A note on : Berfrois closes, first poems from Selected meme and screenshot poems

https://www.berfrois.com/2022/12/we-dont-surf-and-excuse-me-rocks-by-sj-fowler/

Berfrois has been around since 2009, before I even started writing poems. I’m sad to see it go, but as a parting salvo Berfrois kindly published two poems from a new 2023 publication entitled

Recently Attracted Reality Influencers : the selected screenshot and meme poems of SJ Fowler

coming in spring from Overground Underground Press, edited by Michael Sutton.

5 times they published some of my weirdest work, helping me in many ways, as they did for many many writers. All here https://berfrois.com/tag/sj-fowler/

A note on : National Gallery lates performance commissions for 2023

This is going to be a special start to 2023 for me https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/events/talks-and-conversations-friday-lates-tour-and-poetry-readings-writers-kingston-20-01-2023

Friday Lates: Tour and poetry readings

Poet and performer SJ Fowler brings together writers for a unique evening of readings around the Gallery. This event is part of Friday Lates.

Friday, 20 January 2023. 7.15 - 8 pm Room 22

About For centuries, the artforms of painting and poetry have been in dialogue with each other, with each informing the other, or attempting to translate what makes them unique as their own media into another. In this unique event and across future Friday Lates, poet and performer SJ Fowler will read new ekphrastic poems about chosen paintings in our collection, offering alternative interpretations of their meaning, history and standing.

Fowler is joined by Gallery Educator Katy Tarbard alongside invited guests from Writers’ Kingston, students and staff from Kingston University, as well as further afield, for a tour and poetry performances around the Gallery.

A note on: Stephen Watts celebration at Writers Kingston

A miraculous reading by Stephen Watts ended a really beautiful evening in Kingston.The last wk event of 2022, people gathered to mark the launches of books by Lucy Furlong and Martin Wakefield with Sampson Low and to celebrate the poetry and person of Stephen with his book from Prototype.

So many of my events are so structurally experimental and playful perhaps in a sense to escape the rote of poetry readings and then in this moment I realised what is lost. Stephen's reading is without hyperbole one of the best I've ever witnessed. In a crowd of friendly cynics there were visible and invisible tears at being moved. Stephen can easily be called the greatest living English poet.His life's work over the last four plus decades speaks to that. as does every poem he writes and reading he gives.Im lucky he's my friend and I've learned so much from him.

The event reflected all this, modestly and sincerely. All the readers were grand and few will forget those few hours in the courtyard space at Kingston uni. In addition Alban Low did some amazing sketches of the readers in action http://artofjazz.blogspot.com/2022/12/stephen-watts-celebration-poetry.html

A note on : Filming with David Spittle

For the last year or so, after many years of close collaboration, David Spittle has begun shooting a film that explores the work I’ve been doing in and around poetry over the last decade or so. The film is built around a cinematic exploration of my books, my poetry collections and their themes and often hidden concerns. But it also explores my performance work, international projects, teaching and organising and other more ludic, weird and marginal things.

It’s really humbling to have a film-maker and poet I respect so much give attention to what I’m trying to do and after our first film collaboration - Where is everyone austria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmUylSMGNrw its going to end up memorable.

A note on : A performance with Benedict Taylor

My mind was a little bit off so I didn’t know, from the inside, why this would get such a response, but it did get a big response. I’d have to thank Benedict, who is so talented and enjoyable to work with. It was our second outing as a duo the onion boys, as part of my european poetry festival winter camarade at iklectik artlab. It was entirely improvisation, we planned nothing. I just tried to listen to what happened before us and to listen to Benedict, and I have been working hard on the technique of talking poems over the last two or three years, so that’s a positive, my experience is growing. It felt this one had its own miniature life unfolding. In the end, I don’t like it, but a lot of kind words on the night and via email since have been appreciated.

A note on : European Poetry Festival Winter Camarade at Iklectik Artlab

https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/camarade22

Third event in five days and all of them have been completely full, slightly mad. This maybe the most mad. A really rangey weird mix of literary european poetry collaborations and pure improv roaming play. Fantastic. Exactly what Id want, such an expansive idea of what poetry is, couched by lovely, generous people from all over. 9 performances, 19 poets.

All videos and pictures at this link above and that’s a wrap on the festival for 2022. It will return, Im happy to say, in April May 2023!

A note : Writers Kingston European Poetry Festival Winter Camarade

https://www.writerskingston.com/camarade22/

A fun night in the ancient market sq of kingston upon thames! 20 poets, 10 pairs, a standing room only of audience with all chairs full and a xmas market vibe wafting up from the st. Really pleasing to be bringing european poets living in the uk in alongside some british poets and some of the best students Ive ever worked with

For my own performance i did a conceptual experimental interview with milo thesiger meacham. Turned out good i think, blending his field recordings with a satire of some literary interviews maybe. Worth checking out the other performances at the link too.

