A note on : Writers Kingston Online - new poetry-films #11 to #20

#WRITERSKINGSTONONLINE

New poetry films and video-literature to start 2021 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2LmXtC6HArB9k2QSLWQGJA/videos

With the www.writerskingston.com usual new year’s program of events unable to take place I’ve been happy to commission a brand new set of poetry films, hosted on the Writers Kingston youtube channel, themed and released as premiered events online. I’ve asked writers, poets and artists, connected to institute and the events that were planned in the flesh, to present new works of film poetry, video literature or digital reflection on the nature of the moment, around loose themes. I hope, in creating a new body of work, to create a kind of creative time capsule, that will have a legacy beyond that which is hopefully soon passing. Works from Rishi Dastidar, Simon Tyrrell, Luke Kennard, Sylee Gore, Jade Cuttle, Spike Mcclarity, Kayleigh Cassidy, James Byrne, James Knight and more.

Published : 3 new poems on films on Berfrois

Representing the multi methodological poetry of my new collection COME AND SEE THE SONGS OF STRANGE DAYS (available for pre-order https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/sj-fowler-come-and-see-the-songs-of-strange-days) I’m happy to say 3 unpublished poems have been shared by Berfrois, thanks to editor Callie Michail

DOGTOOTH, MARGIN CALL, GUMMO https://www.berfrois.com/2021/02/margin-call-gummo-and-dogtooth-by-sj-fowler

A note on : Come and See the Songs of Strange Days - pre order

Magic my new book COME AND SEE THE SONGS OF STRANGE DAYS : POEMS ON FILMS due next month with Broken Sleep Books is now available for pre-order. The link features 2 poems from the book (Paul Schrader’s Mishima and Roy Andersson’s Songs from the Second Floor, featured here +) https://brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/sj-fowler-come-and-see-the-songs-of-strange-days

'I love the conceit of the project; the meandering and collagic mindscape, induced by the various prose and textual formats, encourages a desire to keep on reading. Here lies an unfathomable interconnectivity, parts always competing for a place in some unfinished scene.' Andrew Kötting

A note on : Film with Thomas Duggan at Montreal and Venice

I had a glut of film work and collaborations in the latter half of 2020, due to obvious reasons. Trying to avoid the ubiquity and pseudo deadness of zoom teams skype, though it has its uses for chats, film is the best way to make work that can be shared at a remove. One of the films was made with my long-term collaborator Thomas Duggan, an artist, architect, designer based in Cornwall. He took a 16mm old camera up to the highlands and cut the footage into a poetic montage, this just at the time I was teaching tonnes of poetry film stuff, and so having pushed the more experimental potentials of the medium, I decided in this case, an separated exchange was the best route, where I write and record poetry to go with the images. When I teach I often mention this form as the standard for poetry films but its that for a reason.

The film is called HERE YOU WERE NEVER A CHILD. It has a soundtrack by The Dirty Three, which is remarkable, and a connection through Thomas. Happily, already, the film has been accepted for screening and competition at the Montreal Independent Film Festival and the Venice Short Film Festival.

Published : Beir Bua special feature - 8 art-poems from 8 books

A very energised online journal from Ireland, Beir Bua, edited by Michelle Moloney King, has generously featured my art-poetry as their special focus in their second issue. It collates one example, one art-poem, from eight of my books. It essentially draws upon what I’ve been working on, in exploring visual poetry and the handmade, and the poem brut movement, since the summer of 2017 and prior. It’s satisfying to see it represented in this way, and the issue has some really fine poets in there too, from Gregory Betts to Susan Connolly and many others new to me. Worth checking out https://beirbuajournal.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/issue-2-15.pdf

The works are taken from my books Come and See the Songs of Strange Days (Broken Sleep), due next month, then Crayon Poems (Penteract Press 2020), Aletta Ocean Alphabet Empire (Hesterglock Press 2018), The Selected Scribbling and Scrawling of SJ Fowler (2020), I fear my best work behind me (Strange Press 2017), Sticker Poems (due out later in 2021 with Trickhouse Press), Unfinished Memmoirs of a Hypcrit (Hesterglock Press 2019) and finally Bastard Poems (due out later in 2021 with Steel Incisors)

