https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/lithuania EPF Digital 2020 presents presents new long-form video-interviews with poets from Lithuania, featuring Rimas Uzgiris, Dovilė Bagdonaitė and Aušra Kaziliūnaitė. View the full EPF 2020 online program here europeanpoetryfestival.com/2020
Supported by Lithuanian Cultural Institute and featured as part of the Maintenant series at 3am magazine.
I’ve decided to make the latest European Poetry Festival interviews, a big part of EPF 2020 digital, part of the Maintenant series, which I ran to 101 editions from 2010 to around 2012. This means the interviews go up on 3am magazine, which originally supported the series. For the history of Maintenant, please visit www.stevenjfowler.com/maintenant
To see the latest Maintenant interviews https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/index/poetry/maintenant/
Excerpts of three books of mine, from BEASTINGS, I WILL SHOW YOU THE LIFE OF THE MIND (ON PRESCRIPTION DRUGS) & THE GREAT APES, have been remixed and mashed and edited by Diamanda Dramm for her new solo show, Subverse. Hotel magazine, edited by Dominic Jaeckle, have published the parts of the texts used alongside a video of Diamanda performing. https://partisanhotel.co.uk/Dramm This clip below is from my book The Great Apes, which is due from Pamenar press in 2021!
you know that life for a minute?
let’s pretend. we’re in the jungle.
the jungle, where ugly finds itself.
but you get used to it, because it is you, that smell
worried about things you can’t change
and while you were worried about your mother’s drinking
and what kind of poetry is going on, and AI
it was chimp who landed on your shoulders
and stuck his middle fingers into your ears
like a medieval helmet covered in oliver oil
and made two fists and ripped your ears off down
and as your hands came up to cup your lost ears
chimp grabbed your fingers in a flower bunch
like it was the brakes on your fancy city bicycle for the green future
and squished them together with strength you didn’t know
and then broke them back against themselves
and tried to pull them off
and partially succeeded
and put some of them in Chimp mouth
and chewed
and looked around and looked at you and waited and couldn’t tell
what species you were even ?
Four talking heads. Three Hungarians. One vacuum cleaner.
They are poets, they are miserable, and they are cut off from the world. United by sardonic pride, they come together to represent their country and wage war on the dust bunnies of the mind in this poetic deepdive. A daring poetry film, The Hungarian Vacuum is part gripping mystery, part arthouse project, part literary podcast, part poetry reading, and part utter failure. You will have questions, but you’re not likely to get any answers.
Supported by Hungarian Cultural Centre, London. A film by, and starring, Steven J Fowler, Kornelia Deres, Kinga Toth, Peter Zavada. Music by Benedict Taylor. Edited by Botond Bartha. https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/hungaryfilm
A film as part of the European Poetry Festival Digital program. With no physical events in 2020, EPF digital reveals what can be created without proximity, generating new insights into poetic practice in continental Europe and creating ambitious film-poetry collaborations especially for this two week e-fest.
The longest period in a decade where I haven’t organised an event. I didn’t miss it really, too obvious the wider context of why. But it was still fun to do an event, the day after the winter lockdown ended in the UK. It was for www.writerskingston.com which im lucky to direct. It was celebrating Alban Low and his Sampson Low Publishing house. We were in the Quakers Centre in Kingston, in a circular theatre, where the Quakers devolve hierarchy by sitting in the round. There were 18 of us, 7 readers. I felt nerves, I felt social awkwardness. I felt the feeling of thinking 8 things at once, performing and organising. I felt the strange minor elation afterward. https://www.writerskingston.com/sampsonlowcelebration/
From a lonely London a figure calls out for the lost poets and three Swedes will answer, each in their own way, with poetic precision and desolate northern sensibilities. The Swedish Beest is less than a cry for help and more than a poetry film; it is a documentary of those who are not there, a gathering of readings out of time and place.
