Come and See the Songs of Strange Days : Poems on Films / Broken Sleep Books
available to buy https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/sj-fowler-come-and-see-the-songs-of-strange-days)
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."
Officially my 9th book-length poetry collection, and one of my most ambitious - over a 100 poems responding to 86 films, pushing the potential of poetry, methodologically. Featuring long poems, sequences, minimalism, photopoems, mesostics, concrete poems, sound poems, art poems, asemic writing, collaborations, conceptual, documentary and quotation poems, found text, sticker poems, collage and more. It’s a book that encapsulates my thinking around what ways of writing are available to poets in the 21st century. As a book of cinematic poetic ekphrasis, of aberrant intersemiotic translation, I’ve chosen in each piece not only what I would write about, but how I would do it.
"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
A full list of films in the book - Songs from the Second Floor, November, Event Horizon, The Relic, Mishima, Julien Donkey-Boy, Sicario, Bait, The 13th Warrior, Gorillas in the Mist, Last of the Mohicans, Benny's Video, Dogtooth, True Romance, Badlands, Blade Runner, Little Otik, Dau, Man Bites Dog, Big Wednesday, Sátántangó, The Ossuary, This Filthy Earth, Irreversible, Congo, Ivul, A Dangerous Method, Conan the Barbarian, Pierrepoint, The Vikings, The Ghost and the Darkness, Budbringeren (Junk Mail), Margin Call, Black Moon, You the Living, Ordet, Tender Mercies, Bells from the Deep, The Burden of Dreams, Mein Leibste Freunde (My Best Fiend), Heftig og begeistret (Cool and Crazy), Groundhog Day, In the Company of Men, Sputnik, Falling Down, A Zed and Two Noughts, The Falls, Prospero's Books, The Greenaway Alphabet, Drowning by Numbers, Homeward Bound : The Incredible Journey, The Thing, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Jurassic Park 3, Lunacy, Barton Fink, Teen Wolf, Come and See, Black Robe, Heat, The Dunwich Horror, Peter Pan, Colour Out of Space, Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, Alien v Predator, Napoléon, Henry : Portrait of a Serial Killer, The Lighthouse, Waterloo, Gummo, The Frighteners, Memento, The Great Outdoors, Strange Days, Time of the Wolf, Jacob's Ladder, L'enfant Sauvage, Fata Morgana, The Abyss and A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
This volume is the second in a series of poems on films I’ve published with Broken Sleep Books, following 2018’s slim volume, a pamphlet, entitled I STAND ALONE BY THE DEVILS http://www.stevenjfowler.com/istandalone
You can find some poems from COME AND SEE THE SONGS OF STRANGE DAYS online, at the links below
and here > an interview with David Spittle, discussing the book specifically in depth, as well as situating it in the history of my publications.
A note on : A reading and why I write for Sun Seekers March 8, 2021
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
Published : 3 cinema poems on m58 March 9, 2021
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.
Published : 3 new poems on films on Berfrois February 17, 2021
Representing the multi methodological poetry of my new collection COME AND SEE THE SONGS OF STRANGE DAYS I’m happy to say 3 unpublished poems have been shared by Berfrois, thanks to editor Callie Michail
DOGTOOTH, MARGIN CALL, GUMMO https://www.berfrois.com/2021/02/margin-call-gummo-and-dogtooth-by-sj-fowler
Published : Bea Bua special feature - 8 art-poems from 8 books February 1, 2021
A very energised online journal from Ireland, Bea Bua, edited by Michelle Moloney King, has generously featured my art-poetry as their special focus in their second issue. It collates one example, one art-poem, from eight of my books. It essentially draws upon what I’ve been working on, in exploring visual poetry and the handmade, and the poem brut movement, since the summer of 2017 and prior. https://beirbuajournal.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/issue-2-15.pdf
The works are taken from my books Come and See the Songs of Strange Days (Broken Sleep), due next month, amongst others…. and the work included responds to Paul Schrader’s masterful MISHIMA >>>>
—————————————————————————————————————
Four poems on the films of Peter Greenaway January 20, 2021
Peter Greenaway’s work is hugely important to me - his austerity, his excess, his style, his unapologetic intellectual concerns, his irreverence, his obsession with language (which is poetry at times) and his exploration of writing, calligraphy and asemia. I’ve written poems about his films for the last few years, in a kind of suite or sequence, ranging in methodologies.
In COME AND SEE THE SONGS OF STRANGE DAYS I have 6 poems dedicated to his works. 3 of them, plus a poem on a documentary made about him by his partner Saskia Boddeke, have been kindly published online by Partisan Hotel, edited by Dominic Jaeckle. They include a long literary poem about THE FALLS, then a hand-written documentary poem about DROWNING BY NUMBERS and an ASEMIC WATER POEM about PROSPERO’S BOOKS https://partisanhotel.co.uk/Fowler-for-Greenaway
Time of the Wolf in Poem Atlas' Refraction online exhibition January 17, 2021
Very cool to be in this online exhibition which celebrates the Streetcake Magazine writing prize, of which I’m a patron and is hosted by Poem Atlas, which is doing great things with sculpture or 3d poetry. https://www.poematlas.com/refraction
This poem-brut lo-fi concertina is a deliberately aberrant pop-up book page. It combines found material, abstract painting, stickers of three different origins, or packs, and is part of an ongoing exploration of the possibilities of collage and an experimental poetry of humour. It is taken from the book 'Come and See the Songs of Strange Days : poems on films' (Broken Sleep Books 2021)
Man Bites Dog on Eurolitkrant January 15, 2021
Very generous of Ghareeb Iskander to take a new poem of mine for publication in the Belgium based journal Eurolitkrant. https://eurolitkrant.com/OneBook.aspx?Id=81
The journal has featured some great European poets recently - Peter Zavada, Ida Borjel, George Szirtes, Kornelia Deres - and I’m particularly happy to have this poem up as it’s taken from my new collection COME AND SEE THE SONGS OF STRANGE DAYS poems on films with Broken Sleep.
The film the poem is about is an intense one, but also from Belgium, so some synchonicity jiggling.