A note on : Stephen Spender Trust poem database and prizes

I’ve had the privilege recently to help a little bit with recommending some international poets for an initiative led by the brilliant Stephen Spender Trust. This spring, as part of a new, free-to-enter schools strand called the Schools Laureate Prize, they’ve developed a new online bank of suggested poems for pupils to translate. It’s 60 plus languages and scope for future development too, and I was really happy to put forward some remarkable poets for it, including those from languages really stretching across the globe

This is a resource for everyone truly, so please check it out and share it! In addition the adult category is also now open, with 45 days left to submit, details below.

Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation 2023 | Open for entries from 12 May, deadline 14 July

Calling all budding poets! The 2023 Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation is now open for entries. Translate ANY poem from ANY language into English, and win publication and cash prizes!

This year, the Stephen Spender Trust is delighted to extend the Open category to adults aged 19+ from all over the world, welcoming translations into all World Englishes.

The winning translations will be chosen by Taher Adel, Samantha Schnee and Jennifer Wong, with top prizes of £1000, £500 and £250, plus three special commendations for first-time entrants.

For full details and a wealth of poetry translation resources, including a Guide to Poetry Translation for Newcomers and interviews with last year’s winning and commended translators, head to the Open Entry webpage: https://www.stephen-spender.org/stephen-spender-prize/open-entry/.

You can also follow the latest Prize news on social media. Twitter: @StephenSpender #SSTPoetryPrize2023 | Facebook: @StephenSpenderTrust | Instagram: @stephenspendertrust

EPF 2023 Event #1 - Opening event, Versopolis at Iklectik Artlab

https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/versopolis

Versopolis is one of the biggest poetry projects to ever take place in Europe, linking together innumerate poets and festivals, constantly creating connections and collaborations and so a perfect partner to kick off the sixth edition of my festival.

This was a really funny, idiosyncratic, playful, rangey night. Everyone seemed at ease, and the audience was unusually attentive and generous.

My long running collaborative connection with the remarkable musician Benedict Taylor was the perfect thing for me to kick off my festival. We lost the video to a camera issue but the audio from Isa at the amazing Iklectik Artlab saved the day. All entirely improvised, clear mind, flow and shiny nonsense.

All the videos from the 10 performances are available at the link above, worth a watch, with a few below alongside some grand piccies

A note on : National Gallery Lates event II - March 2023

An amazing night, for the second time, at the National Gallery this year. These commissions couldn’t have been more fun. I’ve felt so supported, so relaxed, joined this time by poets Stan Dimitrov, Matt Sokulsky, Rushika Wick, and art historian Fiona Alderton, and curator Joseph Kendra. We had a proper blast, huge crowd, great galleries and some great readings. Here you can watch the video of the entire event, and below, my two readings.

I wrote and read new poems on Goya’s Wellington (a hero of mine) and Sorolla’s The Drunkards (at Joseph’s urging)

I had with me, for the second time, a crocodile pointer (dagostini) and on my final reading I dedicated the work to Joe, who I had met seconds before, and found him hushing people who were loudly talking during our unamplified reading. Joe is the best. As is all the lovely folk, many friends, many new to me, who came to celebrate this format of live ekphrasis. The next is at the end of June…

A note on : Sampson Low student pamphlets 2023 - Wade and Sokulsky

Since 2017, I’ve been running the SAMPSON LOW POETRY PAMPHLET SERIES, designed to evidence the remarkable contemporary and innovative poetry being written by current and recent Kingston University Creative Writing students. https://www.writerskingston.com/sampsonlow This year was a special one, as it marked the debut publications of Cameron Wade and Matthew Sokulsky. Following the work of Stanimir Dimitrov and Kayona Daley for last year’s pamphlets, this marks really a peak for me as a lecturer and a collaborator with younger poets, helping them find the right spaces for their ideas and work. Cameron and Matt, like Stan and Kayona, are remarkable people, as well as poets. They couldn’t be harder working, more reliable, more mature. They are funny, naturally and authentically original, and their taking to the inventiveness these pamphlets encourage speaks to it being in their nature. I’ve been proud to work with them.

You can buy Matthews’s THE BOOK OF MATTHEW here https://sampsonlow.co/2023/03/09/the-book-of-matthew-matthew-j-sokulsky/

And Cameron’s I SMELL METAL https://sampsonlow.co/2023/03/09/i-smell-metal-cameron-wade/

A final note must go to the publisher, the amazing Alban Low, who supports me, along with these students, so selflessly and with such energy and skill. He’s a man I’m lucky to know.

A note on : Para- ability exhibition in Kingston

https://www.writerskingston.com/exhibition

I’ve had the pleasure to put together this exhibition of nearly 20 original works on the theme of Para-ability for the Writing Cultures group at Kingston University. The exhibition came together on May 28th and runs until April 15th at the Kingston school of art, dean’s space, and you can see from the video below, it’s really wonderful vibrant weird DIY stuff, and we had a grand opening. Loads more at the link above

A note on : MUEUM feature on 3am magazine and Jaeckle interview

A double whammy on 3am magazine.

An excerpt from my novella MUEUM, just as it’s amazingly been shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness prize, https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/outside-the-first-museum/ this section is taken from the front of the book.

