M U E U M

My debut fiction publication, a novella. Written originally while I was at work at the British Museum for a seven year stretch, with an excerpt shortlisted for the white review prize, now turned into a 150 page book, thanks to Tenement Press. https://tenementpress.com/M-U-E-U-M

As well as the book there were six launch events across winter 2022 and an audio book serialised for broadcast on Resonance Extra.

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A showcase, ransacked with horrid delight:
Fowler's MUEUM presents the placid, lurid violences
of surveillance and exhibitio 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

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. Goya, as atmosphere rather than artwork, hovers amid iron age ghosts, bronzed ideas, and antiqued anxiety. 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? Following the tradition of the Nestbeschmutzer authors (“one who dirties their own nest,” vis-à-vis Bernhard and Gombrowicz, et al), in Fowler’s curt, spiralling, and acute work, the museum’s keepers will answer.

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

Shortlisted for Republic of Consciousness prize March 29, 2023

Nice news, from the ten excellent books nominated for this prize - the most suited to my book, undoubtedly - my debut novella MUEUM has been shortlisted to the final 5. More info at the prize website link below. https://www.republicofconsciousness.com/

MUEUM feature on 3am magazine and Jaeckle interview

A double whammy on 3am magazine.

An excerpt from my novella MUEUM, just as it’s amazingly been shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness prize, https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/outside-the-first-museum/ this section is taken from the front of the book.

And then an in depth and brilliantly complex interview with Dominic Jaeckle, by Daniel Davis Wood. Dominic’s work as publisher of the novella, with Tenement, has been one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. He’s remarkable. https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/qa-dominic-jaeckle-tenement-press/

“In my first encounter with MUEUM, I was reminded of a line from his 2017 collection, The Wrestlers: ‘Diogenes the Cynic said nothing upon hearing Zeno’s arguments, but stood up and walked in order to demonstrate the falsity of Zeno’s conclusions.’ That “standing and walking” work as quite a beautiful means of thinking through the varied emphases of Fowler’s playful and prolific productivity as a poet is true, to my mind. However, MUEUM represented a study of the ways in which certain things inhibit our gait, our capacity for independent thought, our ability to freewheel through the corridors and wings of such an imagined glasshouse as Fowler’s “museum.” Rather than an imago of any free agent aiming defiantly to walk on, their strident sense of self intact, MUEUM—with Buster Keaton’s acuity and a brand of Bernhardian savagery—musters a picture of the ways in which the world (or a city, and its various ecosystems) interrupts any capacity to stride on freely. It’s a banana peel of a novella, and it’s that precise quality of Steve’s writing which first drew me to the project.”

September 13, 2022 / 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.

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).”

MUEUM audiobook on Resonance and interview with Eley Williams September 30, 2022

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

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

Launching MUEUM at Brick Lane Books October 19, 2022

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

Launching MUEUM at Waterstones October 20, 2022

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

Talking MUEUM with David Collard on The Glue Factory October 20, 2022

The Glue Factory has been running for years as a remarkable Sunday evening zoom program celebrating contemporary and modernist literature hosted and curated by David Collard. He kindly invited me on to talk about my novella MUEUM and with him not living far away from me, I went to his house and we had this chat http://davidjcollard.blogspot.com/

MUEUM and the Onion Boys at Hundred Years GalleryOctober 20, 2022

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 >^

A note on : Reading MUEUM at Small Publishers Fair, Green Room November 9, 2022

The fourth launch of MUEUM, I spun in a chair. Such a lovely, intimate green room reading during my extraordinary experience having the exhibition at the Small Publishers Fair while also launching a novella. I felt feel fortunate. I wanted to monkey but not challenge, so I moved about. And so nice to read alongside Kyra and Cristina, and what a great job Dominic Jaeckle at Tenement has done with this film, full of mood

https://tenementpress.com/M-U-E-U-M

A note on : MUEUM audio book part two on Resonance extra November 9, 2022

https://extra.resonance.fm/series/tenement-press-presents-sj-fowler-s-mueum

If you go to this link you can hear two audio works, both sounds pretty grand I think.

The first is part two of the audiobook of my novella MUEUM read by me.

The second is audio from the novella’s launch including Iain Sinclair, Chloe Aridjis and Chris McCabe.

What an amazing job Milo Thesiger Meacham and Dominic Jaeckle have done with these.

