THE SELECTED SCRIBBLING AND SCRAWLING OF SJ FOWLER - ZIMZALLA : November 2020

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/

For loads more on my asemic writing, www.stevenjfowler.com/asemic

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.

This book collects the vast majority of my asemic writing in one beautifully produced volume. I had the best time working on this, developing from the first edition in 2018, 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.

Here is 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.

Asemic poems for Love in the time of covid August 7, 2020

Big thanks to Vaughan Rapatahana in NZ for this publication. He’s part of a project that (from the site) “offers an unprecedented opportunity for voices all over the world to share, in quality fiction and non-fiction, poetry and dialogue, art and music and more, the collective experiences of the international community during COVID.” https://loveinthetimeofcovidchronicle.com

My asemic poems are very recent, taken from my upcoming book The Selected Scribbling and Scrawling of SJ Fowler with Zimzalla Press. One is a crystal and one a landscape. https://loveinthetimeofcovidchronicle.com/2020/08/07/asemic-s-j-fowler/

Here is what I wrote for the site “i suppose, in a sense, a great deal of the experiences we have all gone through, if not the actual horrible sickness of covid itself, has been one of self-confrontation through lockdown’s pragmatic and practical limitations on our movements and space. in this sense then, i am interested in a poetry that acknowledges its inability to eloquently express inner dialogue, mood swings, clouded thought patterns, meaningless and often banal swings of feeling, and the expression of that. i think asemic, or semantically fraught poetry, gets to that. these poems are about synapses flashing and other things you can’t see but see anyway.”

The Poetry of Rearguard Consciousness on The Learned Pig : July 13th 2020

http://www.thelearnedpig.org/the-poetry-of-rearguard-consciousness/7780 A feature on the brilliant online journal, part of their Rhythm theme, edited by Rachel Goldblatt. I wrote “The scribble or scrawl is not a secondary product born of distraction, but a primary neurological output triggered when concentration moves downwards, expressing the minds fundamental rhythm of brain to hand movement. The poetry of rearguard consciousness, it is more often a product of writing than visual art. So why does poetry, the language art, not hold scribbling closer to its chest as a mediator of our internal writing rhythm?”

SELECTED SCRIBBLING AND SCRAWLING
1ST EDITION : JULY 2018 FROM ZIMZALLA

A note on: my selected Scribbling in Cordite magazine article August 5, 2018

Tim Gaze is a visual and avant garde poet whose work I have followed for some years though we've not been in touch. I was therefore happy indeed that his recent article in Australia's Cordite magazine, which covers the gammut for Asemic poetry's entire purpose and history, mentions my selected scribbles, just before Michaux - http://cordite.org.au/essays/punk-calligraphy/ 

"Steven J Fowler’s Selected Scribbling and Scrawling (ZimZalla, 2018) is a collection of what Fowler calls ‘scrawlpoems, scribblepoems, asemic poems, pansemic poems, doodle poems and other messes’. His scribbliness is less extreme than some of the others listed above, and reminds me of handwritten visual poetry by the likes of Carlfriedrich Claus, Robert Corydon and Edgard Braga. Fowler takes handwriting for a run, and sometimes lets it off the leash."

Scribble can be bought from ZimZalla https://zimzalla.co.uk/051-sj-fowler-selected-scribbling-and-scrawling/