European Poetry Festival : summer 2021

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Presenting 5 events in July and 9 in November, the EPF returns, live, throughout 2021. For our quintet of summer happenings, we present our showcase Camarade, with 24 poets presenting new works at St Johns on Bethnal Green, alongside an outdoor reading in Richmond Park and events held in collaboration with the Scottish Poetry Library, Peer Gallery and the Manchester Poetry Library. EPF summer 2021 will bring together over 50 British, Britain-based and visiting European poets. All events are free to attend and socially distanced. https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/

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Published : STICKER POEMS

My new book, one I really am happy with. The press has done a brilliant job with it. 'Sticker Poems' from Trickhouse Press
£10.00 128pp, A5, full-colour. https://www.trickhousepress.com/product/-sticker-poems-by-sj-fowler/6?cs=true&cst=custom

From the publisher “Forget everything you thought you knew about stickers and everything you might have suspected about poems. From animals to Mexican wrestlers, football players to medieval knights, zombie apocalypse to motivational mantras, Garbage Pail kids to dinosaurs, Sticker Poems is no less than a snapshot of human cognition, narrated by Fowler’s idiosyncratic poetics. This book offers a bold new take on what poetry means, a playful shock treatment for arthritic literary convention, and the kind of crystalline insight which is usually reserved for the deranged. These poems will stick to you like gum to your hair. Strawberry gum.”

The book contains 99 sticker poems, full colour, on photographic as well as essays by myself and David Spittle. Every order includes two free stickers of sticker poems which you can stick to that which you  wish to stick to.

“Screw your courage to the sticking place! SJ Fowler has invented a new poetic form, and traced out all its kinks and convolutions in one deliriously weird book. Let your nail grow out a bit to really get under the corners of his language and prise them off the page and you’ll be rewarded. I found at least one of these adhesive little poems at the back of my knee after a particularly hard reading session and now it’s stuck. What is there in life but adhesion?” Colin Herd

A note on : Poem Brut in the City

the first live www.poembrut.com event in a long time, over 18 months, and the launch of my new book, sticker poems https://www.stevenjfowler.com/#/stickers/

I took people on a merry dance. I’ve spent a lot of time in the city of london, i explore it often, im interested in its history and so when i wanted to do a poem brut event, outdoors as we emerge out of lockdown, i thought it suited as a locale. 11 poets were given 11 locations but no one but they knew where the readings would be or in what order. so there was a sense of surprise, i hope, amidst the hot weather, hidden corners and general friendly ambiance. we began at bank and ended up at the thames, two hours later, a good few dozen of us. all the videos of the excellent performances are online here www.poembrut.com/city

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Published : Photo Poetry Surfaces anthology

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https://www.photopoetrysurfaces.com/

well happy to be in the book of the exhibition, an anthology and catalogue in one, of the upcoming photopoetry surfaces - a proper celebration of photo poetry, something i have been teaching, making, sharing, quite concentratedly for the last numbers of years.

works are taken from my book CROWFINGER, with Bard Torgersen, published in december 2020 by sampson low https://www.stevenjfowler.com/crowfinger

A note on: Interview with Sylee Gore for Oxford Review of Books

Thanks entirely to Sylee Gore, a poet I admire greatly and have the pleasure to get to know over the last year, I was interviewed for Oxford Review of Books. https://www.the-orb.org

The chat was themed around nature, the city, animals, humans, environment and so that led me to talk of my residency with j&L Gibbons, my time in Kensal Green Cemetery and then read from my 2017 book The Guide to Being Bear Aware, with Shearsman press.

Published : LINK journal

How I find myself in such places I do not know. LINK is a remarkably beautiful journal out of Barcelona, printed in only 25 copies and exploring “[in-between] spaces, modes of communication, and translations within creative practices. An enquiry into future thinking and cultural shifts.” It is “a collaboration that was initiated between Julia Bertolaso (spatial designer) and Veronica Tran (interaction designer), while we were both in Barcelona. The work we do is at the intersection of many creative disciplines, looking into the role of design - primarily through design literacies and embodied cognition.”

I am in it through my friend and collaborator Thomas Duggan, and it represents his world in a certain way, engaging with architecture, design, conceptual thinking around these and other issues. We have a dialogue in the journal, a discussion, about our concerns and collaborations, about what we are doing and why. https://link-journal.com/

Published : 2nd edition of 1000 proverbs and Knives Forks and Spoons books

In 2015 I published a full length conceptual collaborative book with my nemesis Tom Jenks. We sent each other warped poetry proverbs, one liners, for a few years, and Knives Forks and Spoons press, headed up by Alec Newman, put it out. It was a poetry society book recommendation and recently sold out of its print run. Took 5 years but none the less, it has been printed in a 2nd edition, with a fancy new cover, see images. I am delighted, as Tom and I continue our collaborations. It also made me reflect on how important Knives Forks and Spoons press has been to my own work and development. In the image below you can see the six books I have published with them. One of my three debut collections (I released three in the same summer) Red Museum, amongst four collaborative volumes and an early Fights pamphlet. I think if Alec hadn’t have supported my work around this time 2010, 2011, then perhaps I wouldn’t have become as overconfident with publishing as I have. But seriously, his faith in me did me a huge boost and I’m very proud to be associated with what the press has continued to do over the last decade. Visit them https://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/

EUROPOE : an online course on European Poetry

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EUROPOE - exploring 20th and 21st century European poetry www.poembrut.com/courses

An online course. Begins June 20th 2021, running for 7 weeks. £200. For booking, via paypal, please click here

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 of 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. Müller, 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.

