Small Publisher's Fair, Bibliopoe

Without hyperbole, one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done. So much to write about this I’ll be coming back to it later. Succinctly put, having almost everything I’ve published out in the cases of the Small Publisher’s Fair did give me pause. Whether it would appear egotistical, and whether I would deflated. The generosity of people, that comes from the culture of this fair - the curation of Helen Mitchell and the team, and the melding of poets, fine presses, indie publishers all together - was such that it really felt like a moment of real recognition. I had so many friends helping me with my book table too, over a dozen, and sold a lot of books. And I got to see so many friends, and make new ones too. Going 11am to 7pm two days in a row, I thought it’d be exhausting, but it wasn’t in the end. It was the opposite. And amidst it, my novella flew out into people’s hands, and I gave two readings, and had a lot of fun. I have a great debt of gratitude to the many who made this so special for me. Some pics below and more soon on it.

A note on : Poem Brut in Kingston, collaborating with Nick Roth

An amazing night in Kingston and the return of Poem Brut. https://www.writerskingston.com/poembrut22/

A jam packed evening with over twenty poets sharing new performance right across the literary gammut. So much good will, and properly exciting work, and a really big audience.

I had the chance to work with Nick Roth again, who had flown in for this from Dublin. He is an amazing artist and musician, and conceptually so unpretentious but resonant. We are really trying to get to what is possible in improvisation when the instrument is a voice and the voice is an instrument.


A note on : Kamen's Lens, collaborating with Rebecca Kamen

I have had the great privilege to collaborate with the artist Rebecca Kamen since we met at Salzburg Global in 2015. Her pioneering work exploring high concept scientific ideas and her own neurological experiences have allowed me a way in to my own explorations of neuropoetics. Our work together, for me, methodogically, is probably the purest form of found text writing I do. I take her words and rearrange them.

Our latest collaboration is for her exhibition https://gershoni.com/culture/dyslexic-dictionary Dyslexic Dictionary in San Francisco. You can watch the video here, or visit this page which has some wonderful information on Rebecca’s work https://gershoni.com/artist/rebecca-kamen

Launching MUEUM at Waterstones

The third MUEUM launch and a really lovely evening with friends and students and colleagues at Waterstones, Kingston, hosted by Katerina Koulouri. The pictures below and at the link show what kind of night it was. My performance was improvised.

Everyone performed remarkably well and many were very kind in their comments about me book. All videos here https://www.writerskingston.com/museum/ and novella here https://tenementpress.com/M-U-E-U-M

and the amazing Alban Low did sketches of the poets live, all here http://artofjazz.blogspot.com/2022/10/sj-fowler-mueum-launch.html

Onion Boys at Hundred Years Gallery

A brilliant Sunday evening, October 9th 2022, my debut at Hundred Years Gallery (who couldn’t have been nicer and more welcoming to my specific kind of work) and the first performance of the Onion Boys - which is just musician Benedict Taylor and I, as a duo, exploring talking and playing at the same time, with complete non-preparation. For my own part, I brought my collection the goodness gang, who are veg and fruit with faces. It was a nice time. We did 36 minutes but only 12 was filmed, here >^

Launching MUEUM at Brick Lane Books

A night I’ll not forget. Made special not only for it being the first fiction I’ve had out, launched in such a resonant way at such a staple of a bookshop, and with peers I admire so. But also because the night felt like it was about lineage, or something like that. Brian Catling had passed away in the days before, and Iain Sinclair, who has been so so supportive of me was his dear friend. Iain spoke of him, and with Stephen Watts also in the audience, I felt very much a fortunate person to be aligned with their work and concerns, in this book MUEUM, and in general.

Tenement press has crafted a film of the readings, from Chris McCabe, Iain Sinclair, Chloe Aridjis and I here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXDljjgonug

MUEUM audiobook on Resonance and interview with Eley Williams

Resonance Extra will broadcast my novella MUEUM tomorrow Saturday October 1st at 1pm as an audio book. extra.resonance.fm/episodes/tenement-press-presents-sj-fowler-s-mueum-i-of-iv-2022-10-01 It is the first of four parts, recorded in their studio chapel in South London, with parts 2, 3, 4 broadcast on November 5th, December 3rd and January 7th respectively.

The novella and all information on these broadcasts, here https://tenementpress.com/m-u-e-u-m

In addition to the novella's launch at Brick Lane Books on Wednesday October 5th, https://bricklanebookshop.org/events/#mueum, there will be additional launches.

