A note on : Writers Kingston begins with a Camarade, and improvising with Benedict Taylor

A beginning to the 2023 / 2024 Writers Kingston program with a collaborative Camarade event with some brilliant poets and equally brilliant performances. Some real highlights worth watching at the event link above and I had the chance to work with violaist Benedict Taylor again, for the fifth time in the last year or so, doing an entirely improvised talking performance with his music.





A note on : Asemic poems from Oslo workshop

Some brilliant works below produced by some of those who generously attended my workshop at Oslo National Academy of the Arts (Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo) on asemic poetry and handwriting literature. All thanks to Stefan Ellmer and Maziar Raein for inviting me.

a selection of asemics by the group

by Thales Vikanes

by Mona Huang Høivik

by Simen Løvgren

by Nicolas Vittori

by Apollonia Stroiczek

by Per Brehmer

by Åsta Sparr

A note on : Cafe Haerverk, launching Gullfinger

Bard Torgersen, Dario Fariello and I performed an hour long set of complete free improvisation at Cafe Haerverk in Oslo to launch Bard and I’s new book, Gullfinger, the first ever publication by Haerverk Forlag (publishing house).

It doesn’t really tell the story. The hour was one of the strangest and floppiest I’ve been a part of, it was quite something, and I was surprised how much the audience seemed to love it. It was wholesome terror, in a way. I cut my head with a mic. Bard gave out a nobel prize and threw dollars into the audience. A lot of things happened. The video is coming.

This was one of the nicest gigs I’ve done, ever. Bard and I spent the first hour of opening signing books, which was a surprise to me, as Gullfinger is also one of the most chaotic books I’ve written. But people came out in droves for Bard and Dario, they are very much loved and appreciated in Oslo.

The publishers, who run the venue, were fantastic and enthusiastic and weird like us. And we sold a load of copies. Unlike normally I stayed for hours afterward too, met some amazing people.

A note on : Teaching at Oslo National Academy of the Arts

I had the chance to give a talk at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo) on asemic writing and then lead a workshop with about 20 students, over an entire day, creating asemic poems.

The invitation was thanks the brilliant typographer Stefan Ellmer and designer Maziar Raein. They have led a research group at the academy on asemic and abstract writing and we’ve corresponded on the subject for quite some time.

The talk I gave will be online soon, but following a fascinating technical talk from Stefan I spoke off the cuff not only about asemic poetry was, in my opinion, but why i think i was led to it as a form of poetry, and what it’s benefits are.

The workshop that followed was really resonant, and went so well I took things from it that I will factor into all my future teaching in the subject. The students, like Stefan and Maziar, were unusually hospitable and kind and funny. Over the course of the day I had the students writing with their mouths and feets, backwards and upside down, battling over pens mid script, and creating giant scrolls of asemic poems.

A great experience and more documentation to post soon.

A note on : Article in Austrian Riveter

I am in the Notting Hill Bookshop, when it existed, talking with the late Sheila Ramage, to whom in retrospect I owe so much. If my memory doesn’t fail me, she had told me that she had married an Austrian emigré, who had fled from the war. As humbly as anyone can, she told me about regular meetings with Elias Canetti and all the European literary brilliance London housed after the Second World War. I am a year into knowing literature, and poetry. I am starting to write. She gives me a book by Erich Fried. And she sends me to Kensal Green Cemetery.

….. (full article at the link)

Viennese Actionism. A friend sees me smash a building with a spade in Latvia, on video, and suggests I look up the Actionists, knowing I don’t know them. I see why, and I see why they did what they did. I start attending Bob Cobbing’s writers’ forum after his death but before mine. I hear of his correspondences across the world, at the height of sound and concrete poetry’s first boom. He was close with Ernst Jandl. Oh, the Wiener Gruppe (Vienna Group) too, then. I copy out H. C. Artmann, Friedrich Achleitner, Konrad Bayer, Gerhard Rühm.

I am, again, being helped on by the Austrian Cultural Forum, and we make a film, Where is Everyone Austria?, during the lockdowns. The Austrian poets send me their footage, I roll around in the ACF bedrooms with a rainbow hippo. It is seen over 1,000 times online in the first few months. I am then performing at the Austrian Embassy, talking, making people laugh, hopefully, then uncomfortably, and the room stretches on like a glossy landlocked state. I am in Belgrade on the day of Brexit, having coffee with a surly Austrian poet, Stefanie Sargnagel. ‘Not a good day to be you,’ she says. I am receiving a hamper of Austrian goods at my home, a gift from a friend, and eat the cake with my hands. I am in Graz, at the Forum Stadtpark. A film of my words is projected in massive letters across a public park. It says, ‘two dates and a line between, that is all there is’.