Also featured in the issue are short reviews of my books Crayon Poems, Unfinished Memmoirs of a Hypocrit and Aletta Ocean Alphabet Empire, kindly penned by the editor, who also reviews my friend and collaborator Christodoulos Makris, as well as introing the issue. https://beirbuajournal.wordpress.com/journal/issue-2/

A note on : Writers Kingston Online - new poetry-films #1 to #10

#WRITERSKINGSTONONLINE

New poetry films and video-literature to start 2021 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2LmXtC6HArB9k2QSLWQGJA/videos

With the www.writerskingston.com usual new year’s program of events unable to take place I’ve been happy to commission a brand new set of poetry films, hosted on the Writers Kingston youtube channel, themed and released as premiered events online. I’ve asked writers, poets and artists, connected to institute and the events that were planned in the flesh, to present new works of film poetry, video literature or digital reflection on the nature of the moment, around loose themes. I hope, in creating a new body of work, to create a kind of creative time capsule, that will have a legacy beyond that which is hopefully soon passing. Works from Laura Davis, Agnieszka Studzinka, Sara Upstone, Meg Jensen, Anna Johnson, Stephen Sunderland, Susie Campbell, Chris Kerr, Robert Sheppard and more.

A note on : EPF films in Versopolis' Festival of Hope

https://www.versopolis.com/festival-of-hope/festival-of-hope/1049/poetry-films

“The Festival of Hope, a global initiative of Versopolis, was launched in a situation where the connection between literary creators and readers, as well the global exchange of ideas and content was limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our main idea was to create a bridge between continents and cultures, while giving a clear signal to the widest global community that poetry has no boundaries, that it can bring hope even in times of crisis.”

Nice that the three poetry films we created for european poetry festival 2020 are now shared again as part of this Versopolis online festival

A note on : Limbo screened at London Short Film Festival

This first screening of Limbo, Lotje Sodderland’s new short film which I co-wrote, was supposed to take place this January 2021 in the Curzon cinema, either in Soho or Mayfair. Unfortunately, not possible, and so the London Short Film Festival premiered it online, in a program of excellent shorts. Nice that the film has been aired once, and hopefully many more festivals to come.

A note on : Tinti and Ballen’s The Earth will come to Laugh and Feast

I’m often associated with collaboration when it comes to poetry, and more recently, art-poetry too. Art-poetry being something ive tried to explore in my own work, teaching and in www.poembrut.com Recently I’ve had the pleasure to get a copy of one of the most considerable poetry / art collaborative volumes released in recent years - Gabriele Tinti and Roger Ballen’s THE EARTH WILL COME TO LAUGH AND FEAST.

Gabriele is an old friend, we bonded over our shared love of boxing and did an event together at the National Poetry Library. His poetry in this beautifully produced book is extraordinary, but more than that, it is perfectly set with the grim, atmospheric photo-art of Balen, whose speaks to, and compliments Gabriele’s poems to great effect. There is a really complex interchange of mediums in the book, between the poetic, the discursive, the morbid, the photographic and the hand-made / hand-written. You can also see the great director Abel Ferrara reading one of Gabriele’s poems in this video

I’ve had the chance too to publish a small selection of the work on 3am magazine here https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/theearthwillcome/

And the volume can be picked up here https://powerhousebooks.com/books/the-earth-will-come-to-laugh-and-to-feast/

Published : Four poems on the films of Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway’s work is hugely important to me - his austerity, his excess, his style, his unapologetic intellectual concerns, his irreverence, his obsession with language (which is poetry at times) and his exploration of writing, calligraphy and asemia. I’ve written poems about his films for the last few years, in a kind of suite or sequence, ranging in methodologies.

In my latest collection - COME AND SEE THE SONGS OF STRANGE DAYS - released in March with Broken Sleep books I have 6 poems dedicated to his works. 3 of them, plus a poem on a documentary made about him by his partner Saskia Boddeke, have been kindly published online by Partisan Hotel, edited by Dominic Jaeckle. They include a long literary poem about THE FALLS, then a hand-written documentary poem about DROWNING BY NUMBERS and an ASEMIC WATER POEM about PROSPERO’S BOOKS https://partisanhotel.co.uk/Fowler-for-Greenaway