Thursday October 13th, 7pm,. at Waterstones, Kingston Upon Thames https://www.waterstones.com/events/an-evening-at-the-museum-meet-sj-fowler-author-of-mueum-and-writers-kingston/kingston-upon-thames

And Sunday afternoon October 9th, 4pm, with Benedict Taylor, at Hundred Years Gallery http://hundredyearsgallery.co.uk/music-the-onion-boys/

And also a video of a chat between the amazing Eley Williams and I, about MUEUM

Bibliopoe at Small Publisher Fair

I'm really pleased to have the exhibition at the Small Publishers Fair this year - October 28th and 29th 2022, 11am to 7pm, at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London. smallpublishersfair.co.uk/bibliopoe-books-by-steven-j-fowler-exhibition-2022

"Bibliopoe showcases books by poet, writer and performer SJ Fowler. With over fifty publications since 2010 made with many different imprints, Fowler’s books reveal the strength and diversity of British small press publishing.

Ranging from formal poetry collections to innovative collaborative selections, from letterpress limited editions to poetry stickers, bags and posters – Fowler’s unique engagement with the British indie publishing scene has seen him reimagine the process of disseminating experimental literature.

Bibliopoe captures his distinctive approach, where publications reveal context and process as well as content and product. Fowler’s prolific output suggests poetry not just as a rarefied act of self-reflection but as an active and collaborative means of understanding the world around us through language.

Featured publishers include Dostoyevsky Wannabe, Hazard Press, Hesterglock Press, JOAN, Knives, Forks and Spoons, Penned in the Margins, Penteract Press, Prototype Publishing, Shearsman Books, Tenement Press and Veer Books.

Artist’s books and ephemera relating to print collaborations will be on show including books made with Angie Butler (ABPress) and Pat Randle (Nomad Letterpress). There’ll be displays of new visual poems and launches for publications made with Barrie Tullett, Egidija Čiricaitė and Jules Sprake.

Many of the publications on show will be on sale from SJ Fowler’s table on the stage. Fowler will also curate a short series of readings in the Green Room on Saturday afternoon."

A note on : Big Doom Above Me (45 Minutes in my MUEUM) on Montez Radio

Mueum continues to generate things beyond itself as a piece of fiction. Thanks primarily to Dominic Jaeckle it has to be said. This sonic piece for Montez radio is a unique blend of an interview Eley Williams very generously conducted with me on the book, some of my street ramblings and a reading of the most modernist chapter in the book when the protagonist is fogged up in the reading room. All has been stitched in a singular piece with some David Antin in there, and soundscapes too. And a video film of this also, below, which also contains poems I wrote while in the museum, never before published.

“BIG DOOM ABOVE ME is a patchwork quilt of readings and field recordings anchored in SJ Fowler's debut novella MUEUM (https://tenementpress.com/M-U-E-U-M). Introduced by a brief exchange between Fowler and author Eley Williams, the broadcast recording features a reading from the text—a suite of unpublished poems (from a pamphlet entitled THE MUSEUM OF DEBT)—and concludes with a brief lecturette from the author on (and around) a condition called "museumitis."

BIG DOOM ABOVE ME is scored by Yamachan (https://soundcloud.com/yamachantapes) and was produced and mixed for the radio by Tenement Press. First broadcast on Montez Press Radio (22/09/22).”

* THE ORDER OF THINGS 00.00 – An exchange between Eley Williams & SJ Fowler 23.36 – (Leaves from) MUEUM 42.57 – (Leaves from) THE MUSEUM OF DOUBT [†] • Prelude ("museumitis – unknown to medical science ...") • xxvi. 'disney underwater; it kicks the nun & wins a prize' • xxvii. 'the fat duck is worth every penny' • xxviii. 'the 77 lives of Jahangir Robinson' • xxix. 'wrack of the Nile' • xxx. 'Cherry Cola / Screaming Eagle' • xxxi. 'maximym securitii black dolphin' • xxxii. 'Morlock' • xxxiii. 'Falcor' • xxxiv. 'the thin blue line between front of house & back of house' 53.17 – Diagnosing "museumitis" † A suite of poems (SJ Fowler) and photographs (Alexander Kell).”

A note on : The Onions Boys - October 9th at Hundred Years Gallery

http://hundredyearsgallery.co.uk/music-the-onion-boys/

Music : The Onion Boys: Steven J. Fowler & Benedict Taylor / Blanca Regina & Reuben Sutherland. Sunday 9th October 15:30 The Onion Boys: Steven J. Fowler & Benedict Taylor + Ongoing Book Launch: MUEUM by S.J. Fowler (Tenement Press). Doors 3pm | performances from 4pm | entry £8 cash

The Onion Boys – ‘their creative juices will make your eyes water’ (Anon 2022)

The Onion Boys are Steven Fowler and Benedict Taylor. They’ve worked together and crossed paths through sound art, poetry, music, film & improvisation circles, and through chatting and larking about, for many years, albeit with some large gaps amongst these meetings.

