Published : Come and See the Songs of Strange Days - Poems on Films

My 9th collection is released today from Broken Sleep Books. They have done a grand job creating a beautiful book with an especially ambitious text, as it brings literary poetry together with visual, photographic, asemic, sound, conceptual poetries. Each poem is on a film. The book is purchaseable at https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/sj-fowler-come-and-see-the-songs-of-strange-days
and much more on it at www.stevenjfowler.com/comeandsee

From the publisher "To say that SJ Fowler’s Come and See the Songs of Strange Days is a poetic encyclopaedia of film would be right but falls short of describing its true nature. From an authorship marked by poetic skill and genius insanity, this book covers a range of avantgarde methodology without parallel in the British literary tradition. At times aberrant, at times playful, it overlaps cinema and language, combining lyricism with abstract visual commentary, and thriving on that which defies description. The films include American blockbusters and European arthouse, obscure documentary and all-time classics. It is a book that offers much, whether or not you like film, and whether or not you like poetry."

Poems from the book can be found at the following journals, if you're the kind that likes to sample before buying:

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

• Hotel THE FALLS, DROWNING BY NUMBERS, PROSPERO’S BOOKS https://partisanhotel.co.uk/Fowler-for-Greenaway

• Eurolitkrant - MAN BITES DOG
  https://eurolitkrant.com/OneBook.aspx?Id=81

'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

Exhibition : A History of Unnecessary Developments - April 19th to May 2nd

www.stevenjfowler.com/developments

at The Willesden Gallery, London
An exhibition by Tereza Stehlikova & SJ Fowler

The gallery opening times are:
10.30am to 2.30pm, Mon to Fri
12.00pm to 4.00pm, Sat and Sun

Government guidelines are in place throughout the exhibition, with seven people allowed in the gallery at one time, masked and socially distanced. The exhibition has been developed and supported by Nadia Nervo.

Note - Really lovely to have a second exhibition with Tereza in West London, extending our ongoing worm wood project into the brilliant Willesden Green based, library housed, willesden gallery… For more on our project in general visit stevenjfowler.com/wormwood and for our last exhibition visit stevenjfowler.com/wormexhibition

Press Release : A longform collaboration between the artist-filmmaker Tereza Stehlikova and artist-poet SJ Fowler takes shape in an exhibition of experimental documentary, found sculpture and abstract writing. Exploring, recording and revealing the environs of industrial West London, this exhibition creates a temporary shrine to overlooked corners, pathways and ley lines of an area of London soon to face major redevelopment. Taking in vistas and flotsam from across Wormwood Scrubs, Kensal Green Cemetery, the Grand Union Canal and beyond, this fusion of artistic methods, centred around a feature length film previously screened at Whitechapel Gallery, aims to offer an aperture into the lived in, urbane and often unseen beauty of a part of London soon to change.

The exhibition of part of an ongoing collaboration between Stehlikova and Fowler, begun in 2015, which aims to document the disappearing. So far the endeavour has created multiple films, new performances, events, publications and a month long exhibition as part of an extended residency with the Dissenter's Chapel at Kensal Green Cemetery in 2017. http://www.stevenjfowler.com/wormwood

A note on: Yi Sang, Korean Literature Night on April 28th

Brilliant to hosting a Korean Literature Night once again, following events on Han Kang, Kim Hyesoon and Choi Don-Mee. My work with the Korean Cultural Centre has been a real joy, stretching back to 2019 now. This one, on April 28th, is online, and can be booked here https://kccuk.org.uk/en/programmes/korean-literature-nights/yi-sang-selected-works-jack-jung-conversation-steven-j-fowler/

YI SANG: SELECTED WORKS - JACK JUNG IN CONVERSATION WITH STEVEN J. FOWLER

28 APR 2021 - 7PM KOREAN LITERATURE NIGHT / APPLICATION WINDOW CLOSES - 15TH APRIL 2021

The Korean Literature Night (KLN) is a monthly discussion group that explores various themes and topics relating to that month’s chosen book. Our Korean Literature Night has gone online to ensure that you can still be a part of some great discussions about fantastic literature.

Join us for a bilingual reading from Yi Sang: Selected Works with one of its translators, poet Jack Jung, as well as a conversation with moderator Steven J. Fowler. Following the talk, Jack Jung will respond to questions from the audience.

Yi Sang (1910-1937) was a painter, architect, poet and writer of 1930s Korea and one of Korea’s most innovative writers of modern literature enough to deem him Korea’s finest modernist. Yi Sang: Selected Works is the first major collection of the electrifying, experimental writer whose short, yet exceptional, body of work has enthralled readers and scholars since the 1930s.