Published : Time of the Wolf in Poem Atlas' Refraction online exhibition

Very cool to be in this online exhibition which celebrates the Streetcake Magazine writing prize, of which I’m a patron and is hosted by Poem Atlas, which is doing great things with sculpture or 3d poetry. https://www.poematlas.com/refraction

This poem-brut lo-fi concertina is a deliberately aberrant pop-up book page. It combines found material, abstract painting, stickers of three different origins, or packs, and is part of an ongoing exploration of the possibilities of collage and an experimental poetry of humour. It is taken from the book 'Come and See the Songs of Strange Days : poems on films' (Broken Sleep Books 2021)

Published : Man Bites Dog on Eurolitkrant

Very generous of Ghareeb Iskander to take a new poem of mine for publication in the Belgium based journal Eurolitkrant. https://eurolitkrant.com/OneBook.aspx?Id=81

The journal has featured some great European poets recently - Peter Zavada, Ida Borjel, George Szirtes, Kornelia Deres - and I’m particularly happy to have this poem up as it’s taken from my new collection, which is due March 2021, in two months time. It is entitled COME AND SEE THE SONGS OF STRANGE DAYS poems on films with Broken Sleep.

The film the poem is about is an intense one, but also from Belgium, so some synchonicity jiggling.

A note on: co-voicing Andrew Gallix's Lorem Ipsum

This short film, by Julie Kamon, is based on an extract from Andrew Gallix‘s novel-in-progress, Loren Ipsum. Readings by Susanna Crossman, S.J. Fowler, Stewart Home, Sam Mills, and C.D. Rose.

Very cool to be asked to read an excerpt of Andrew’s work, someone I admire and have worked with for a decade or so at 3am magazine. It’s from a new novel he’s working on, turned into an interesting literary-film with a cacophony of readers layered and intersecting.

A note on : Hipoglote sound poetry podcasts ends with 200 editions

There’s been nothing like the Hipoglote podcast / interview series run by Tiago Swabl out of Portugal. It’s had 200 editions covering the history, and the current state, of sound poetry. I had the chance to chat to Tiago a few years ago for an edition, then in the summer of 2020 produce a special program discussing the way I got into sound poetry, and covering a full decade of work. Tiago has got a radio show now and Hipoglote has come to an end after 200 editions, please listen to the final show which features lots of clips from his guests. https://www.mixcloud.com/Hipoglote/200o-hipoglote-_a2h-43_2020-12-27_-o-%C3%A9ter-%C3%A9-aqui-ao-lado/

EUROPOE : a new online course on European Poetry

An online course beginning January 23rd 2021, running for seven weeks. £200. 
All information & booking at www.poembrut.com/courses

The character of European literature remains a hotbed of innovation – a constant remaking of what we know poetry to be. This ambitious course seeks to introduce the English-language poet, or anyone captivated by a wide understanding of what poetry is, to the European tradition in all its richness.

Over the course of seven weeks, we will trace a line from the aftershocks of modernism, to the arrival symbolism, futurism, surrealism, and more. We explore the constraints that emancipate in the OULIPO movement, the collaborative asemic poetry of the CoBrA group, the onset of conceptual poetry, the birth of Concrete Poetry, the emergence of Sound poetry, leading to the current movement of Performance Literature. We explore electronic poetry and digital literature, and vitally, we present what is happening now – with contemporary poets working in the 21st century. 

We will also dip into the ‘grand’ post and pre-war literary poets across the continent, focusing in on their technique to inspire new works. From Mayakovsky to Akhmatova, Brodsky to Dragomoshchenko, Celan to Sachs, Brecht, Miłosz, Herbert, Szymborska to Różewicz, Ritsos to Elytis to Seferis, Popa to Jozsef, Salamun, Isou to Queneau, Cendrars, Pessoa. Ekelöf, Handke, Saariskoski.

