A note on: performing at the institute of psychoanalysis in London

June 11, 2017

I had a blast performing in Sigmund Freud Lecture Theatre at Institute of Psychoanalysis! It was for The Poetry and Psychoanalysis Conference: Creative Borders and Boundaries brilliantly organised by Kathryn Maris, Catherine Humble and Susanne Lansman. Much to say about my performance, it was a conceptual satire on conference papers perhaps and the normative urge in poetry and psychoanalysis to 'fix' or to begin a discussion about these fields with the assumption that such 'fixing' is possible. Anyway I had fun and people seemed to enjoy my tomfoolery. https://psychoanalysis.org.uk/civicrm/event/info?id=531

A note on: New poets published on 3am magazine this summer

October 1, 2016

The submissions for 3am magazine have opened once again, from September 1st until January 1st, and the work coming has been the best I've ever seen in my five plus years in the magazine. Completely anecdotal, probably representative of nothing in the wider scope of literary trends, but finally a huge portion of the work, maybe 25% is innovative, interesting, original and a pleasure to read. I've decided to go with this and take more poets on than before, really try and build the magazine's poetry into something dynamic and energetic over the summer and in the coming months too. http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/index/poetry/

Some exciting work published recently:

Plenty more to come and here's every poet I’ve published as poetry editor http://www.stevenjfowler.com/3ammagazine

A note on: Goldsmiths Lit Live & Graduate School Festival - May 13th 2016

May 14, 2016

Had the pleasure of reading at the impressively varied and extremely popular Lit Live series, thank to Livia Franchini, alongside poets entirely new to me, and discovering some interesting writers, after presenting on a panel for the Goldsmith Graduate Festival, on Found poetry, thanks to Kathryn Maris. Always amazing energy at Goldsmiths, the panel was a really generous conversation with Kathryn, whose work I admire, increasingly so with each exposure, and Cat Conway and Joe McCarney, who were both insightful. We talked quite broadly about found poetry, and I tried to situate my position more theoretically, with a wider scope. Then Lit Live itself, well over a hundred people came to see 10 readers, and I read my BBC Radio 3 commission and then set up one of my polyphonic choral poems. A beautiful way to meet people in this clearly tight knit scene, to ask them to read with me, surreptitiously, and to have the audience somehow implicated in what I was doing. It worked well, it seemed. A generous night overall, glad to have been part of it.

A note on: Magma Poetry's National Conversation Event: Peel & Portion - Jan 15th 2016

January 25, 2016

A real pleasure to spend an evening the company of the Magma magazine audience, for an event exploring drafting, its process and concepts, curated by John Canfield and hosted by Patrick Davidson Roberts. I always enjoy speaking to people who aren’t perhaps familiar with my work, or even the philosophies that underpin, who see modernism or the avant-garde as something alien (though I don’t want to assume too much). It was an evening where the insights given by Rebecca Perry and Kathryn Maris, both of whom spoke wonderfully, complimented my more discursive, fundamental questions and ideas. And the audience really seemed to engage with this, the collective impetus of the event, and the notion that I want to question certain assumed ideas about what drafting means, from the creative impulse, to the notion of a language idea, to refining, to what might be called a finished piece. And that these questions aren’t necessarily antagonistic to more confirmed notions, that seem to proffer control of language in poetry. I was really touched to have quite a few people stop me after speaking and share their thoughts and enthusiasm and was very grateful to John and the team at Magma for having me involved in a really positive event in the lovely environs of the Teahouse Theatre in Vauxhall.