Whenever they would meet, they would delve deep – moving a step towards the core of their shared creative thoughts and ideas; peeling the layers of an onion if you will. In a similar sense, following these various creative encounters, they were left with lingering and increasingly strong and developing flavours of what the other was up to and where they wanted their collaboration to go; as with the glorious flavours and fragrances of all types of Allium, whether it be garlic, leeks, chives, scallions, good old common onions and so on. Steven and Benedict are thrilled to bring these essences to the public sphere now, with the first performance of The Onion Boys.

stevenjfowler.com - benedicttaylormusic.com - M-U-E-U-M

A note on : Japanese UK Poetry Exchange in Norwich and London

JUPE in the UK : At Dragon Hall, Norwich and Candid Arts, London : Sept 16th & 18th 2022 A great start to the long delayed and much enjoyed JUPE project for three UK events. At National Centre for Writing’s amazing Dragon Hall venue in Norwich we travelled to Glasgow, and then to a remarkable Camarade event at Angel’s Candid Arts Basement Gallery. Very different spaces, all brilliant events. All told over 40 British based poets welcomed visiting Japanese poets Fukudapero and Kyoko Yoshida, alongside UK based Shina Shihoko Naga and Hinako Matsumoto. As ever before with these camarade collaborative events, it was a real range of what poetry can be, from all angles, and styles, and ages, and approaches, in the midst of two friendly, playful, supportive nights of literary performance. Click the link for more on each event September 16th in Norwich : National Centre for Writing / September 18th in London : Candid Arts

A note on : Guillaume is coming ... letterpress collaborating with Angie Butler and Pat Randle

My work with Pat Randle and Angie Butler is the kind of thing academic conferences are built around but don’t actually, often, manage to do. An immensely creative, live, collaborative process built on an authentic enjoyment of each other’s company and the right environment, built on goodwill and expertise (on their part). For the second phase of our recent, second, collaborative publication, we spent two days together as a press in the Cotswolds. I came with a new set of poems written to the specifications Angie and Pat offered me to do with the practical letterpressing of the eventual publication. The type would be wood, and they would go up in size, ascending. So only so many characters per page. Already then the poems were shaped by this constraint. But over the two days, in real time, the poems were rewritten, made far far better, on the hoof, by us literally searching out the possible letters for each wood type set! Often limited by an absence of certain letters, we would then change words, quickly and collectively, while chatting. And none of this was planned. And the poems are lively, weird, hopefully funny, and together we just made them, with these constraints, with Angie and Pat’s knowledge. It’s one of the most pure forms of collaboration I’ve encountered, full of breaks and asides and laughter too. I’m excited, next year, to present what we’ve been making. It’ll be the first of a new sequence I’m into about Guillaume IX, the first troubadour, and crusader, and the eventual publication will be a bit special as a thing itself.

A note on : MUEUM launch at Brick Lane Bookshop : October 5th

October 5th, 7pm, at Brick Lane Bookshop, my debut novella - mueum - will be launched alongside readings from Iain Sinclair, Chris McCabe and Chloe Aridjis. More on the event bricklanebookshop.org/events/#mueum and tickets at £5

The novella is available here tenementpress.com/M-U-E-U-M

As part of the book's launch, here is a long-form interview with Gareth Evans, shot at Resonance Extra studios in London, discussing the origins of MUEUM.

A note on : Severn Arts mentoring and Faith Taylor

For over a year I have had the pleasure to work with Severn Arts, a remarkable charity, mentoring their young poet laureate of 2021, Faith Taylor. Faith has been a brilliant young writer to collaborate with, she is so talented, mature and ambitious, and our conversations over the last year have taught me a lot. So much of work in sharing ideas is with adults, though my background in teaching martials was often with younger people, so this has been a really rewarding relationship.

Faith has a page on the charity’s website https://www.severnarts.org.uk/faith-taylor and her own page here https://faithtaylorpoetry.square.site/

A note on : Versopolis - a letter to Europe

Each year Versopolis commissions and shares a letter to Europe by a poet. I worked with Versopolis as an executive editor on their magazine out of Ljubljana for many years, and to mark this year’s letter i was asked to help curate it’s being shared, in print, online and at events.