Supported by supported by The Embassy of Sweden, London. A film by Steven J Fowler. Starring Aase Berg, Jonas Gren and Ida Börjel. Music by Benedict Taylor. Photography by David Spittle. www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/swedenfilm
A film as part of the European Poetry Festival Digital program. With no physical events in 2020, EPF digital reveals what can be created without proximity, generating new insights into poetic practice in continental Europe and creating ambitious film-poetry collaborations especially for this two week e-fest.
This Thursday, December 3rd 2020, will see the 13th edition of the Sampson Low Writers Kingston Student Pamphlet series. It’s supported by Kingston University and its designed to evidence the remarkable contemporary and innovative poetry being written by current and recent Kingston University Creative Writing students, with beautifully designed pamphlets each featuring a suite of poems, most often on one theme or in one style, by a solo author. https://www.writerskingston.com/sampsonlow
Low key, it’s one of my favourite editorial projects. I get to work with poets early on in their writing, support them in their own originality, and the results have been amazing. It’s perhaps not had the recognition outside of the university and community around Writers Kingston that it deserves, with 12 debuts out of 13 pamphlets, 12 young women too, all so so high level in their quality, production and conception. The work standard is so high, and the 13th issue is remarkable. Maria Celina Val is an artist + poet + architect and her ‘children draw fivefold stars’ is really such a unique book of visual poetry. I mean, it’s quality is way beyond me, the design, the care, the samples above show. Please buy it here https://sampsonlow.co/2020/11/23/children-draw-fivefold-stars-maria-celina-val/
I have to thank Sara Upstone and many others at Kingston Uni who support this project, my idea, and it also has to be said that Alban Low is a gem. A rare thing. So generous, consistent, reliable, professional, insightful. I’m not being hyperbolic. That’s why we have an event celebrating his press this thursday, for the launch, please come by https://www.writerskingston.com/sampsonlowcelebration/
EPF Digital 2020 presents presents new long-form video-interviews with poets from Latvia, featuring Inga Pizāne, Krišjānis Zeļģis, Marija Luīze Meļķe and Lote Vilma Vītiņa. More on their work can be found www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/latvia
Supported by Platform Latvian Literature / EPF Digital is an eight part online festival, presenting long-form video interviews and entirely original poetry films. Unable, finally, to take place in the flesh this year, the festival will present poets from Switzerland, Austria, Latvia, Sweden, Hungary, Lithuania and more, leaning in to what can be created without proximity, generating new insights into poetic practice in continental Europe and creating ambitious film-poetry collaborations especially for this two week e-fest. www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/2020
Realistically, I conceived of this maybe a month ago. We shot it a couple of weeks ego. It’s a pure furious burst of work. A real collaboration, with David, Max, Franziska, Robert. The Austrian Cultural Forum are amazing people to work with. At times, a lot of work, but now out, already worth it. This is what I wanted to do if we are online. Not a simulacra, a new piece of work. A friend wrote to me, in response to the film, ‘you’ve squeezed the blood from the stone of online events’ and I replied ‘we tried to make a new stone.’
Supported by Austrian Cultural Forum, London. A film by David Spittle. Written & conceived by Steven J. Fowler. Starring Franziska Füchsl, Max Höfler, Robert Prosser, SJ Fowler. Director of Photography and Editor : David Spittle. Music by Benedict Taylor. www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/austriafilm
An empty house and the people who should have been there.
As three Austrian poets come to terms with the prisons of the now and their host is forced to confront their absence, Where Are You Austria documents their poetic descent into madness. What follows is as uncanny as it is unlikely, and, ultimately, inevitable. An epic poetry film about the consequences of that which does not happen, the intimacy of isolation, metal work and Erwin Schrödinger.
A film as part of the European Poetry Festival Digital program. With no physical events in 2020, EPF digital reveals what can be created without proximity, generating new insights into poetic practice in continental Europe and creating ambitious film-poetry collaborations especially for this two week e-fest.
