust 
Wednesday 26th February - 7pm (reading commencing at 7.30) = FREE
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Whale Hunt  - SJ Fowler 

"Time began with a bear then it became a Viking

family tree over grandfather to all of us (that matter)
the polite, the gentle born of the power to display force
but choosing not to do so in company resounds its glow"

Poet and vangardist, SJ Fowler, strives to encounter and confront all disciplines in the poetic tradition. His latest work starts from a root of Norse mythology and carves a path through contemporary poetics and language construction. 

Whale Hunt, part of the Introducing series, is a curated section of Fowler's Vikings work and is published as an illustrated pamphlet.