A note on : on collaboration for Poetry Society's Young Poets Network

I was asked by the Poetry Society to write a little burst for their young poets network and a collaboration and poetry challenge, worth a peek at https://ypn.poetrysociety.org.uk/features/how-to-get-started-with-collaboration-in-poetry/

Steven J Fowler on The Enemies Project, his latest project and collaboration

Steven J Fowler is the originator of The Enemies Project, a long-running programme that started in 2010 and has resulted in hundreds of collaborations and events. He shares some wisdom:

I’m lucky to work collaboratively often. I organise events where I pair poets and ask them to make new work, over 300 of these events have happened around the world, and I’ve published two volumes of selected collaborations too, having written with over 100 artists and poets. I collaborate a lot because it’s generous, it builds friendships, and it forces one to be inquisitive. To be a good collaborator, you simply need to be interested in how the other person creates, as much as what they create. You need to so interested in this, you’re willing to allow their idea prominence, to let it supplement yours. I’m currently working on a book-length poem with Russian poet Maria Malinovskaya. We’ve spent a year exchanging lines, fragments, paragraphs – the project constantly changes, and this has been the joy of it. It’s an act of friendship, where the normal creative and editing processes I’d have in my head for my solo work are mediated through the originality and brilliance of another, of Maria, who thinks in ways I’ve never encountered. The book is now a series of questions and answers, it’s taken a year to find that form. I ask a question in the form of a poem, Maria answers in poetry and poses me a question. On it goes, and we don’t know, or care, when it finishes, or how it will finish. This, to me, is pure collaboration, the joy of the process over the product.

Published: Elit blog #2 - European poetry as representation of the modern nation

http://www.literaturhauseuropa.eu/?p=4078 "Every nation’s literature contains within it multiplicities. Not only are definitions of these traditions based on approximations, that which has been recorded, assigned, that which has had the fortune of being discovered, but the very concepts around what actually makes a poem or a novel is ever changing. In fact the very intransigence, and ever changing, nature of each language we utilise in Europe makes declarations and definitions fraught. That being said, I have come to realise, reading, writing and programming in many European nations over the last number of years, that certain social and political realities, certain modern histories, have an indelible effect on what kind of poetry a nation produces now, and what kind of literature a nation reads.

Recently I curated a project called Feinde, an Austrian themed Enemies project, which is all about collaboration and exchange between nations. In this case, supported by the immensely open minded and generous Austrian Cultural Forum in London, four contemporary Austrian poets came to London and collaborated, and performed, with British counterparts. In all we put on four major events in a week, heading up to European Literature Night in Edinburgh, via UNESCO City of Literature, to close out the programme.

A first difference, and a vital one. The Austrians poets, Ann Cotten, Jörg Piringer, Max Höfler and Esther Strauss, were all guests of the Austrian Cultural Forum, which isn’t just an organisation in name, but inhabits an incredible space, a building they have run for over fifty years in London. The value of this, in having a home, a locus for the project, in encouraging collaboration, and raising awareness of the iconoclastic post-war Austrian tradition of poetry is incalculable. I intend no vast conclusions here, but I know of few equivalents in London, and I know I have yet to stay in a British house in any other city outside the UK.

More importantly, and forgive my compression here, but the outstanding innovation, elasticity of methodology and range of practise the Austrian poets evidenced, while still being major figures in their nation, suggests a rather different tradition than here in the UK. It exists here, but it is not conducive to repute in the world of poetry. Why is this? Reasons are legion, but it is hard to look past what the two nations needed to face up to after 1945. Where contrarianism and a deep suspicion of language itself seemed necessary to a country who had think through its culpability, so tradition, fixedness and conservative methodology seemed apt to those who saw themselves wholly victorious or proper.

Still, now, 70 years on, my generation of poets, those encouraging consistent dialogue and collaboration across our continent, to build communities of writers and long lasting friendships in the creative act, must be aware and mindful of history, if they are not to repeat it, or be curtailed by it."

my first blog on Literaturhaus Europa

Really delighted to be part of this Europe wide enterprise, one whose concerns are so closely aligned to my own "The ELit Literaturehouse Europe establishes an observatory for European contemporary literature focusing chiefly on: research, discussion and publishing results concerning literary trends across Europe, as well as the inter-cultural communication of literature within Europe and the dissemination of literature among the diverse cultural spaces within Europe." 

As part of a regularly blog feature, edited by Walter Grond, literary practitioners from across Europe contribute short pieces for the organisation.. This is my first, and there should be a fair few over the next year or two http://www.literaturhauseuropa.eu/?p=3071 Thanks to European Literature Network, & Rosie Goldsmith & Anna Blasiak.

"....The fact is the tradition modes of ‘translated’ poetry are the bedrock of literature exchange across our nations, through festivals, readings and the tirelessness of translators, but this is no longer enough in a new age of easy travel and rapid communication technology. Beyond these rarefied remakings of literature across our continent’s languages, where some countries are open and some, more decidedly closed (I am looking to my own shores here …), there lies collaboration. New works, written over and under languages, in new forms, shapes and styles. Even if one rejected the aesthetic possibilities of collaboration for an artform not often associated with it, what cannot be denied is that collaboration succeeds in building human relationships that last. They create immediate dialogue, they bring communities of writers together and they build friendships. This, more than anything, is the aim of the Enemies project, a name for a project pioneering experimentation, innovation and collaboration, with its tongue firmly in its cheek, for what must we keep closer than our Enemies?...."

Euro Literature Network & discovering Peirene Press

I had an immense time visiting, and speaking, at the extraordinary Euro Lit network meeting at the Freeword centre, organised by Rosie Goldsmith this past week. Honestly feeling as though, in the best way possible, a lot of my curatorial activities are best served by a singular vision, where collaborations emanate from my approaches, this evening, the brilliance of the other organisers who attended and their generosity of spirit, made me think there is so much to gain from sharing resources and projects and ideas laterally, with those already well established in this field. Rosie Goldsmith is an immense centre to this activity, and I really feel great optimism to what seems the start of many friendships and relationships with people who represent presses, festivals, venues and so forth. http://eurolitnet.wordpress.com/

One of the most distinct, of a very many brilliant presses in attendance (those like Arc I have worked with before), was Peirene press and the work of Meike Ziervogel, whose own work is very interesting (http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/sep/30/not-booker-magda-meike-ziervogel), and who has published Hamid Ismailov amongst a many brilliant others http://www.peirenepress.com/ "Peirene Press is an award-winning boutique publishing house with an extra twist, based in London. We are committed to first class European literature in high quality translation. Our books are beautifully designed paperback editions, using only the best paper from sustainable British sources. Affordable, timeless collector items. And because literature - both reading and writing - can be a lonely affair, Peirene hosts a wide range of regular literary events, from informal coffee mornings to exciting literary salons and tailor-made, exclusive events."