Tim Gaze, brilliant sound and asemic poet (he co invented the term asemic in fact) over in australia, runs a cool sound poetry radio show! its called sound poetry etc.., well worth a listen in.
the issue - focusing on anglophone sound poets - has so many brilliant noises. Cobbing, Claire and more, and me, towards the end with my sound poem IROQUOIS https://archive.org/details/sound-poetry-etc-episode-8
EPF Digital begins! After two cancellations, I’m happy that I bit the bullet and decided to lean into some proper online content. Masses to come, 9 interviews, 3 films, and more. This opening is just the beginning of stuff coming out over the next two weeks…
An eight part online festival, presenting long-form video interviews and entirely original poetry films. Unable, finally, to take place in the flesh this year, the festival will present poets from Switzerland, Austria, Latvia, Sweden, Hungary, Lithuania and more, leaning in to what can be created without proximity, generating new insights into poetic practice in continental Europe and creating ambitious film-poetry collaborations especially for this two week e-fest. / The full program is available to view www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/2020 and the 'events' will be released via this newsletter and online every few days November 23rd to December 10th. To begin, we are very happy to present three new long-form video-interviews with Swiss poets to kick off EPF Digital 2020. More on the work of Laura Accerboni, Rolf Hermann and Linn Molineaux is available at www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/swiss with videos below and on YouTube. These interviews are supported by Pro Helvetia and are part of the Maintenant series at 3am magazine.
A kind of video podcast to celebrate the launch of my THE SELECTED SCRIBBLING AND SCRAWLING OF SJ FOWLER (available here, please buy it and support Zimzalla as a great UK press). We did it in place of a launch, perhaps, but it became something else - an unplanned 90 minute chat. I admire Tom, he’s an influence on me, a long time collaborator, and the publisher of this book. This chat made me realise I had known Tom for 10 years, and a lot of people have written to me when they’ve listened to it with warm words. Maybe because Tom and I are friends, and we used the conversation to explore ideas without being too serious or technical, and we covered our whole journey with poetry, in a way. I enjoyed doing it anyway.
Rob Mclennan asked me to put together a small bevy of 8 poets working in and of engerland and I did and he published their work, glimpses of it. The 8 poets are listed below, with links, so you can click on their names and see the work, and here is my intro too, and the link to while feature https://periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2020/11/sj-fowler-small-folio-of-poets-engerland.html
Years in the making, The Selected Scribbling and Scrawling of SJ Fowler (me) is now available from Zimzalla. zimzalla.co.uk/051-sj-fowler-scribbling-and-scrawling-2nd-edition/
From the publisher - The Selected Scribbling and Scrawling of SJ Fowler is an assembly of hand-drawn, instinctive visual poems from beyond the ragged edge of language. Arguably the most comprehensive book of asemic poetry ever published in the UK, this sizeable revamped new edition includes images of live asemic performances alongside over 100 visual poems divided, and introduced, in chapters. Asemic neurons butt up against poetic constellations, portraits and diagrams. The volume is bookended with new articles on the asemic endeavours of SJ Fowler from David MacLagan, Tim Gaze, Michael Jacobsen and David Spittle, plus a written interview between Fowler and Zimzalla editor Tom Jenks. Click here for a sample.
Click here to buy for £11.99 in the UK.
I'm happy to announce the release of my latest visual poetry book, collecting the vast majority of my asemic writing in one beautifully produced volume. I had the best time working on this, developing the first edition, working with Tom Jenks. It means the world to me too that the volume is full of brilliant reflections on my scribbles by such luminaries in the asemic world - David Maclagan, Tim Gaze, Michael Jacobsen, they all influenced me a lot, and the long critical piece by David Spittle is brilliant. I spent all summer tinkering, theorising around these abstract writings, really working hard on my intros to each section, and this book is the result, a true consolidation of my travails into asemia
I had a really grand time working with editor Alice Willitts on a feature for the latest, collaboration themed, edition of Magma magazine. We spoke quite a few times over many months, sharing ideas, and Alice really put her heart into this issue and I’ve a lot of admiration for her approach.