YI SANG: SELECTED WORKS Formally audacious and remarkably compelling, Yi Sang’s works were uniquely situated amid the literary experiments of world literature in the early twentieth century and the political upheaval of 1930s Japanese occupied Korea. While his life ended prematurely at the age of twenty-seven, Yi Sang’s work endures as one of the great revolutionary legacies of modern Korean literature. His work shows innovative engagement with European modernism, especially that of Surrealism and Dada.

Adam Zagajewski 1945 - 2021

In a time we are losing some of the greats in multiple fields of poetry, I was sad to hear Adam Zagajewski has died in the last week. I was very lucky to spend two weeks with him in Macedonia at the Struga Festival where he won the Golden Wreath in 2018. He was completely humble & gracious & kind and laughed when I did stupid performances like reading with my mouth full of cake and when i read putting my feet in Lake Ohrid. He was a link to a different time, one of the great Polish post-war poets and while his poetry is very different from mine in almost every aspect, this is exactly why I liked him and his work so much - it was absolutely brilliant at what it was. Around him, on bus trips and in hotels, for those two weeks, I saw him give encouragement to everyone, including myself. A legend, truly, and someone I’m lucky to have briefly known.

This video here shows the festival as a mini documentary and at about 1.35 in you can see Adam, actually interrupted by the adhan of a nearby mosque. He was mid sentence. He just stopped, listened with everyone, and then said, we are now having a mystical experience.

Ghedalia Tazartes 1947 - 2021

Was very sad to hear the great French pioneering musician, and I think one of the most important sound poets of the 20th century, died last month. I saw Ghedalia Tazartes play live just 3 times and met him just once, very briefly, and he was every bit the gentle and brilliant man everyone who knew him will describe, but since being given his work by my friend Ben Morris in 2010, his work exerted an immense influence over me and my explorations in sound poetry. Much is written about him about his indescribable style as a musician and artist, but his vocal work seemed to me to rise up out of his records and hit me in the face as a lesson in what was possible in the sonically ineffable. I have tried to introduce his work to sound poets, who often haven’t heard of him because he was designated purely in music and I teach him every year now at Kingston University. His entire back catalogue is available on bandcamp https://ghedalia-tazartes.bandcamp.com/ and here are two of my favourites from this great sound artist. “Un Amour Si….” was so big to me that I’ve copied it’s vocal gestures in at least 5 performances.

A note on : an interview with Thomas Helm at Mercurius Magazine

A brisk and expansive chat with Thomas Helm, the founder of Mercurius Magazine, based in Barcelona. We talked about a great deal of complex things in a direct way, I think, and I waffled. Very happy to be connected to what Thomas is doing and open up some thoughts on writing poetry, and if there’s any point to it

https://www.mercurius.one/home/mercurius-in-conversation-with-sj-fowler

Published : a new poetry film - Verlaine Rimbaud Around the Courner Lived

The first of a series of new, short poetry-films I’m making now and as the lockdown unfurls in the UK, across spring and summer 2021. They will centre around London and its history. This first one is shot outside the house Verlaine and Rimbaud lived in briefly, which happens to be just a few minutes from my studio and something I discovered entirely by accident, just walking by. This discovery kind of prompted me to start making these films, each one filmed on a daywalk explore across the city, somehow, vaguely, perhaps, connecting my year in London, without leaving it and walking it so much, with the poets who have lived here in the past. / It’s published as part of Writers Kingston Online too - a program of new films and video performances to stand in lieu of live events www.writerskingston.com/online

A note on: Interviewing David Spittle on his Light Glyphs

I sat down to chat with the poet David Spittle to chat about his new book Light Glyphs with Broken Sleep books https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/david-spittle-light-glyphs It’s a completely unique volume, collecting ten extensive interviews and essay intros, all centred around the overlap between poetry and film. Moreover David is someone I’ve worked with in the past and have great respect for, so I wanted to offer a small space for him to open up about the work and his concerns in general.

Published : 3 cinema poems on m58

Taken from my new book COME AND SEE THE SONGS OF STRANGE DAYS : POEMS ON FILMS, available for pre-order https://brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/sj-fowler-come-and-see-the-songs-of-strange-days… 3 new poems up on Andrew Taylor's brilliant M58 - You The Living, The Abyss, Ordet https://m58.co.uk

I’m especially happy with the Abyss poem, made from collaged screen shots from the director’s cut of the film and You, the Living, using screenshots from the film itself, with the subtitle repurposed as poetry.

