New course : The Writing Eye

EXPLORING PHOTOPOETRY & FILMPOETRY

An online course. Begins May 2nd 2021, running for 7 weeks.
All information and booking here www.poembrut.com/courses

The potential of image and text is an endless field of creative exploration. Yet, despite the ubiquitous access we have to cameras, it remains underexplored and underappreciated as its own medium. This course traces the history of photopoetry and filmpoetry and draws it into the 21st century, rooted in making over theory, method over all else - it aims to provoke questions while exploring examples from a variety of fields - from conceptual art to surrealism, collage to concrete poetry, from modernism to collaborative practice.

We ask what makes up the essence of photography, film and poetry, and how might they interact to move beyond traditions in both fields, as something new, a true photopoetry or filmpoetry? We ask what is hybridity, truly, and simultaneity, and photoliteracy, and illustration? What is a poem in time, on film? How has the technology needed for the cinema and video evolved what a poem might be? What is the line between documentation and artwork?

Poet-photographer-filmmakers featured on the course will range from the historical to the contemporary, from canonical modern figures to "outsider" artists, from Laszlo Moholy-Nagy to Barbara Kruger, Francesca Woodman to August Strindberg, Peter Greenaway to Hamish Fulton, Blaise Cendrars to Martha Rosler, Susan Hiller to Yamamoto Kansuke, Paul Muldoon / Norman McBeath to Paul Eluard / Man Ray.

A note on: teaching at Kingston University

As a lecturer in the Creative Writing department at Kingston University since late 2014 I've the chance to not only share more Avant-Garde, modernist and global writing philosophies, techniques and concepts at an institutional level, but also to help encourage young writers, poets and artists to engage in public events and experiment with their work early in their development. This is hugely important to me and a massive privilege. Moreover Kingston has the most diverse student body of any University in the UK and is a really supportive place to be. 

Long overdue I've created a webpage where videos from students reading at my Enemies project events can be seen with more info on what I teach. http://www.stevenjfowler.com/kingstonuniversity

A note on: Teaching Greco-Roman Wrestling for the Midnight run with the Almeida Theatre

Lovely to be a part of the Midnight run thanks to Kit Caless, teaching a session on Greco-Roman wrestling on the curated 12 hour walk through London, with lots of interesting activities featured in. Inua Ellams founded the project, and the whole thing was really well measured and a grandly positive experience. These beautiful pictures are courtesy of Katie Garrett.

Maintenant! a course for the Poetry School

I'm delighted to announce that in 2014 I will be teaching a course for the Poetry School http://www.poetryschool.com called Maintenant! exploring post-war & contemporary European avant-garde poetry.

It's a bi-weekly course, five lessons over ten weeks, aiming to elucidate traditions that might be occluded in the UK, and explore how their innovations in writing can compliment people's poetry in the now. The onus is on how these great moments in modern poetry can enrich writing practise, rather than dense historical analysis. It’s a rare chance to excavate avant garde work in such a setting, please sign up below if interested & in London.

http://www.poetryschool.com/courses-workshops/face-to-face/maintenant.php

The course will take place at the Poetry School London office, 79-83 Lambeth Walk. 2 hour lessons – 6.45pm to 8.45pm

Week One: January tuesday 28^th – Oulipo

Georges Perec, Jacques Roubeau, Raymond Queneau up to Frederic Forte and British Oulippeans like Philip Terry. The constraints that emancipate.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo

Week Two: February tuesday 11^th – Austrian postwar modernism

Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, Elfriede Jelinek. How to deal with the legacy of Fascism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Handke

Week Three: February tuesday 25^th - Concrete poetry

Hansjörg Mayer, Bob Cobbing, The Vienna Group, Oyvind Fahlstrom, Marton Koppany up to Anatol Knotek. The visuality of the poem as its meaninghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_poetry

Week Four: tuesday March 11^th - CoBrA

Asger Jorn, Christian Dotremont, Pierre Alechinsky. Dutch, Danish, Belgian & beyond, poetry as art revolt & primitivism.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBRA_(avant-garde_movement)

Week Five: March tuesday 25^th - British Poetry Revival

Tom Raworth, Bill Griffiths, Maggie O’Sullivan & many many more. Those every British poet should know, our immense late 20^th century Vanguard heritage.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_poetry_revival

& near the end of the course, on March 15th 2014, at the Rich Mix arts centre, the students will get a chance to read some of the work they've produced during Enemies: Fjender, which explores contemporary Danish avant garde poetry in collaboration, with Cia Rinne, Martin Glaz Serup and Morten Sondergaard, who will also be exhibiting his remarkable Wordpharmacy http://www.wordpharmacy.com

You can download the entire Poetry School London programme here: http://www.poetryschool.com/resources/ps-brochurespring14-printerfriendly-3.pdf

& here is the interview series that inspired the course http://www.maintenant.co.uk/ all 97 editions so far.