Alongside the dozens and dozens of contemporary poets, EUROPOE will situate the anglophone poet with roads into an often occluded European tradition that will hopefully last long into the future... When the course finishes, an event and publication will consolidate that which everyone has produced. All info www.poembrut.com/courses

Published: an article on Mummery for Versopolis

I was very happy to be asked to write a new article for the Versopolis Review, where I was co-editor a few years back. It is part of a brilliant e-book edited by Ana Schnabl called the European Reliquary - collected texts about European Customs. I wrote about Mummery. The article is part of an ongoing interest of mine in English idiosyncrasy which lies beneath what is official or branded art, and historically too. I’ve been interested in going beneath what is designated as art and poetry to the weird things English people have always done in one form or another, creatively, to find a thread into my own work, and its flippancy, strangeness and intensity. This exploration has taken me into tonnes of folk songs, old manuscripts, visual poetries, theology, religious texts and rituals, local festivals and even into things like Nonsense Verse, which I discussed on Mischa Foster Poole’s podcast in 2020. Perhaps things people take for granted, those who know them, but stuff I wasn’t aware of when younger, having no interest in anything creative. This article then, while I'm sure naive and inaccurate in parts, is a dip into some of that research and I was delighted to write it. // To receive a free copy, you simply go to this link and fill in your email https://www.versopolis.com/multimedia/ebook/1043/european-reliquary

Published : Sabotage film for Ida Börjel

http://www.audiatur.no/festival/?lang=en I got commissioned by swedish poet ida borjel to make a new short film response to her brilliant collection of poetry about sabotage - entitled, in english, Miximum Ca' Canny the Sabotage Manuals - and made this film here, which was just published online by audiatur in norway, a festival and publisher which is releasing ida’s book.

the film was shot in kensal green cemetery, where i was once in residency, and was cinematographed and edited by david spittle with music by benedict taylor.

the film is one of a dozen made by poets around the world responding to ida’s ideas and poems. more on the book and to buy it in english in england here

Published : CROWFINGER

Crowfinger, by Bård Torgersen and I, is now available from Sampson Low sampsonlow.co/2020/11/23/crowfinger-sj-fowler-and-bard-torgersen/

36 pages of full colour photopoetry printed in a limited edition of 200. £4.99.

From the publisher “The boldest take on photopoetry and corvids of the last decade, Crowfinger is a book that offers more than meets the eye. Juxtaposing Torgersen’s candid and striking photographs of Norwegian forests with Fowler’s precise and unrelenting poetry, it comes at you like evening fog between the trees." www.stevenjfowler.com/crowfinger

“This is menacing and funny and antic and accusatory and gorgeous and just the best kind of collaboration. It gives us a new way into ekphrasis and a new maze to lose ourselves in. Were you having beautiful thoughts in the beautiful place? Can you just be f*cking honest for once in your life?”  Luke Kennard, poet

“The only thing I could compare this book to is going for a run in the forest in the middle of the night. Surrounded by pitch black you hurtle yourself into a little pocket of light whilst trying your best to ignore whatever it is that’s watching you from the shadows. I’m not sure if I read the book or the book read me.”  Mikael Buck, photographer

Below, the launch of CROWFINGER, at Kingston Quaker’s Centre on December 3rd 2020, as part of Writers’ Kingston’s celebration of Sampson Low press.

Published : Crayon Poems on Mercurius

Crayon Poems is the poetic equivalent of a cat gifting its owner a dead bird, only it’s done with greasy, gentle colours on the page. It is a gift you don’t want but should be grateful for. https://www.mercurius.one/home/crayon-poems

One of the highlights of the year, publishing my book CRAYON POEMS, with the brilliant Penteract Press. Thanks to Thomas Helm, over at Mercurius, a few more of the poems have been published online

EPF Digital #8 - Messages from the Other Side

Thanks to everyone who has supported our digital festival over the last two weeks! To close European Poetry Festival 2020, we’re delighted to partner with the longstanding public video poetry project "Messages from the Other Side", founded and curated by Max Höfler. www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/messages

Six poets from Graz and London each have written short poems for public screening in both cities. These video-poems or kinetic texts are styled as literary "news" for the other city, London to Graz, Graz to London. Projected onto the side of the Forum Stadtpark in Graz and Hardy Tree Gallery in London, passing civilians have witnessed the ludic newscasts of Natascha Gangl, Ghazal Mosadeq, Stefan Schmitzer, Vik Shirley, Thomas Antonic & Steven J. Fowler. The films have been screened publicly November 18th to December 11th 2020 and are available to view at the link above and vimeo.com/channels/nachrichtenvondrueben with German language versions.

The entire digital European Poetry Festival 2020 can be viewed www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/2020 and we will return, in physical proximity, in 2021.