A note on : Poem Brut in the City - June 10th

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https://www.poembrut.com/city

Poem Brut returns with a unique outdoor event! Expect an extraordinary exploration of innovative potential of what a live poem might be, all while strolling along the historic alleys and avenues of the City of London. Nearly a dozen poets, writers and artists, working in their own traditions, present new works, made for the night, as performance, with live poems exploring language against space, time, mess, colour, writing, speaking and moving.

This event is the launch of my Sticker Poems (Trickhouse Press 2021) https://www.trickhousepress.com/product/-pre-order-sticker-poems-by-sj-fowler/6?cs=true&cst=custom

A note on : Sticker Poems! available for pre-order

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I am so excited for this. I have had so much joy making this book, the next in my visual poetry series, and over a year in development. It has been such a pleasure to work with Dan Power of Trickhouse Press on the project, which is 99 full colour, full bleed, complex collagic weird poems made of actual stickers and digi-text. Launched on June 10th, more soon on that, but available for pre-order now https://www.trickhousepress.com/product/-pre-order-sticker-poems-by-sj-fowler/6?cs=true&cst=custom

Forget everything you thought you knew about stickers and everything you might have suspected about poems. From animals to Mexican wrestlers, football players to medieval knights, zombie apocalypse to motivational mantras, Garbage Pail kids to dinosaurs, Sticker Poems is no less than a snapshot of human cognition, narrated by Fowler’s idiosyncratic poetics.

This book offers a bold new take on what poetry means, a playful shock treatment for arthritic literary convention, and the kind of crystalline insight which is usually reserved for the deranged. It contains 99 original and striking sticker poems, as well as essays by SJ Fowler and David Spittle.

“Screw your courage to the sticking place! SJ Fowler has invented a new poetic form, and traced out all its kinks and convolutions in one deliriously weird book. Let your nail grow out a bit to really get under the corners of his language and prise them off the page and you’ll be rewarded. I found at least one of these adhesive little poems at the back of my knee after a particularly hard reading session and now it’s stuck. What is there in life but adhesion?” - Colin Herd

A note on : The Printed Poetry Project

A new page dedicated to the PPP www.stevenjfowler.com/ppp

Aiming to create overlaps between poetry and letterpress, as well as publishing and book arts, I’m lucky to be the poet at the centre of this project so far, thanks to Angie Butler and Sarah Bodman. Evolving organically over many months of correspondence, the PPP is creating a generous, generative space for real collaboration between those with the expertise to realise printed matter and those who might write the poems within.

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Supported by the Centre for Fine Print Research at UWE, Bristol, the current form of the project is really the brainchild of Angie Butler and has taken in, so far, a short residency at The Whittington press working with Pat Randle of Nomad Letterpress in May 2021.

This will be followed with a limited edition publication, entitled 25 poems, which was written during, and about, the project, before being collaboratively typeset and printed by Angie and Pat. This will be followed by an ambitious symposium in October 2021 and more happenings into the future.

A full diary of my time in Bristol is a available too, www.stevenjfowler.com/ppp, an excerpt here “The process then was a whirl. The evenings in my airbnb, doing long runs through Bristolian suburbs, the sharing of ideas with Sarah Bodman and the the postgraduate students at UWE, and the conversations with Angie, both for an online event and in her motorcar - these all fed into the poems I wrote, that were to be finished in this week so they could be printed there and then! We found an old cast in the press that said ‘25 poems’, next to an image of a cock and bull, and i leapt on this as the title. So 25 poems. A perfect chance for me to exorcise a desire to write one word poems I thought, following Aram Saroyan and 16 were created, for the opening and closes pages. Then notes, fragments, overheard conversations, things I thought when I was not thinking, these began coming together for the remaining 9 poems - with a sense always of the vernacular of letterpress and printing, of the terminology, the vocabulary, the intense sense of workable knowledge.