A note on : Pictures from Small Publishers Fair by Julie Mitchell

Some brilliant photos from the remarkable Small Publishers Fair a month ago http://smallpublishersfair.co.uk/bibliopoe-books-by-steven-j-fowler-exhibition-2022/ taken by Julie Mitchell © Small Publishers Fair, https://work.juliehmmitchell.com of myself and pals Andrew Kotting, Egidija Ciricaite and with my new publication from JOAN publishing

A note on : Babs at Poem Brut; cassette coming in 2023 from 8ox

Another Babs performance, the last of the year, and likely to be in the last on my upcoming cassette release, coming early in 2023, from Stephen Emmerson’s object published house 8ox https://eightox.org/

The cassette will be called : Bab’s London Adventures - talking poems

This Babs was all made up on the spot, what a nice audience, at Poem Brut at Rich Mix, Nov 19th 2022.

A note on : Poem Brut returns at Rich Mix

Holy moly this was amazing, a very big audience turned up at the rich mix for poem brut’s return with 12 performances from really talented, generous poets. It was great. All the videos here https://www.poembrut.com/2022

A note on : Horror films poems for The Glue Factory

Thanks to David Collard and Vik Shirley for the invitation to present something on the Glue Factory zoom reading series (my 2nd appearance in a month or so) for a special themed night about horror and horror films.

I read, in my office at uni, poems from my booklet https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/sj-fowler-i-stand-alone-by-the-devils-and-other-poems-on-films - my “slim volume of cinematic poetic ekphrasis.” I talked about being in Mexico a bit, had a real juicy cold, read poems about films like American werewolf in london… The ending is nice as are the masks

Published: Are You Keeping Cardboard? JOAN publishing

https://joanpublishing.org/Project-Are-You-Keeping-Cardboard

Are You Keeping Cardboard? by SJ Fowler, Mireille Fauchon, John Hughes, Rachel Cattle
Newspaper poster
Comes in orange internal mail envelope, 37cm x 52cm, produced for the Small Publishers Fair 2022, Conway Hall, London
£5 + £2 p+p

A pleasure to write with John, Mireille and Rachel, and have my second collaborative publication of 2022 out in the world. Below a full reading of it, launched at the publishers fair

A note on - Readings from Small Publishers Fair 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 : European Poetry Festival : Winter Camarade!

European Poetry Festival:
Winter Camarade
November Wednesday 23rd 2022
www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/camarade22

7.30pm - Free Entry. Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Ln, London SE1 7LG
Closing our the EPF’s program for 2022, poets in pairs from countries across the continent present brand new collaborations of literary performance, made especially for the night. Held at the remarkable Iklectik Artlab in Waterloo, London with New performances and commissions by 
Xelis de Toro and Blanca Regina
SJ Fowler and Benedict Taylor
Egidija Čiricaitė and Jules Sprake
Milo Thesiger-Meacham and Gianna T.
Daniel Kramb and Julia Rose Lewis
Laura Davis and Shani Cadwallender
Michael O’Mahony and Matt Martin
Aea Varfis-van Warmelo and Prudence Chamberlain-Bussey
Radosław Jurczak, Marta Koronkiewicz and Paweł Kaczmarski
iklectikartlab.com/european-poetry-festival-winter-camarade-2022/

A note on : MUEUM in Mercurius

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

A note on : Finlay in Mayfair film in Living With Buildings Festival

Really pleased one of my short films, made with Vilde Bjerke Torset, entitled FINLAY IN MAYFAIR - one of the poets in London films I began during lockdown - will be screened at Coventry’s Living With Buildings festival run by Adam Steiner

LWB- IV - Live Film Screening - Wednesday, 23 November 2022
Find us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/events/1134689370589568
Living With Buildings is a festival of films that explore themes of people, poetry and place.
Past work has focussed on how we move through streets, the decline of social housing and the rise gentrification, roads to nowhere, and the space in between.
Find out more about the Disappear Here project - http://www.disappear-here.org/

Published : Show Me The Original

So happy to share the buying link for my first collaborative publication of 2022 - SHOW ME THE ORIGINAL: nine thoughts on poetic language (2022) made with (but entirely by) the remarkable Egidija Ciricaite. We made this for the Small Publisher’s Fair and the process was so smooth, fun, inspiring - a proper collaboration. And what a job Egidija did making this rare, beautiful, elegant limited edition

http://www.egidija.com/books.html

A note on : Poem Brut returns at Rich Mix / Nov 19th

Poem Brut at Rich Mix
November Saturday 19th 2022
www.poembrut.com/events

7.30pm - Free Entry - 35-47 Bethnal Green Rd, Shoreditch, London E1 6LA
New performances and commissions by Jade King, Alice Evans, Michael Sutton, Paul Hawkins, Mary Paterson, Stephen Emmerson, James Knight and more..

I’m happy to say Poem Brut will return for a new season of events, exhibitions, publications and workshops, with its next happening taking place at Rich Mix. This marks the beginning of the fourth iteration of the project, which explores the potential of what a live poem might be, asking poets, writers and artists to present new works, made for the night, as performance. These live poems might explore language against space, time, mess, colour, writing, speaking and moving. Find out more www.poembrut.com and join us on Nov 19th in London.

Supported by Arts Council England and Serendip Studios.