In the end, the issue features a large interview we did, discussing many things, including my selected collaborations NEMESES and my film THE ANIMAL DRUMS, all available to read online https://magmapoetry.com/archive/magma-78/articles/interview-with-sj-fowler/
The print issue also has a selection of my visual collaborative works, so worth getting a physical copy. The magazine has some brilliant poets in there, really an extraordinary list, including works I had the pleasure to commission, like Christodoulos Makris and Pierre Alferi, alongside many of those I admire https://magmapoetry.com/archive/magma-78/
Very cool to have four poems from my book I WILL SHOW THE LIFE OF THE MIND (ON PRESCRIPTION DRUGS) published on Mercurius, a journal brilliantly edited by Thomas Helm here free and out like nowt. Please have a peek www.mercurius.one/home/i-will-show-you-the-life-of-the-mind-on-prescription-drugs
These are four special texts, or rather excerpts (as the book is a poetic conceptual choose-your-own-adventure narrative with all text intermingled somewhat), as they include the book’s opening gambit, describing the human brain.
My friend and collaborator Tereza Stehlikova has started a new journal online, entitled Tangible Territory “a platform that offers a space for various voices to meet and discuss themes relating to the role of the body, the importance of place and embodied experience, in giving meaning to our every day experience of life and art.” For the first issue, which rather extraordinarily includes Jan Švankmajer and Gabriel Josipovici amongst others, a genuine conglomeration of unique artists, I wrote a small piece on London and walking https://tangibleterritory.art/journal/issue1/s-j-fowler-experiences-of-necessity/
“My exploration of London is a sacrosanct subject I do not normally write about. This is because it is for the future, or because it is not a material to make things out of, but a thing I just do. I’m likely better to write about it when I have left London, if I do that upright.
What I do know is that I’d rather walk than write, which is why I have yet to complete longer works of fiction or non-fiction. I am literally out walking instead. I know how to walk from anywhere north of the river to anywhere else north of the river within the bounds of say, zone four, without the aid of a map. Mapless I wander, impressing friends and loved ones with my ability to end up where I had intended to.
But I also do not write about my London because I have often noticed, and recoiled, at those professional artists who turn everything they like into work, without fear of the thing being despoiled, or it being uninteresting to others. I shan’t write about it here. Simply to say, I walked a great deal during the lockdown of 2020. I keep a pedometer because I find in it a curious companion and across London I would average forty miles a week.”….
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 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.
Babel Between Us has been one of the most ambitious collaborative writing projects ever made, without a doubt. It’s an immense project, massive. I’ve been writing stories and texts with over a dozen writers around the world, kind of anonymously, for a great part of 2020. Now it is over. It’s strange to me I’ve not written more about it on my site or blog, but because the because includes so much anthropological analysis and itself feels like a kind of commentary, somehow, creatively that felt redundant to me. / If you want to have a look at the project in general, do have a butchers at https://bbu.world/ and all my posts, starting fiction and interrupting it, is https://bbu.world/u/werebear/activity with some screenshots below.
I had such a lovely time being part of The Beijing October Literary Festival online recently. I had the pleasure to visit and read in Beijing in 2016 and made friends there who remain correspondees to this day and so this was, for me, a reconnection. The online festival has two themes - the city and tradition with modernity. I gave a talk on London, on its relationship to my writing, reflecting on how physical space, proximity, alters the reality of the writer, and how the modern city demands a modern literature, that looks forward, future facing, rather than looks to history for writing. History is for history. It seems to go down well, which was gratifying, but for me, the other speakers were exceptional and this was arguably the best online event I’ve done. It was especially cool to watch the Chinese poets and writers talk about Beijing and the modern Chinese megacity. It was a frank and playful conversation at times.