Who has the chance to be led to such a tradition, that isn’t their own? Who then gets to work with it, now, as an outsider? What a privilege to have built a structure which allows me to invite Austrians to perform in London, and to go to festivals there, and to collaborate. To learn of them through them, and to see their tradition in a way they never will. Envy is inspirational.

I organise one of the Illuminations events in Kensal Green Cemetery itself, to celebrate Erich Fried, where he is buried. I end up being poet-in-residence of this place, the cemetery, for a whole summer. I get to know Fried’s son David, his niece Maeve, his friend, John Parham. They read for me, and us all, in the Dissenters’ Chapel. He was larger in that room, as he was in life. My younger British friends don’t know him. I’ll settle for them watching and reading the Austrian poets of their own age, for they are the ones who carry with them a century or more of something that no other country can, or will, commit to paper or the stage.

Coming soon : Gullfinger with Bård Torgersen

A new collaborative book, my second with Bård Torgersen, to be published in a limited edition of a few hundred by Haerverk Forlag.

It will be launched on October Thursday 12th in Oslo https://www.kafe-haerverk.com/events/bard-torgersen-steven-j.-fowler-dario-fariello:-bokslippperformancekonsert/2Ui1r5RuSU You have to be 20 to get in.

The book is about chaos.

For some reason my name is SwJ on the spine, which is what the book is like. I am now swoj.

A note : Overground Underground online mag #3

The new issue of Overground Underground features pages from my Recently Attracted Reality Influencers! https://overgroundunderground.co.uk/issues

Overground Underground Issue #3: The Response Edition is out now! You can read the magazine for free here on our website.  This issue features work from  Philip Venzke, Tomoé Hill, Danni Storm, Paul Hawkins, Hanna Komar, Matt Travers, Dan Power, Silas Curtis, SJ Fowler, Laura Davis, Rue Baldry, Michelle King, Stephen Sunderland, MW Bewick and Richard Dannenberg.  


A note on : St Bride's launch this November 22nd

My big publication this year will be a special one, a serious foray into Letterpress limited editions - The Hyphen is a Dagger : Guillaume IX, Crusader Troubadour.

It will be launched at the remarkable St Bride’s Foundation on November 22nd, with tickets now available below.

https://sbf.org.uk/whats-on/view/the-hyphen-is-a-dagger-poets-and-printers-in-collaboration/

The Hyphen is a Dagger; Guillaume IX, troubadour crusader by Angie Butler, Pat Randle, SJ Fowler. Published by Nomad Letterpress and AB Press.

The gallant errant crusading knight, and the world’s first troubadour, Guillaume IX of Poitiers visits his former comrade-in-arms Sir Richard de Croupes. In the ancient Cotswold village of Whittington, future home of the eponymous press, will Guillaume, fine dining, be able to resist the temptations of a beaked devil?

A limited edition of 100, letterpress printed, original poetry sequence.

A distinctive, eccentric and playful work of literature, The Hyphen is a Dagger is a product of a unique ground-up collaborative project between printers and poets - Angie Butler, Pat Randle and SJ Fowler. Working in cahoots from scratch, this publication was made with its specific letterpress production as a constraint and guide. Using only wood-letter typefaces from the stores of the legendary Whittington press in the heart of the Cotswolds, and working to vocabularies available from the letters on hand, the poems were written by Fowler to be then edited, while being set, across a series of collaborative in press sessions over 2022 and 2023. The poems themselves relate to the the place of their making, centering around the real life crusader Sir Richard de Croupes, whose tomb adjoins the press in Whittington court. Guillaume, the hero of the story, was the first recorded troubadour. For print afficionados, the text is buffeted with labels of each typeface used, from the Delittle collection of 1888. This publication is a rare example of what is possible when contemporary writers and printers work together with simultaneous purpose.

A note on : James Kearns' On the Subject of Fallen Things

Really happy to have written in support of James Kearns new book from the brilliant Bad Betty press - On the Subject of Things https://badbettypress.com/product/on-the-subject-of-fallen-things-james-kearns/

"Whatever we are, we are a thing. And the thing about things is that they need not language to be. But if language is going to, then the things change, and then poetry should be the way. Nowadays it rarely is. But here, with James Kearns, there is a book that might do that work, existential. This a really brilliant sequence of poems. Like Ponge, or Herbert, or Steger, or Simic, it manages to be both serious and fleeting, weighty and funny. It's hopeful, actually."

