A note on : European Poetry Festival begins in 10 days, with Swiss then Norwegian poets!

EUROPEAN POETRY FESTIVAL : SWITZERLAND
November Saturday 20th at Rich Mix, London
www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/swiss

7pm doors / Free Entrance : EPF 2021 begins with an event centered around visiting contemporary Swiss poets presenting brand new performance collaborations with British-based counterparts, made for the night, at one of East London’s most iconic poetry venues. With Baptiste Gaillard & Vik Shirley / Rolf Hermann and Joe Dunthorne / Clea Chopard & SJ Fowler / Ghazal Mosadeq and Simona Nastac / Mikael Buck and Michael O’Mahony / Vanessa Onwuemezi and Martin Wakefield / Ana Seferovic and Konstantinos Papacharalampos & more. Supported by Pro Helvetia.

EUROPEAN POETRY FESTIVAL : NORWAY
November tuesday 23rd at Open Ealing, London
www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/norway

7pm doors / Free Entrance : EPF 2021 continues with a celebration of contemporary Norwegian poetry, in collaboration. New performance poems made in tandem for this event will be presented across styles and languages. With Endre Ruset & Harry Man / Bjørn Vatne & Richard Marshall / Jon Ståle Ritland & JT Welsch / Maren Nygård & Susie Campbell / Silje Ree & Maria Celina Val / Tamar Yoseloff & Alison Gill / Chris Kerr & Virna Teixeira. Supported by The Norwegian Embassy UK and NORLA. The event will also serve as a launch for Utøya Thereafter : Poems in Memory of the 2011 Norway Attacks by Harry Man and Endre Ruset available from Hercules Editions

A note on: having a lamb named after me

Some achievements are the stuff of eulogies, and this may indeed sneek into my deathwords, along with ‘definitely not sleeping, we checked’. A lamb has been named after me on a farm on the west coast of Norway. How? well Hilde Myklebust, whom I met on a reading in Alesund back in 2019, who became a friend in correspondence, and whom I interviewed online for my festival in 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFiv-eG-_-8 has named two of her new lambs after me, as she promised in the interview. She kept her lamby promise. She said ‘Steve is directly from your name, but with norwegian pronunciation. The norwegian verb " å steve", is an perticular way of singing or performing an old type of poem called stev.’ Is this news? Yes, yes it is. Look upon my lambs and rejoice.

EPF Digital #7 - Three Norwegian Poets

Really some of favourite interviews I’ve conducted, with my friend and collaborator Bard, and the amazing Hilde, below, who will name two lambs after me. Worth a listen to all three pieces here, they are all very interesting, I think anyway.

EPF Digital 2020 presents two remarkable new long-form video-interviews with poets from Norway - Hilde Myklebust, discussing the darkness of nature from her remote farm and Bård Torgersen, chatting about transgression and ritual, amongst many other things! Plus a brand new video-poem commission by Norwegian writer Bjørn Vatne, a musical collaboration with artificial intelligence. More on their work can be found www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/norway

Supported by NORLA - Norwegian Literature Abroad and The Norwegian Embassy in the UK.

A note on: Bjørnson Festival, Molde and Bergen Bibliotek: Norway

An eclectic and frequently glorious tour of Western Norway in the late summer of 2017 saw me fortunate to travel with friends and poets Endre Ruset, who was responsible for the venture, and Harry Man. After flying to Bergen and reading in the cities Bibliotek, thanks to the brilliant poet Erland Nødtvedt, I read at the Bjørnson festival in Molde, celebrating the work of Arne Ruset. A chance to further my relationship with contemporary Norwegian poetry, which began in 2010, and more than that, share some extraordinary fjords, mountains, seas and times with great folk.

Bergen is famed for its rainfall, but we were fortunate, flying in from London, to have a day to acclimatise in beautiful sunshine, and I was able to roam all over the city, across the university campus, the old docks and up into the hills around the harbour. The first time I had spent time in Bergen since 2002, when I lived in Oslo for many months for a very different reason than poetry. Endre travelled to meet Harry and I from that city, overnight, after a translation deadline encroached on his always intense schedule. That made all three of us pretty much sleepless, which was a theme for the trip, and added the often creative, underwater quality to the journey. We then linked up with local poet Kristian Heggernes, a really fine poet, and prepared our reading, which would see us present new collaborations in revolving pairs, in a sort of miniaturised Enemies project. The Bergen library is so beautiful, and we were so well treated, spirited out of the rain after a guided tour of the city, that the experience felt more personal, more intimate than a normal reading....

Read the full travelogue here http://www.stevenjfowler.com/norway

A note on: The European Camarade & collaborating with Endre Ruset

All but 2 pairs had never met each other before the night itself. From the 18 poets participating, travelling in from 12 nations across the continent, virtually none had established friendships. Yet, by the end of the night, a night that went on long after I went home, it was clear that a community had been made and relationships which would last years had begun. I can't emphasise enough how the collaborative creative act and the diffusion of energy away from the singular, representative, pre-written poetry, creates closeness and community and energy and openness. Quite amazing to witness on this night, almost the perfect evidence for what I spend quite a lot of my time talking about, theorising behind the Enemies project. The most gratifying thing was the poets themselves feeling they had had a generous and memorable experience, one where they were treated with hospitality and due respect. For me it was a great privilege to see so many friends,  Christodoulos Makris, Gabriele Labanauskaite, Christoph Szalay, Valgerður Þóroddsdóttir, Ville Hytonen and co, whom I had only known before in their countries, or during a festival. And to meet so many new poets. Every collaboration was distinct and dynamic in it's own way and many remarked it was the best Camarade they'd been to. All the videos are here: http://www.theenemiesproject.com/europeancamarade

And working with Endre Ruset, a friend for many years now, was wonderful. We had written a poem with ascending lines corresponding to the Fibonacci sequence, and then planted lines with other poets in the audience, so as our collaboration grew in number, so the number of voices would multiply too, and become intermittently choral. 

It capped a great run for me with events and performances, each one has been a special experience and motivating to keep on, keep curating and creating together. And keep travelling, extending reach and asking poets from all over the world to visit us in London.

Norway & from last year, reading with Endre Ruset

I met some interesting Norwegians recently, poets and otherwise, got me thinking about this reading last year, which I was very proud of. Not just because I like Endre, respect him too, and that we share some similarities in our lives, but because I lived in Norway before I went to university, lived in Oslo, and the people there took care of me when I needed it, over nearly a year all told, in between less gentle travels. Norway will always be a lofty place in my mind. When Utoeya happened it hit me, and when then I found myself reading this with Endre, it stayed with me. Endre and I wrote together for a bit, but it fizzled. Next year, maybe, another Norwegian poetry thing, we'll see...