A note on : A reading and why I write for Sun Seekers

Ana Seferovic has started an excellent new youtube and instagram channel called sun seekers, where she asks poets to respond to the question why they write and provide a short reading too. Below you can find my instalments in the series, reading a poem from my upcoming book Come and See the Songs of Strange Days and answering the question with a question, maybe, or with some scepticism perhaps. Ana is a brilliant poet too, do look up her work, and she’ll hopefully be part of this year’s European Poetry Festival. More on sun seekers here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmwsnHv_atKf_c4tpPoXwrQ/videos

A note on : ACF 65th birthday - a performance highlight

The Austrian Cultural Forum has meant a great deal to me, supported my work as a poet, performer and curator for many years now. This work is thoroughly documented here www.stevenjfowler.com/acf

Asked to mark their birthday I put together a video message and a highlight video of some of my works in the ACF itself, evidencing, i hope, just how supportive they are.

“As the ACF marks its 65th year we are pleased to present this digital guestbook where we have invited artist, musicians, partners from across the world as well as former directors to share their significant moment and experiences at the ACF London.” https://65.acflondon.org/

A note on : Writers Kingston Online - new poetry-films #21 to #39

#WRITERSKINGSTONONLINE

New poetry films and video-literature to start 2021 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2LmXtC6HArB9k2QSLWQGJA/videos With the usual new year’s program of events unable to take place I’ve been happy to commission a brand new set of poetry films.

This is the third set to be released with the full list here
https://www.writerskingston.com/online

Published : The Mystery Book on Tar Press

Tar Press publish new short fiction on twitter, in an episodic unleashing over one long Sunday. The editor, Henry Johns, shared my tale, The Mystery Book, along with illustrative photos I took on the trip that inspired the story.

Henry said of the work, “In this story we’ll follow the narrator on a walk. But there’s a notable disparity between the passing of diegetic time and reading time. We’ll spend about two days following this walk that presumably took the narrator just a few hours.”

You can read the other Tar Press tales in their archive https://www.tarpress.co.uk/, including an excellent one by Tom Jenks. I have been on record saying twitter is something I am partially ashamed to engage with, but you have to try to make that which is corrosive bountiful, even if it’s inherently a failure, so good on Tar Press for doing what they do, and I was happy to be a part of it.

Here are six parts of a 20 something part story. You can read the whole story at www.stevenjfowler.com/themysterybook

A note on : Broken Sleep launch event

I will be doing a physical launch when possible in April, May, June, but for now Broken Sleep have set up a digital launch event series and happily I shall be reading from my book COME AND SEE THE SONGS OF STRANGE DAYS : POEMS ON FILMS on March wednesday 31st at 7.30pm, with the link here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/copy-of-broken-sleep-books-march-launch-tickets-143689443995

Published : Light Glyphs by David Spittle

Really happy to be one of 10 respondents in a new book of interviews conducted by David Spittle and published by Broken Sleep books, entitled Light Glyphs https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/david-spittle-light-glyphs

“Light Glyphs is a series of interviews with filmmakers on poetry, and poets on film. Featuring interviewees such as John Ashbery, Iain Sinclair, Lisa Samuels, and Guy Maddin, this intriguing set of interviews delves into the connections and shared interests of creatives behind the camera, and holding the pen. Light Glyphs seeks to explore 'ways of thinking, writing and seeing opened to new and changing possibilities [...] or in where the light escapes and how it obscures, in what is missing from the frame or smudging the lens.' I’ve been reading and following this series for years, David is a brilliant poet and am really pleased to be in such company. Our chat covered my film The Animal Drums amongst others thing.

A note on : Phone interview with Henry Johns of Tar Press

This chat was in aid of a new piece of short fiction being published with Tar Press, so editor Henry Johns phoned me up and we spoke. We spoke about lemon smell, axes, courses, warhammer and the story itself. Tar press publishes fiction on twitter, trying to do something good in a bad place. https://www.tarpress.co.uk/

A note on : I will show you the life of the mind... reviewed on Interpreter's House

https://theinterpretershouse.org/reviews-1/2021/2/17/joseph-turrent-reviews-sj-fowler

A generous review of my 2020 choose your own adventure poetry fiction hybrid book I WILL SHOW YOU THE LIFE OF THE MIND (ON PRESCRIPTION DRUGS) by Joseph Turrent. The book is available here https://poembrut.bigcartel.com/product/iwillshowyou

“Again, this leavening of darkness by the surgical insertion of an item from childhood. Humour in this text comes when you least expect it. You feel as if someone knows you truly, then they go and buy you a soda stream machine. You feel the sudden chill on the hand of a gaudy drink you didn’t realise you were holding. Is everything over now? Should you run like a deranged John Goodman down the burning corridors of your life? (I should say here that my wife bought me a soda stream last year as a gift. It was very welcome and I am very happy with it.)

