The Hyphen is a Dagger! Launch at St Bride Foundation

A rare new publication, made in a rare way. I'm delighted to announce the launch of The Hyphen is a Dagger; Guillaume XI Troubadour Crusader this November 22nd at 7pm, at the venerable St Bride Foundation in London.

Tickets here, both for in person and online attendance sbf.org.uk/whats-on/view/the-hyphen-is-a-dagger-poets-and-printers-in-collaboration/ 

Please come along for a unique night of performance, reading and discussion. The Hyphen is a Dagger is a product of a unique collaborative letterpress project between printers Pat Randle, Angie Butler and I. 60 numbered copies have been stitch-sewn & 20 marked I-XX case-bound by Roger Grech, available at the launch, and afterwards online. More on the book below...

"A distinctive, eccentric, playful work of literature, The Hyphen is a Dagger is a product of a unique collaborative project between printers and poets – Angie Butler, Pat Randle and SJ Fowler. This publication was made with the letterpress process as both constraint and guide, using wood-letter from the stores of the legendary Whittington Press in the heart of the Cotswolds. Working to vocabularies and sorts available to hand, the poems were written by Fowler to be then edited, whilst being set, across a series of collaborative on- press sessions over 2022 and 2023.

The poems themselves relate to the place of their making, centring around the real-life crusader Sir Richard de Croupes, whose tomb adjoins the press at St Bartholomew’s Church. Guillaume, the hero of the story, was the first recorded troubadour. The typefaces are from a unique collection sourced from the Cambridge University Press and date back to the golden age of letterpress printing. Most were manufactured by the Delittle Foundry in York and each face contained within this project is identified in the margin of the page. This publication is an outstanding example of what is possible when writers and printers work together with simultaneous purpose; unlocking the creative potential of contemporary prose within the confines of letterpress printing."

A note on : Performing at BONE festival in Bern this month

https://2023.boneperformance.com/programm/sj-fowler/ hastag englisch! an amazing festival in switzerland curated with huge energy be regina durig. im exciting to perform there and am on saturday november 25th at 20.30 in Bern at PROZESS, the venue

they did quite a lovely number on my pic

and a below podcast I did with Regina for the fest

And my bio in German, quite nice,

Bitte nach unten scrollen für einfache Sprache. - SJ Fowler ist Schriftsteller, Dichter und Performer und lebt in London. In seiner Arbeit widmet er sich Dichtung und Literatur in allen Facetten – textlich, visuell, asemisch, konkret, klanglich, kollaborativ, performativ und improvisiert. Sein Werk umfasst 50 Veröffentlichungen und 200 Performances in über 40 Ländern, darüber hinaus kuratiert und organisiert er Literaturfestivals, macht Auftragsarbeiten, Kooperationen und mehr. SJ Fowler leitet das Writers’ Centre Kingston an der Kingston University und das European Poetry Festival (UK).

Zu seinen jüngsten Veröffentlichungen gehören «How Do You In Devon» (Moormaid Press, 2023), «Bab’s London Adventures» (8ox publishing, 2023) und die Novelle «MUEM» (Tenement Press, 2022). Im Sommer 2023 hat er für die National Gallery (London, UK) Gedichte zu Gemälden verfasst, die er während drei Nacht-Veranstaltungen mit den Museumsaufsichten improvisiert aufgeführt hat.

Beim BONE W ORT wird Steve eine Poetry Performance machen, ein Format, das er so beschreibt: «Ein Spiel mit dem Potenzial von Live-Literatur – mit Raum, Stimme, Interaktion, Körperlichkeit – vor Ort, mit einem Publikum. Oft improvisiert, aber durch und durch poetisch.»