A note on : How to Hide Anything in London

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Three short poetry films into a new series now, one I began in lockdown, to trace my many years of walking and exploring London, and never writing about it, through the ghosts of poets I’ve stumbled upon in the city. No research was done for these, I came across the inspiration for them all by accident, by just exploring. This is important, in the essence of the project, which I aim to keep on, with many short films, before lacing them together as a full length piece. All available to view on www.stevenjfowler/howtohide with more to be released in July. Also available https://vimeo.com/sjfowler

A note on: having a lamb named after me

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Some achievements are the stuff of eulogies, and this may indeed sneek into my deathwords, along with ‘definitely not sleeping, we checked’. A lamb has been named after me on a farm on the west coast of Norway. How? well Hilde Myklebust, whom I met on a reading in Alesund back in 2019, who became a friend in correspondence, and whom I interviewed online for my festival in 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFiv-eG-_-8 has named two of her new lambs after me, as she promised in the interview. She kept her lamby promise. She said ‘Steve is directly from your name, but with norwegian pronunciation. The norwegian verb " å steve", is an perticular way of singing or performing an old type of poem called stev.’ Is this news? Yes, yes it is. Look upon my lambs and rejoice.

Published : Hotel, Phonica - why my work is pointless

I’m very lucky to be part of a new series published by Hotel magazine, edited by Dominic Jaeckle, about the Phonica event series, curated by Christodoulos Makris. I was asked to provide an article, reflection, response to a performance I did in Dublin for the series in early 2018. It just so happens that this performance was one of the most important for me, in developing my live work. At this link you can find my recollections along with video of the performance, paged artfully by Dominic https://partisanhotel.co.uk/Pointless-Work

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My performance at PHONICA on March 26th 2018 was a breakthrough. If there is ever a recounting of my ‘career’ in literary performance, one of the many terms I use that no one else really seems to use, then this would be a dramatic scene. Let’s be honest with ourselves. There will be no recounting. This evening in SMOCK ALLEY THEATRE, I wasn’t very well. It drew down my scant nerves, or better said, filters. Not towards antagonism, as had been the case in the past, but towards almost pure improvisation, as a mode towards a live, living poetry. The work I did on that night led me to think through liveness in a concrete way, it led to THIS—a nice juicy section on my website. I describe a TALKING performance thusly ... A SPECIFIC KIND OF PERFORMANCE WHICH EXPLORES TROPES OF PUBLIC SPEAKING, RECITATION, READING AND INTRODUCTION, WHICH USES DERIVATION, PROLIXITY, MENTAL ASSOCIATION AND SUBVERTED EXPECTATION TO MAKE OFTEN ENTIRELY IMPROVISED TALKING PERFORMANCES OR TALK-POEMS.

Published : Aww-struck Anthology and online Exhibition

Out in a week, and produced to a remarkable standard, I am happy to have a bevy of my sticker poems and collage poems in this new anthology from Poem Atlas https://www.poematlas.com/awwstruck-book

“A wide range of visual poems themed around cuteness is framed with significant critical essays and page-based poems that take our theme  to another dimension. Featuring a wide range of poetic and critical responses to cuteness by UK-based and international poets and academics including Chris Kerr, Chris McCabe, Daniele Pantano, Karenjit Sandhu, Vik Shirley, Kate Siklosi, Greg Thomas et al.”

The theme of the anthology is resonant with some of my visual poetry work, without design, but undeniably. My upcoming two visual collections - Sticker Poems from Trickhouse Press and Bastard Poems from Steel Incisors - get their first outings in grand company.

In the meantime there is a brilliant online exhibition of work featured in the book, which is well worth a free look https://www.poematlas.com/aww-struck

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A note on : Photo Poetry Surfaces and the Bristol Photo Festival

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very cool to be a part of this project celebrating photo poetry, something ive been working away at the last half decade, teaching, sharing publishing https://www.photopoetrysurfaces.com/

my work with Norwegian poet Bard Torgersen - CROWFINGER - will be part of the exhibition online and I’ll be appearing at the online event on June 17th. www.bristolphotofestival.org/photopoetry

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As part of the Bristol Photo Festival 2021, the Photo Poetry SURFACES (photo-visual-poetics) activities (curated by David Solo, Astra Papachristodoulou and Paul Hawkins) will be exploring and presenting a range of works. The programs will include mapping out the range of combinations (and sometimes going outside the lines), exhibiting a selection of current examples and presenting mixed media presentations of the work. We’re also hosting conversations about the nature of such collaborations, how such material may be “read” and looking at ways to assess or evaluate it.

Published : 3 poems on films on Anthropocene

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Very likely the last burst of poems to be published in a journal from my 9th collection, out recently in April 2021, Come and See the Songs of Strange Days : Poems on Films, with Broken Sleep press.

Published by Anthropocene, edited by Charlie Baylis, this selection features an asemic poem celebrating John Milius’s surfer classic Big Wednesday, Bela Tarr’s adaptation of Satantango and Andrew Kotting’s This Filthy Earth.

https://www.anthropocenepoetry.org/post/3-poems-by-sj-fowler-1

A note on: An exhibition tour of A History of Unnecessary Developments

Two weeks, bursting out of lockdown, pushing through barriers of fultility, or difficulty in opening up, coming out of routines, meeting friends again, making works, dragging them across London, collaborating, reading, performing, cleaning, hanging - this exhibition, all told, feels well worth it, now it is finished. We documented all the events and works in great depth www.stevenjfowler.com/developments and before we left I managed to shoot this tour, so that the works briefly up may be seen in perpetuity.