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 : Revolve:R 3 available for pre-order

An opportunity to pre-order a copy of the Revolve:R, edition three publication. Edition three is the result of a multi-disiplinary collaboration (between artists from the UK, Europe, Africa, and the USA) over a two-year long duration and includes: 2D visual artworks, poetry, films, sound-art, and music.  /  Pre-orders of edition three will enable us to meet the publication costs and so are very much appreciated. To begin our funding campaign we are now offering a number of copies at a greatly discounted price (75% off). All pre-order backers of the project will be credited by name within the publication. 

Revolve:R, edition three includes: > 300+ 2D Visual Artworks > 15 Poems > 6 Films > 4 Soundscapes and 2 Songs / Pre-order Revolve:R, edition three  Here
Continuing from the thematic development of edition one and two - inspired by concepts of chance and synchronicity - in 2016 the curators sent an artwork to a number of artists with the invitation to respond with an artwork of their own by a set date. Once all these artworks were received a new work, both a synthesis, edit and reply to the collective works was produced and sent back to all participating artists. Within each Revolve:Rproject there are six such rounds (referred to as 'Revolves') of this process of communication, which effectively form six chapters within the edition.

For Revolve:R, edition three poets were invited to write poetry in response to the collective artworks of each of the six Revolves. These six poems were then forwarded to six artist-filmmakers who each made a short film in reply. Each  poem was also forwarded to another poet who in turn responded with a poem of their own. As well as the poets artists working with sound as well as musicians were also invited to create a soundscape, or song, inspired by the collective artworks of each of the six Revolves.

As a multidisciplinary site and source for experimentation and exchange, Revolve:R aims to support the artists involved through the publication and exhibition of their work. With a strong focus on collaborative practice, the project facilitates communications between national and international arts communities, transcending geographic and linguistic boundaries, and is intended as a vehicle for new and responsive artistic dialogue and interaction. Revolve:R, edition three is near completion and will be published in 2018.
Poem:11/15

The Instinct of Life is Trained Out of Memory When You're Tired

by Steven.J.Fowler.

The instinct of life is trained out of memory, for a moment.
Your flat earth we acknowledge as a series of visions, in two dimensions
that contain colour, shape, compositions under a guiding hand,
not like a poem in any visible sense.
Every point and place of this planet contains images like these,
in time, but not poems to match them, being out of time, their opposite.
Bone, rust, soil samples, sideways cities printed upon card.
They can be a votive for you, book owners, away from the adoration of dropbox.
Portals, twins - boxed images that confuse the rushing to our next meeting -
 hammers, those soil samples, writing visions as a competitive award.
 A black bin that appears a rose. But flatter than a black rose.
 What would be more hopeless than the claim that life itself
is to have survived long enough to have free time
that we do not need
to make books, images, objects and poems
that are less than the things they've been invented to oppose? 
Where sub-reality is more uniform,
more schedule, than actuality?
There is something in the bottom of this bucket worth reaching in to see.

Title of Bookwork: Revolve:R, edition three Publisher: Arrow Bookworks (in collaboration with a publishers - to be announced) Publishing date: 2018 Bookwork dimensions: 21.5 cm, 21.5 cm, 7 cm Number of pages: 360 (approx) Edition size: Limited edition (exact number to be decided) Media: Card, Cloth, 170 GSM paper (plus HD card) Pre-order price: 100.00 Retail price: 250.00 Contact:  revolve_@icloud.com Website:  www.revolve-r.com Pre-order Revolve:R, edition three:
> All pre-order backers will be credited by name within the publication (unless specifically asked not to be).
> Initial pre-order backers will receive the edition at a discounted price (75% off).
> Pre-order Revolve:R, edition three: Here

A note on: An Incident of Originality for BBC Radio 3's The Verb

A new commission on The Verb, for a programme exploring the notion of the fake, in poetry and beyond. I had the best time visiting the studios in Salford once again and the producers of the show, like Ian McMillan himself, are the nicest and most generous people. The other guests couldn't have been cooler to hang out with too. This show is really one of a kind in the UK, a must listen.

My text also features cameo contributions from brilliant poets and artists Maja Jantar, Zuzana Husarova and Prudence Chamberlain. You can read more about the piece here www.stevenjfowler.com/theverb and listen to it clicking the link above. For the full show, below. 

A note on: new BBC Radio 3's The Verb commission - An Incident of Originality

Very excited to appear on The Verb once again this week coming. Here is the page for the show : http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08n24fc

I've written a new piece about the concept of originality, authenticity and fake-ness for the show, as this is the theme. I'll be appearing alongside poet Ira Lightman, novelist Delphine de Vigan and comedian Mark Steel. 