The letter is by Chus Pato, the remarkable Galician poet and will be found in 10 languages in dozens of publications across the continent. One of the places kind enough to share it has been Berfrois, and it can be read here https://www.berfrois.com/2022/09/chus-patos-letter-to-europe/

Published : Mueum

my debut novella - mueum - is now available to buy from Tenement press tenementpress.com/M-U-E-U-M

A showcase, ransacked with horrid delight: Fowler's MUEUM presents the placid, lurid violences of surveillance and exhibition with startling and brutal stylishness. A seething triumph. Eley Williams

A book as powerful, monumental and strange as Alasdair Gray's Lanark in miniature. Joanna Walsh

To be launched with a series of events this October, followed by broadcasts of the audio book on Resonance Extra. More soon, and here

"A novella of ludic menace, a puzzle without pieces, SJ Fowler’s MUEUM pictures the amassing and dismantling of a public edifice, brick by brick, in prose that refracts and breaks the light emitted by history’s ornaments and history’s omissions. Suspended in unknowable time there is a city; in the city, an event, a conflict. Amid the ash, fog and cloud, there is the manufacturing of a space—a many-winged museum on the make. On the plinths, exquisite remnants of life present and past—adorning the walls, portraits of gentle torture sit hand in hand with brutal and statuesque portrayals of camaraderie—and the gift-shop is littered with plastic curios and gilt revulsion. Pacing the hall, atrium and corridor, there are those who keep the museum—the various midwives to the building’s demands—and those, like the reader, who merely visit; those who pass through the vacant galleries adrift with questions. What can I touch? What is next to Egypt? What is hidden in Mesopotamia? Where do we eat? Drink? Where is the entrance? The exit?"

Deeply, beautifully unsettling, and somehow so complete that I have screwed up and rewritten this endorsement seventeen times. As a text, MUEUM seems to eat any potential response to it. Sometimes I called it a mesmerising, bravura meditation on work, power, and subjugation; sometimes I called it the psychopathology of the institution; sometimes I just made sub-animal noises. Initially I just felt awe at how compelling Fowler can make the sheer tedium of labour, in an environment terrifyingly regimented, curious (and intimate, like being let backstage behind existence itself), but this was gradually replaced by an increasing suspense and horror which got its claws into me for the whole last half of the novella. Anyway. It makes me very happy—and also insanely jealous—that works like this are being written.
Luke Kennard

A note on : working with Pat Randle and Angie Butler at Whittington Press

so so grand to work again with printer / artists, and friends, angie butler and pat randle at the legendary whittington press in the cotswolds. one of the highlights of 2021 for me, we made a publication entitled 25 poems. the poems were about the process of making the book and letterpress culture / vocabulary and this embedded, cohesive, direct collaboration not only began a new path for me thinking through what is possible with poetry and printed material, but also created a real bond between us. since then we had a couple of events together, to the keep fire burning, and now we’ve returned to work, potentially on another publication. as before, it was just such a blast to hang out with them both, and to learn from their skill

A note on : Japanese UK poetry exchange, coming September

JUPE : Japanese UK Poetry Exchange

September 2022 and January 2023 with multiple events in both Japan and the UK.

With Kyoko Yoshida, fukudapero, Colin Herd and SJ Fowler, and all latest lineups here https://www.theenemiesproject.com/jupe

A remarkable international poetry project, featuring new collaborations made by Japanese and British poets across the globe, performed at six special Camarade events taking place across the UK and Japan. Centred around the creative and curatorial work of Fukudapero, Kyoko Yoshida, Colin Herd and Steven J Fowler, JUPE will see events in Norwich, London, Glasgow, Kingston upon Thames, Kyoto and Tokyo across autumn 2022 and early 2023. Each events will feature the four primary collaborator protagonist poets as well as local poets invited to contribute new duets, made for the night, too. A literary project that aims to break new ground, emphasising the possibilities of poetry and performance over and alongside translation, and to forge new bonds between two nations, exploring what is possible for modern poets working across languages, styles, cultures. / Supported by The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, Daiwa Foundation, National Centre for Writing, Writers Kingston at Kingston University and Glasgow University.

September Friday 16th : JUPE in Norwich https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/whats-on/meet-the-world-japan-to-the-uk-poetry-in-collaboration/
September Sunday 18th : JUPE in London https://www.theenemiesproject.com/jupe
September Saturday 17th : JUPE in Glasgow https://www.theenemiesproject.com/jupe
September Monday 19th : JUPE in Kingston https://www.writerskingston.com/#/japan/