I had the pleasure to work with James over a long period of time not too long ago, being a minor sounding board to some of his recent works and it’s so satisfying to see a poet of such serious complexity, whose poems are so distinct, and enjoyable for that fact, get a book out like this.

A note on : Performing at National Gallery Lates, June 30th

A fitting way to end a triptych of brilliant events at the National Gallery Lates in 2023, flanked by fellow poet-artists Andrew Kötting, Safia Kamel, Marcia Knight Latter, led by art historian and author Fiona Alderton, and given the chance by curator Joseph Kendra. https://www.stevenjfowler.com/nationalgallery/

Again I felt curiously relaxed, almost transforming into some sort of pink liquid, reading my poems, wafting about and interacting with everyone who attended. Fiona remarked, kindly, and lucidly, that these events have been notable for their joyousness. The audience and poets alike were happy to be there, for it was a bit special, in that place, at that time, together, moving room to room.

I’m very grateful to everyone who has supported these events, they have been so positive, and fun, to Joseph Kendra for making them happen.

A note on : Launching How Do You Do In Devon

Ailsa Holland has been a brilliant publisher to work with. Her editorial support and oversite reshaped and encouraged this publication to be what it is now, grew it into it’s full form. So lovely it was to have such a nice launch at this poem brut event at 100 years gallery, surrounded by friends and have a chance to properly thank her and share the pamphlet. I did a reading, rare enough, of the poems in the book, as that felt the correct way to fling the thing into the world. The chapbook is available here https://www.moormaidpress.co.uk/product/how-do-you-do-in-devon-by-sj-fowler

A note on : Poem Brut at Hundred Years Gallery

On a summer night in Hoxton, 13 poets shared 7 performances of expansive, engaging, amusing and daring poetry performance for the 8th event of the 4th season of Poem Brut. Highlights included knitting, shredding, burnt toast, a Devon seagull and a Bird King. Please watch all the performances. https://www.poembrut.com/2023

Another great event, completely exceptional if it wasn’t normal. Everyone was interesting and warm hearted. Worth a look at the videos at the link

A note on : On a Yellow Evening, celebrating Jordi Larios

On a boiling hot saturday evening an intimate group of attentive people took up a back room of atlas grinds, a cafe in Stamford Hill, open late to celebrate the launch of Jordi Larios' On Yellow Evenings. We crowded round a table after chatting for an hour and the formal divisions of readings were stripped away. It was so much better for this, memorable in the closeness and heat. It was like an evening from a film in the 70s, the street noise and humid thunderstorms at our backs, we listened to Jordi read from his poems brought together in English for the first time. The book is bilingual and takes from his four collections published in 1984 2006 2013 and 2020. He and I then had a discussion and like the rest of the evening this comfortably blended into a wider discussion with the friends present. A lovely evening celebrating a grand book from an excellent poet, these are the kind of things it is such a privilege to be invited to do - unique, memorable, generous. What better way to spend a saturday night. The volume is available here and recordings below of Jordi’s reading and our discussion. https://www.fumdestampa.com/shop/p/on-yellow-evenings

A note on : Babs on Mercurius - a feature of the Surreal Absurd

https://www.mercurius.one/home/sjfowler

Very nice for my employer Babs the cat to get a proper feature on Vik Shirley’s surreal absurd series on Mercurius. It not only features a new intro from me, below, but also two new poems made from the Babs live improv performances - proper talk poems. Then there is also a series of responses to Babs by poets I admire and Babs threatened.

“I first met Babs when I first met Babs in London. I was spending a lot of time in Bethnal Green because of my events at Rich Mix and my workshop at St Johns. I went into a shop on the Bethnal Green Road, surrounded by people pretending to be poets, and met her basically. I thought I had seen it all, but here was this purple cat. And she had a heart of gold. She really did. She showed me the film Villain, with a young Ian McShane. And she was there for me, to loan me money, give me advice about how people really are. And she was proud of being a Londoner, and of being English. And that wasn’t something I was used to. I looked the other way at her constant casual violence towards dogs, whom I love. But it is what it is as they say. She knew Bob Hoskins back in the day. Before London changed. And she was a connection to the past for me, and she isn’t even old, you know what I mean? And it really helped me, to have her to rely on when I was asked to read poems and I thought wow, that is going to be so boring, for me and everyone else. And wow I know some of these people don’t like me because I’m not necessarily all nice and soft like them even if I am quite nice most of the time, and that’s just like Babs. And she told me, if people don’t really know how to react, then they probably stuck ain’t they? In your lucy locket, all sewn up sweet like. And that’s something I’ve tried to do, that Babs has helped me with, going around people who aren’t as sharp as they think they are. But who is at the end of the day? Babs.” SJ Fowler, April 2023