The last commission I was lucky enough to do for The Verb, The Worm in its Core, actually began a whole new series of texts and so with this piece, An Incident of Originality, I've happily kept a certain aesthetic connection to this piece, which can be heard here https://soundcloud.com/sjfowler/theworminitscore 

The commission will be a collaboration too, with a small group of poets from across Europe whom I admire. I've asked them to contribute short bursts of new text, like a dialogue. My text is literary but quite computational too – abstract at times, using more common speech but also quite disembodied. I think modernist theatrical writing has been influence, as I’ve been writing more theatre – Pinter, Beckett, Churchill certainly. It is written for a kind of monologue delivery, addressing an abstract other.

It’s about the impossibility of originality, or something like that. It was in earlier drafts about literal thinking, how that is the root of nearly all ethical malignancy, on both sides of debate nowadays certainly – the false binary that drives the left and right, the death of complexity and ambiguity in discussion and often in poetry too, and how this is connected to the myth of the original poem / poet, and the traditional, formal, metaphysical and romantic notion of the poet as producing original work, as though they invented language itself.

But with further edits, its become more about me burying this commentary in strange tonal and conversational shifts, though it is still about authenticity being a fundamental acceptance of authenticity’s impossibility and the paradox at the heart of that. 

Listen in this coming Friday night! 10pm BBC Radio 3.

A note: my commission for The Verb on BBC Radio 3 - January 15th broadcast

A new page for my second appearance on The Verb, a brilliant, inspiring day at Media City in the company of Ian McMillan, Charles Fernyhough, Jennifer Hodgson and David Morley. 

www.stevenjfowler.com/theverb 

Amazing to be able to write this new piece of poetry, or theatre / performance as I see it, for The Verb and on such a wonderful topic and project. One of my favourite commissions I’d say.

"The Worm in its Core was commissioned as a new poem / performance by Radio 3's The Verb, hosted by Ian McMillan, for broadcast on January 15th 2016, in response to Hearing the Voice - a project which explores, and demystifies auditory verbal hallucinations. A great privilege to write something responding such a vital and intelligently conceived project, and to share it on The Verb, which has always maintained a laudable balance between all forms and modes of literature, bringing them where they belong, together, in brilliant conjunction."

A note on: upcoming in 2016

Thanks to everyone who has made 2015 so special, a few highlights, upcoming, for 2016

The final a World without Words event takes place January 9th at Apiary Studios featuring a host of neuroscientists and artists.

I'll be on BBC Radio 3's The Verb with a new commission responding to the Hearing the Voice project in January. 

Ovinir - The Enemies Project: Iceland, includes a big Camarade reading in Reykjavik where I'll be collaborating with Valgerður Þóroddsdóttir, supported by Reykjavik UNESCO city of literature. Then a reading in London, on January 30th, with over 30 poets, where I'll be presenting a new work with Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir

February sees a reading in Buenos Aires, hosted by El tercer lugar, curated by flavia pitella, thanks to the British Council.

The Soundings project will continue with 7 new collaborative performances including works with Tamarin Norwood (February), Sharon Gal (March), Patrick Coyle (April), Phil Minton (June), all responding to prompts from Wellcome Librarians.

I'll be attending the StAnza festival on the weekend of March 5th, speaking at an event on the body and poetry, responding to a film about bp nichol and leading a workshop / curating a Camarade collaborative event.

I'll be curating the English PEN Modern Literature Festival over one day on April 2nd, featuring 50 writers writing new works responding to some of PEN's writers at risk cases. Free to attend, but signing up for membership encouraged!

Very happy to be attending the Tbilisi International Festival of Literature in May 2016, thanks to the British Council, Writers Centre Norwich and the International Literature Fund, beginning a Georgian Enemies project: Mtrebi, which will return to the UK in July, where it'll visit the Ledbury Poetry Festival and the Rich Mix in London.

I'll be curating a Camarade for the Essex Book Festival on March Sunday 20th and I'll be curating further innovative Camarade events, including the University Camarade, on April 23rd, where students from five different creative writing departments (including my own at Kingston) create new collaborations across institutions.

Alongside both Croatian & British collaborators I'll be attending Vicenza's ArtBox reading series in May, curated by Marco Fazzini.

I'll be attending the Milosz Festival in Krakow in June, writing new collaborations with Polish poets / artists, thanks to UNESCO Krakow City of Literature, The British Council & co.

The Kakania project will return with readings in Berlin and London, from February to September 2016, all featuring new commissions of poets and artists responding to figures from Habsburg Vienna.

I'm happy to be part of the ambitious CROWD project, which crosses Europe next summer, travelling from Finland to Cyprus, over many months, with lots of interchanging poets on a bus. I'm doing Graz to Belgrade in June 2016.

Lots more publications, events and projects to be announced next year.