And then an in depth and brilliantly complex interview with Dominic Jaeckle, by Daniel Davis Wood. Dominic’s work as publisher of the novella, with Tenement, has been one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. He’s remarkable. https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/qa-dominic-jaeckle-tenement-press/

“In my first encounter with MUEUM, I was reminded of a line from his 2017 collection, The Wrestlers: ‘Diogenes the Cynic said nothing upon hearing Zeno’s arguments, but stood up and walked in order to demonstrate the falsity of Zeno’s conclusions.’ That “standing and walking” work as quite a beautiful means of thinking through the varied emphases of Fowler’s playful and prolific productivity as a poet is true, to my mind. However, MUEUM represented a study of the ways in which certain things inhibit our gait, our capacity for independent thought, our ability to freewheel through the corridors and wings of such an imagined glasshouse as Fowler’s “museum.” Rather than an imago of any free agent aiming defiantly to walk on, their strident sense of self intact, MUEUM—with Buster Keaton’s acuity and a brand of Bernhardian savagery—musters a picture of the ways in which the world (or a city, and its various ecosystems) interrupts any capacity to stride on freely. It’s a banana peel of a novella, and it’s that precise quality of Steve’s writing which first drew me to the project.”

A note on : Writers Kingston student showcase at Waterstones

A really resonant night capping off one of my favourite years teaching at Kingston University. This event, hosted by Katerina Koulouri at the lovely and local Waterstones in Kingston, saw students of mine from five different years, and lots of different approaches to poetry and literature share their work with readings and performances. It was also the book launch for the brilliant Matthew Sokulsky and Cameron Wade. Lots more here https://www.writerskingston.com/waterstonesshowcase/ included all the videos

At the event in his role as publisher too, the brilliant Alban Low also provided these beautiful sketches of myself and many of the performers!

A note on : performing at Lavinia Singer's debut poetry collection launch

Lavinia is a brilliant poet and a dear friend, and I was so touched to be a tiny part of her debut poetry collection book launch! It took place at Burley Fisher, and her book with Prototype publishing - Artifice, buyable and highly recommended here https://prototypepublishing.co.uk/product/artifice/ - is fantastic. It’s deft, funny, complex, clever, playful, experimental. And in it is Lavinia’s warmth too. She is so supportive of so many others and this night captured the feeling so many have for her. It was a really friendly, kind, generous event, emanating from the person it celebrated.

For my own part, I took youtube videos of Lavinia performing, from events I had invited her to, over 10 over the years, and then copied the given subtitles that youtube had conjured. I lightly edited and read three of these.

A note on : Workshop in Newcastle on Sticker and Bastard Poems

A workshop recently took place at The People’s Theatre in Newcastle in which my books Sticker Poems and Bastard poems were used, by the brilliant David Spittle, to lead teenagers to collage! It all seemed to go well, from the work attached.

It confirms my long held suspicion that the more playful experimental works are better for younger people to learn about poetry that the more formal or subjective, in the sense that aberrant humour and play, and the emphasis on this in method as well as subject, circumnavigate the boredom so associated with the medium. Or maybe not.

A note on : Versopolis Poetry Expo 2023

https://www.versopolis.com/initiative/poetry-expo-23/content/1333/european-poetry-festival-presenting-on-poetry-expo-2023 “The European Poetry Festival in the UK is unique as a festival happening for a number of reasons, having involved over 1000 poets from across our continent since its inception in 2018. All attending poets present new works, and the festival pushes the boundaries of what is possible for live literature in the 21st century. Improvisation, performance and experiment is encouraged, specifically in the environment of the live event, separate from the book. At the centre of all this is a celebration of collaboration. The Camarade event format has seen hundreds of new works made by pairs of poets, performed, bringing together new literal friendships in the making of poetry. Here, for Poetry Expo, we present a selection of some of the festival’s most unique and brilliant collaborative works from the last festival in 2022, given the 2023 edition begins soon in April 2023.”

European Poetry Festival 2023 : program announced

National Gallery Lates II - March 24th, 7.30pm in Gallery 45

The second of my commissions for the National Gallery this year. The first was remarkable. This should be the same. New paintings, new poets, new art educator to talk with. A walking tour of ekphrastic poems and performance. Please come along

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/events/friday-lates-tour-and-poetry-readings-sj-fowler-24-03-2023

For centuries, the artforms of painting and poetry have been in dialogue, with each informing the other, or attempting to translate what makes them unique as their own media into another. In this second event for our Friday Lates programme, poet and performer SJ Fowler returns to the gallery to 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 Fiona Alderton 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. Readings will be performed by Stanimir Dimitrov, Matt Sokulsky and Rushika Wick

A note on : Babsing Babs and Cassette Literature

It was a brilliant event, the 62nd of Writers Kingston, celebrating Cassettes this past week. And a perfect place for me to launch my debut cassette https://sjfowler.bandcamp.com/album/babs-london-adventures-talk-poems and the culmination of my Babs performances. Everyone brought some brilliant work, poems, performances, spools and tape, and all can be seen here https://www.writerskingston.com/cassette/

My own performance, I made it up on the spot, obviously, but also wasn’t going to do anything but play the cassette until it all kicked off. It seemed to go well. Please have a watch.