A note on : MUEUM in Mercurius November 16, 2022

https://www.mercurius.one/home/mueum “I wander to the book table. One volume lies atop the other two, so you can't read them. Because you can't touch. The large, faded book above the others is shut and attracting no visitors. The cover is creamy, for it’s a big, jaundiced thing. Normally this is the book at the bottom of the pile. I look around, there are no visitors near me or aware of anything but themselves. The label says, Hastur. It feels a bit rude reading someone’s thoughts, but I open the book. As my fingers lift the pages, there is some movement in the gallery that I should take notice of, though I am sick of doing so, so I ignore it. I am on the precipice of reading something important. It's hard to even look up. The tiredness just gets in your bones. The day I've had. The motion attempting to draw my attention is what seems to be a visitor walking through the gallery at a pace that makes no sense. It is too fast, too tall. I have no choice but to slam the book shut and glare.”

Read a whole chapter for nowt and please buy the book here https://tenementpress.com/M-U-E-U-M

Launch #5 - Readings from Small Publishers Fair 2022 November 16, 2022

A set of grand performance documentations from the remarkable Small Publishers Fair 2022. My readings with Angie Butler and Egidija Ciricaite in the hallowed Conway Hall Library and my launch of MUEUM as well as the brilliant Andrew Kotting in the Green Room the day before. From the Library above and from the Green Room below

A note on : MUEUM part III on Resonance FM December 9, 2022

Part three of the serialised audio book of my novella has now been published on resonance extra https://extra.resonance.fm/series/tenement-press-presents-sj-fowler-s-mueum

recording audio book of MUEUM at Resonance extra April 2, 2022

Thanks to Dominic Jaeckle, editor of Tenement press who are putting out my novella MUEUM in June https://tenementpress.com/M-U-E-U-M I had a lovely two days in the remarkable space of Resonance Extra, aided by Milo Thesinger Meacham, recording my entire novella into an audio book.

It will be broadcast over five weeks on resonance fm in june, in hourly segments, and presents the book as is, read in my best radio voice, interspersed with audio only improv play. It was a unique experience recording the whole thing in two days, fun but also chest straining but also really engaging. It’s also absolutely the most extensive audio element of a book ive ever done, so im interested to see how it turns out post Jaeckle edit.

Down in the mire of London's grimpen, above the drained marshlands and drift of the fatbergs, exist the cultural centres that shine like jewels in the mudcake of the greatest city on earth: London's museums. Their great domes are craniums through which pass the crazy, unbidden thoughts of a culture always moving closer to madness.With the apocalyptic vision of Ballard and the acerbic attitude of Céline, MUEUM scatters human detritus over the shiny Perspex of our most dearly loved vitrines. Rimbaud's visits to the British Museum reading room come to mind: scratching himself down for lice as he flicked through the latest encyclopaedias. And Bataille, assembling curios so strange the Surrealists wouldn't touch them wearing gloves.MUEUM is a novel of watchers and the watched, a testament to the fact that people are always more interesting—and far stranger—than things. And nothing is stranger than people's obsession with touching objects from the questionable past.Prepare to travel the world, from Rome to Japan, with a travelling troupe of unforgettable characters who walk the world each day but never leave a building. SJ Fowler's MUEUM is an essential artefact for our troubled times, proving that travel of the mind is always more powerful than the real thing.               
Chris McCabe

SJ Fowler is arguably the most influential, tirelessly generative and expansively generous English artist working in experimental literature today. No other contemporary writer is as comprehensively, and ambitiously, engaged with Europe’s histories of the avant-garde in addition to such vital participation in its present. Whether in poetry, essays, fiction, painting, scrawling, sculpting, film, performance, theatre, sound, or in happenings without definition, his art draws its volatile experience of language into the mobile and embodied possibility of language as experience. Emerging in feral exploration between the poetry of Tom Raworth and the prose of László Krasznahorkai, this is a shape-shifting and omnivorous body of writing; uncompromisingly alive in the playful, violent, oblique and confrontational. When language chases and inhabits the mess of living it cannot sit neatly, and only, in a book (though there are nearing 50 publications to date) there is always more. 

In addition to his own work, Fowler is endlessly and inventively supporting other writers. For a singular writer-as-artist-making to support and creatively involve so many others has a rare and historic momentum: from founding and organising the vast and inclusive European Poetry Festival (whilst also teaching, editing, curating, and collaborating) to fostering truly international communities and building events that have grown and changed a generation of UK avant-garde poetry. Returning in amidst such travelling energy to the page, the reader of such unique work will encounter the disarming gristle of being-as-struggle, but they will also find the resounding depths and laughter of a strange companionship in that struggle. No other contemporary UK writer is as comprehensively, and ambitiously, engaged with Europe’s histories of the avant-garde. Bracing challenge doubles mischievously as an embracing welcome within SJ Fowler’s experimentation that is, at its barbed and brilliant core, a language of extreme and unfamiliar honesty.
David Spittle