Words on Babs by other poets

Chris Kerr - Here are 145 words. I hope this is ok. I love Babs

pspspsps there is Babs stuck in the tape spooled between cassette and Smurfette. Babs runs away with the tape stuck to her fur, not in on the joke sometimes. Get your horror camcorder out for the Babs who do the funniest things round and round the foley artist leg. A lucy locket does look like a cats face and other nice things. Babs was once a little cat, a catette, not a big cat scary roar in hollow red plastic house on Fenchurch st. Babs is not your fur baby, tickling the belly of language. watch suddenly it’s the previous decades. having nostalgia for marketing language. Cat sit on the looper pedal and like things. Oohh sweet. When tape fast forward it’s high pitched observational. What if jim Davidson was Virgo? What if a purple snooker ball potted history? then Sound poetry that make u laugh scream

Susie Campbell - 7 things I’ve learnt about Babs from trying to film a performance.
1. Babs is unpredictable and can’t stand still.
2. Babs loves a gossip.
3. Babs can’t leave stuff alone. Nothing is safe from Babs. Anything might be nicked, rattled, broken open, or transformed into a tractor.
4. Don’t lend Babs your watch.
5. I think Babs might be dangerous.
6. Babs just wants to be your friend.
7. Babs might be Godot as a purple cat.

David Spittle - Babs is the cheery volatility of what shouldn’t be said but is all the better for being said. The improvised chronicles from an amiably rabid eccentric where ‘eccentricity’ is not a cultivated affectation or pompous curiosity but a rough-shod and noble condition that derives from a wheeler-dealing lineage of truly unhinged troubadours. Between vaudeville Dadaism and seaside surrealism, Babs is an affectionately torn postcard from a purple cat; signed with the blurting sincerity of a local grievance, mixed up and tumbled into the giggling debris of a traveller’s discovery; it is the friendly nattering of prophecy and pratfalls. The strange joy of Babs articulates a liberating claustrophobia, to be dizzyingly free whilst also plagued by the scuffed heel of daily existence.

Entirely serious and very silly, Babs is not to be trusted. For this slapstick seer, wide-eyed vulnerability is grafted messily onto the reckless frustrations of contemporary cat-life. The creation of Babs, though it seems more akin to a kind of spiritual ventriloquism, is as much a parody of banal English fury as it is a crazed plea: a nonsensical rallying cry for living and live-ness in all its absurd wonder.

Julia Rose Lewis
Be careful!
Bab’s tractor is absolutely a shark attractor.
Babs is an ambiguous figure, forever confusing the foreground and background for the love of the audience.
A cat is not interested in a line of people looking at him.
Babs is a cat’s cat.
Cat is only an abbreviation for a cassette tape.
Babs will unroll that yarn they told you about evolution in his human and yet impossible to hear correctly voice.
Babs is the fifth life-form to follow the Animal Drums film.
Fowler is alive “to often explore an uncomfortable ambiguity” in the words of David Spittle.
Babs is a cat caught on cassette tape, like a cats eye, look and grudge can fly flinging into time and distant libraries.
It is the feline function to go toward the most timid and bring them into the fold.
Babs is always looking into the beyond chrysoberyl eye to rice crispy to very brilliant to tough enough for polished concrete.
No cat ought to tolerate a closed door or being ignored by human beings on the other side of reading death.

A note on : Solution Opportunities, for Iain Sinclair at 80

https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/stock/solution-opportunities-for-iain-sinclair-at-80-various

Very happy to have a piece in this remarkable book made for a remarkable man.

A unique tribute to a remarkable writer, film-maker and walker, in an edition of only 400 numbered copies – each signed by Iain Sinclair – this 192 page A4 illustrated publication features over 170 contributors. Featuring original essays, poems, images, letters and reflection from writers, artists, musicians, publishers, friends, critics, booksellers and readers, it is not only a celebration of a unique body of work but also a de-facto history of the last 60 years in experimental literature and culture.

It is conceived and edited by Gareth Evans, and designed by Joe Hales Studio.