Fowler foists uncertainty on us, and some of the most memorable passages of the book evoke the inescapable, unaccountable peril of an anxiety dream. 

Here we find ourselves on a bus. In keeping with the conventions of anxiety dreams, we are exposed to others: we perceive the vehicle’s interior as a theatre, filled with observers.  

When you shift your chair just a few centimetres from the middle of the stage, to better see the driver, it falls out beneath you. This in front of a full audience and with a series of glasses below. You are not embarrassed, as its quite spectacular.

You stand up and say ‘my arse is wet’, then some elderly person points out to you your leg had been cut and blood is streaked across your clothes. The glass cuts into your knee joint, you were lucky to not have slashed your wrist. A different older human being asks you, are you alright love? Yes you say, they’re taking effect but they’re not working proper.”

A note on: Video interview with Michelle Moloney King for Beir Bua

This was a lovely, off the cuff video interview / podcast / chat with the Irish poet and editor Michelle Moloney King for her Beir Bua journal, in its new youtube channel. We chatted about asemic poetry, high and low art, authenticity and loads of other stuff. Michelle is exactly the kind of person I’m lucky to be able to meet through poetry, someone who has found their own way into it and won’t give up their own way of things, and is original for that fact.

Do go follow beir bua too, it’s a great magazine https://beirbuajournal.wordpress.com/

SEEN AS READ : Online Course

An online course beginning March 14th 2021. Seven weeks. £200.  All information & booking at www.poembrut.com/courses
What are the possibilities of poetry on the page, or screen, beyond, or expanding with, its semantic content? Far from being a domain of contemporary experimentation in marginal literatures, what we know as visual poetry reaches back into the very origins of poetry, far more than more formal, mainstream writing. This online course exposes the roots of the language arts, from cave paintings to undecipherable manuscripts, before touching upon the possibilities of the modern visual poetry by taking in great swathes of modern art engaged with text. We explore Asemic writing, Collage Poetry, Concrete Poetry, Art Poetry, Minimalism, Poster Poetry and Originary Visual Poetry in a course rooted in making over theory, method over all else.

The Voynich Manuscript / Sophie Podolski / Judit Reigl / Annagret Soltau / Seiichi Niikuni

Poet-artists featured on the course will range from the historical to the contemporary, taken from all over the globe - from canonical modern artists to "outsider" poets, from Laszlo Moholy-Nagy to Henry Michaux, Bob Cobbing to Rosaire Appel, Sophie Calle to Sophie Podolski, Jean Michel Basquiat to Cy Twombly.

Published : 4 poems from Aletta Ocean Alphabet Empire in Mercurius

My #poembrut vispo book Aletta Ocean's Alphabet Empire published with Hesterglock press in 2018 has 4 unpublished asemic / art poems now online at Mercurius, an online journal. https://www.mercurius.one/home/aletta-ocean-alphabet-empire

AOAE is available https://poembrut.bigcartel.com/product/aletta

The publication includes the essay featured in the book, on poetry, eroticism and pornography.

“You can never discover for yourself what you’ve been given. Bodies and knowledge, both. The primary purpose of this book is to worry about the division between the experienced and the perceived, and what is lost between that ever expanding gap.

Bataille suggests that you try to imagine yourself changing from the state you are in, to one in which your whole self is completely doubled. He means this to be a disturbance.  He reminds us, you would not survive this process since the doubles you have turned into are essentially different from you. Each of these doubles is necessarily distinct from you as you are now, as while you’ve split into two new versions of yourself, you cannot be the same, twice over. A kind of procreation is what he is suggesting and the metaphor is about writing, I think. To mark the pages then release them is to indulge oneself, fundamentally, in a productive onanism. Cells dividing, with some of that division escaping you. No wonder it feels sad, a let down, to release things into the world.

At some event, I’m watching a panel of speakers talking about something banal. The title is specious, it’s designed to intrigue but not offend. It’s a turgid literary festival, stuffy and fake, but the panellists keep talking about sex. They are almost battling each other over it. It is awkward, and insistent, but not, perhaps, for the reasons they’d imagine. They are desperate to appear comfortable with the notion of sex and in so doing are opening a gap between themselves and sex itself. Gone is anything remotely evocative of the experience, from within, within consciousness. I do not believe them too, it is a falsehood which is designed to make the audience comfortable while appearing to be discomforting. Aletta flits across my mind, as I’m actively daydreaming an escape, and it occurs to me there seems nothing more unerotic than poets talking about sex. “