#Dichtung #Spielfreude #Improvisation #Englisch

A note on : Table at the Small Publishers Fair and sharing The Hyphen is a Dagger

I had a brilliant few days running a table of my books at the Small Publishers Fair 2023. It is always really so friendly, inspiring, generous. I met so many interesting new people and caught up with dozens of friends. And many friends helped me on my stall too, huge thanks to them Simon Tyrrell, Lisa Blackwell, Jules Sprake, Bob T Bright, Ailsa Holland, Bev Frydman, Patrick Cosgrove. Thanks to my collaborators that made it so special too Dominic Jaeckle, Pat Randle and many others. And to those who run the fair, long may it continue.

Three new publications were launched, which included a very special letterpress edition made with Pat Randle and Angie Butler. We shared it, Pat and I, at an event as part of the library reading program, and can be watched here. We discussed the unique process, then read the poems, then fielded some questions.

A note on : Writers Kingston begins with a Camarade, and improvising with Benedict Taylor

A beginning to the 2023 / 2024 Writers Kingston program with a collaborative Camarade event with some brilliant poets and equally brilliant performances. Some real highlights worth watching at the event link above and I had the chance to work with violaist Benedict Taylor again, for the fifth time in the last year or so, doing an entirely improvised talking performance with his music.





A note on : Asemic poems from Oslo workshop

Some brilliant works below produced by some of those who generously attended my workshop at Oslo National Academy of the Arts (Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo) on asemic poetry and handwriting literature. All thanks to Stefan Ellmer and Maziar Raein for inviting me.

a selection of asemics by the group

by Thales Vikanes

by Mona Huang Høivik

by Simen Løvgren

by Nicolas Vittori

by Apollonia Stroiczek

by Per Brehmer

by Åsta Sparr

A note on : Cafe Haerverk, launching Gullfinger

Bard Torgersen, Dario Fariello and I performed an hour long set of complete free improvisation at Cafe Haerverk in Oslo to launch Bard and I’s new book, Gullfinger, the first ever publication by Haerverk Forlag (publishing house).

It doesn’t really tell the story. The hour was one of the strangest and floppiest I’ve been a part of, it was quite something, and I was surprised how much the audience seemed to love it. It was wholesome terror, in a way. I cut my head with a mic. Bard gave out a nobel prize and threw dollars into the audience. A lot of things happened. The video is coming.

This was one of the nicest gigs I’ve done, ever. Bard and I spent the first hour of opening signing books, which was a surprise to me, as Gullfinger is also one of the most chaotic books I’ve written. But people came out in droves for Bard and Dario, they are very much loved and appreciated in Oslo.

The publishers, who run the venue, were fantastic and enthusiastic and weird like us. And we sold a load of copies. Unlike normally I stayed for hours afterward too, met some amazing people.

A note on : Teaching at Oslo National Academy of the Arts

I had the chance to give a talk at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo) on asemic writing and then lead a workshop with about 20 students, over an entire day, creating asemic poems.

The invitation was thanks the brilliant typographer Stefan Ellmer and designer Maziar Raein. They have led a research group at the academy on asemic and abstract writing and we’ve corresponded on the subject for quite some time.

The talk I gave will be online soon, but following a fascinating technical talk from Stefan I spoke off the cuff not only about asemic poetry was, in my opinion, but why i think i was led to it as a form of poetry, and what it’s benefits are.

The workshop that followed was really resonant, and went so well I took things from it that I will factor into all my future teaching in the subject. The students, like Stefan and Maziar, were unusually hospitable and kind and funny. Over the course of the day I had the students writing with their mouths and feets, backwards and upside down, battling over pens mid script, and creating giant scrolls of asemic poems.

A great experience and more documentation to post soon.

A note on : Article in Austrian Riveter

I am in the Notting Hill Bookshop, when it existed, talking with the late Sheila Ramage, to whom in retrospect I owe so much. If my memory doesn’t fail me, she had told me that she had married an Austrian emigré, who had fled from the war. As humbly as anyone can, she told me about regular meetings with Elias Canetti and all the European literary brilliance London housed after the Second World War. I am a year into knowing literature, and poetry. I am starting to write. She gives me a book by Erich Fried. And she sends me to Kensal Green Cemetery.