Gorse: issue 3 with Ailbhe Darcy

I'm really very privileged to have had poetry in the first three issues of Gorse, one of the most beautifully and professional, and groundbreaking, literary journals of the 21st century in Europe, edited so scrupulously by Susan Tomaselli. http://gorse.ie/

This time it is a collaboration in the magazine, with Ailbhe Darcy. We began writing for the Yes But Are We Enemies tour last September 2014, and our Subcritical Tests have become something special to me, in that they are the most concentrated example of a collaboration in poetry living and breathing through a profound friendship. Meeting Ailbhe and having the great fortune to now call her a friend was the boon of that project and through our writing together I feel we will long be close. So grand the result of all this is in a place that is its equal.

3 poems in the Honest Ulsterman

Very proud indeed to have work in the first issue of the relaunched Honest Ulsterman. The magazine was a powerful entity once, began in 1968 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Honest_Ulsterman publishing some recent greats, and has been reawoken by the remarkable writer, essayist and literary monster that is Darran Anderson. If anyone can remake it as a wholly original but equally important entity, it is he. http://www.humag.co/poetry/three-poems-by-sj-fowler With Gorse, the Bohemyth and many other things happening out of Ireland, it is a fine time to announce a massive Enemies project thing there, which Ill do soon.

Incidents of Anti-Semitism

#104
if privileged presents where contact divine
mediated through a son, then privileges past
expressed in the covenant with a father on isles
a fact about oneself that cannot be changed
it can either be acknowledged or denied
one can live neither path changes the fact
one can be despite oneself, the event in petition to which
is not the eternal presence rather the acknowledgement
of a fact about the past, of one is bound whether one likes or not.

Less Than Three poetry reading- March 18th

Very pleased to be introducing this event, to be involved at all, on March 18th. It's an admirable beginning for a new reading series which has it's roots in a collaborative venture between many worthy endeavours / poets. 3AM press is the really admirable publishing foray that has shot out of the magazine whose poetry I am happy to wrangle, pioneered by Christiana Spens, a great novelist in her own right, and Susan Tomaselli, who is responsible for Gorse amongst other things. The Quietus, hugely established in terms of musicology, has shot out into contemporary poetry under Karl Thomas Smith, with a gentle crush, kindly publishing some of my work recently. And Alex MacDonald and Francine Elena are both poets peers whose work I actively follow and have had the pleasure of hosting at events and in 3am magazine past and present. Both extraordinary nice people too. Which does make a difference in the world. Come along, it's 2 quid.

Silk & Thomas Duggan

This is the most groundbreaking collaboration I've ever been involved with, and one of the highlights of my career as a writer. All thanks to the remarkable artist, Thomas Duggan, who has been a friend of mine for nearly twenty years now. What he has gone on to achieve professionally is really no shock to me, he was always ahead in his thinking, and somehow he has managed to turn his powerful mode of thought and aesthetic engagement under really strict and challenging, self-imposed, expectations of quality and validity into a vocational life practice that benefits not just himself, not just his peers, not just those who might attend a gallery, or handle an object, but our entire understanding of materiality and form and presence and environment and permanence. It's breathtaking. I feel privileged to have reconnected with Thomas in such a fashion, our artforms fusing, coming together, like our corporality, after so long, into a palpable thing which has a life and legacy all of it's own.

 He has printed a poem of mine in silk – silk fibroin, entirely biocompatible and biodegradable and programmed to disappear, when required, without leaving any trace – it is three dimensional poetry in a revolutionary new material developed using the very latest design technology, that has the potential to realise new environmentally sustainable modes of substance - material never seen in public before. It is actually a world first. Hard to say how much that means to me. The poems were written for Thomas and his work, and now seem a feeble gift in the light of what he has given back to me.

 Come and see the piece on July 6th, at the Hardy Tree gallery in St Pancras London. http://hardytreegallery.com/

BBC Radio 3 - the Verb

A really gratifying experience to be on the Verb, talking about my new commission for the Electronic Voice Phenomena tour http://www.electronicvoicephenomena.net/. Ian McMillan was immensely friendly and generous, as he has a wide reputation for being, the other guests were charming and erudite and the producers were amazing in their knowledge and affability. They really invested time into my work, into researching it, and making the actual experience of being in the studio, in the booth, really relaxed and enjoyable. And actually travelling to Salford, to the media city, was an experience interesting enough that I could write an essay on that itself, if I had the energy. I decided to read a manifesto poem and a sound poem. I tried also to be calm in the reading, which I am normally not, because it was radio and didn't want to screech down the airwaves. People have been nice about the show, but in retrospect I wish I had been a little more bold. Oh well. Amazing to be on the bbc.

 The show was broadcast live on Friday May 3rd, at 10pm, and is now downloadable, and listenable until May 10th. Once gone its gone, so please visit to listen or store away for later. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s35n4


This week Ian's guests are Rebecca Solnit with her new book 'The Faraway Nearby', SJ Fowler, with a piece connecting Electronic Voice Phenomena and Dada, Richard Williams discusses sex and buildings and Rozi Plain performs from her album 'Joined Sometimes Unjoined
Follow The Verb on Twitter: @R3TheVerb.