….. (full article at the link)

Viennese Actionism. A friend sees me smash a building with a spade in Latvia, on video, and suggests I look up the Actionists, knowing I don’t know them. I see why, and I see why they did what they did. I start attending Bob Cobbing’s writers’ forum after his death but before mine. I hear of his correspondences across the world, at the height of sound and concrete poetry’s first boom. He was close with Ernst Jandl. Oh, the Wiener Gruppe (Vienna Group) too, then. I copy out H. C. Artmann, Friedrich Achleitner, Konrad Bayer, Gerhard Rühm.

I am, again, being helped on by the Austrian Cultural Forum, and we make a film, Where is Everyone Austria?, during the lockdowns. The Austrian poets send me their footage, I roll around in the ACF bedrooms with a rainbow hippo. It is seen over 1,000 times online in the first few months. I am then performing at the Austrian Embassy, talking, making people laugh, hopefully, then uncomfortably, and the room stretches on like a glossy landlocked state. I am in Belgrade on the day of Brexit, having coffee with a surly Austrian poet, Stefanie Sargnagel. ‘Not a good day to be you,’ she says. I am receiving a hamper of Austrian goods at my home, a gift from a friend, and eat the cake with my hands. I am in Graz, at the Forum Stadtpark. A film of my words is projected in massive letters across a public park. It says, ‘two dates and a line between, that is all there is’.

Who has the chance to be led to such a tradition, that isn’t their own? Who then gets to work with it, now, as an outsider? What a privilege to have built a structure which allows me to invite Austrians to perform in London, and to go to festivals there, and to collaborate. To learn of them through them, and to see their tradition in a way they never will. Envy is inspirational.

I organise one of the Illuminations events in Kensal Green Cemetery itself, to celebrate Erich Fried, where he is buried. I end up being poet-in-residence of this place, the cemetery, for a whole summer. I get to know Fried’s son David, his niece Maeve, his friend, John Parham. They read for me, and us all, in the Dissenters’ Chapel. He was larger in that room, as he was in life. My younger British friends don’t know him. I’ll settle for them watching and reading the Austrian poets of their own age, for they are the ones who carry with them a century or more of something that no other country can, or will, commit to paper or the stage.

Coming soon : Gullfinger with Bård Torgersen

A new collaborative book, my second with Bård Torgersen, to be published in a limited edition of a few hundred by Haerverk Forlag.

It will be launched on October Thursday 12th in Oslo https://www.kafe-haerverk.com/events/bard-torgersen-steven-j.-fowler-dario-fariello:-bokslippperformancekonsert/2Ui1r5RuSU You have to be 20 to get in.

The book is about chaos.

For some reason my name is SwJ on the spine, which is what the book is like. I am now swoj.

A note : Overground Underground online mag #3

The new issue of Overground Underground features pages from my Recently Attracted Reality Influencers! https://overgroundunderground.co.uk/issues

Overground Underground Issue #3: The Response Edition is out now! You can read the magazine for free here on our website.  This issue features work from  Philip Venzke, Tomoé Hill, Danni Storm, Paul Hawkins, Hanna Komar, Matt Travers, Dan Power, Silas Curtis, SJ Fowler, Laura Davis, Rue Baldry, Michelle King, Stephen Sunderland, MW Bewick and Richard Dannenberg.  


A note on : St Bride's launch this November 22nd

My big publication this year will be a special one, a serious foray into Letterpress limited editions - The Hyphen is a Dagger : Guillaume IX, Crusader Troubadour.

It will be launched at the remarkable St Bride’s Foundation on November 22nd, with tickets now available below.

https://sbf.org.uk/whats-on/view/the-hyphen-is-a-dagger-poets-and-printers-in-collaboration/

The Hyphen is a Dagger; Guillaume IX, troubadour crusader by Angie Butler, Pat Randle, SJ Fowler. Published by Nomad Letterpress and AB Press.

The gallant errant crusading knight, and the world’s first troubadour, Guillaume IX of Poitiers visits his former comrade-in-arms Sir Richard de Croupes. In the ancient Cotswold village of Whittington, future home of the eponymous press, will Guillaume, fine dining, be able to resist the temptations of a beaked devil?

A limited edition of 100, letterpress printed, original poetry sequence.

A distinctive, eccentric and playful work of literature, The Hyphen is a Dagger is a product of a unique ground-up collaborative project between printers and poets - Angie Butler, Pat Randle and SJ Fowler. Working in cahoots from scratch, this publication was made with its specific letterpress production as a constraint and guide. Using only wood-letter typefaces from the stores of the legendary Whittington press in the heart of the Cotswolds, and working to vocabularies available from the letters on hand, the poems were written by Fowler to be then edited, while being set, across a series of collaborative in press sessions over 2022 and 2023. The poems themselves relate to the the place of their making, centering around the real life crusader Sir Richard de Croupes, whose tomb adjoins the press in Whittington court. Guillaume, the hero of the story, was the first recorded troubadour. For print afficionados, the text is buffeted with labels of each typeface used, from the Delittle collection of 1888. This publication is a rare example of what is possible when contemporary writers and printers work together with simultaneous purpose.

A note on : James Kearns' On the Subject of Fallen Things

Really happy to have written in support of James Kearns new book from the brilliant Bad Betty press - On the Subject of Things https://badbettypress.com/product/on-the-subject-of-fallen-things-james-kearns/

"Whatever we are, we are a thing. And the thing about things is that they need not language to be. But if language is going to, then the things change, and then poetry should be the way. Nowadays it rarely is. But here, with James Kearns, there is a book that might do that work, existential. This a really brilliant sequence of poems. Like Ponge, or Herbert, or Steger, or Simic, it manages to be both serious and fleeting, weighty and funny. It's hopeful, actually."

I had the pleasure to work with James over a long period of time not too long ago, being a minor sounding board to some of his recent works and it’s so satisfying to see a poet of such serious complexity, whose poems are so distinct, and enjoyable for that fact, get a book out like this.

A note on : Performing at National Gallery Lates, June 30th

A fitting way to end a triptych of brilliant events at the National Gallery Lates in 2023, flanked by fellow poet-artists Andrew Kötting, Safia Kamel, Marcia Knight Latter, led by art historian and author Fiona Alderton, and given the chance by curator Joseph Kendra. https://www.stevenjfowler.com/nationalgallery/

Again I felt curiously relaxed, almost transforming into some sort of pink liquid, reading my poems, wafting about and interacting with everyone who attended. Fiona remarked, kindly, and lucidly, that these events have been notable for their joyousness. The audience and poets alike were happy to be there, for it was a bit special, in that place, at that time, together, moving room to room.

I’m very grateful to everyone who has supported these events, they have been so positive, and fun, to Joseph Kendra for making them happen.

A note on : Launching How Do You Do In Devon

Ailsa Holland has been a brilliant publisher to work with. Her editorial support and oversite reshaped and encouraged this publication to be what it is now, grew it into it’s full form. So lovely it was to have such a nice launch at this poem brut event at 100 years gallery, surrounded by friends and have a chance to properly thank her and share the pamphlet. I did a reading, rare enough, of the poems in the book, as that felt the correct way to fling the thing into the world. The chapbook is available here https://www.moormaidpress.co.uk/product/how-do-you-do-in-devon-by-sj-fowler

A note on : Poem Brut at Hundred Years Gallery

On a summer night in Hoxton, 13 poets shared 7 performances of expansive, engaging, amusing and daring poetry performance for the 8th event of the 4th season of Poem Brut. Highlights included knitting, shredding, burnt toast, a Devon seagull and a Bird King. Please watch all the performances. https://www.poembrut.com/2023

Another great event, completely exceptional if it wasn’t normal. Everyone was interesting and warm hearted. Worth a look at the videos at the link