Goblins : a poetry collection
from Broken Sleep Books : February 2025

https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/sj-fowler-goblins
Released February 28th, 2025 // 100 pages // 978-1-916938-78-6 // RRP: £9.99 

From the publisher “A young employee of GCHQ sweeps the internet for your secrets. Disappointed, they turn to poetry. Disappeared, their poems somehow end up in the lap of Steven J. Fowler, then into the hands of a journalist, then into the gloves of a less vulnerable benefactor, to reach your eyes, here and now, in this book, to be almost ignored, as most things are. Goblins is as much a poetry collection as a sardonic belly tickle for the rank underside of our online reality. Four long weird poems, each named after a particularly rampant surveillance program, considers the paradoxes of life lived in the age of the internet, when the line between public and private disintegrates and inexorable harvesting of our digital lives is a given. Sinister and playful, ambiguous and precise, these poems ponder the consequences for the watchers and the watched.”

My 12th poetry collection, the book has a satirical meta-structure around it’s four long poems, and this has been most of the work on it over the last year, as the long poems are drawn from previous iterations of the project - writing about surveillance - which reach back nearly a decade. The structure is intended to ironise the self-importance of the poet while stressing how little attention is given to this poet (me, basically), and that being somehow connected to how little attention people give to how they are being surveilled. The latter is one of the biggest confusions of our time, the general shrug in the face of spying and data harvesting, and how its the norm to even volunteer private and personal information. A lot more than that is in the book, as it uses the language of many surveillance programs amidst a complex story of a GCHQ employee discovering his muse etc… It’s the final book in a trilogy, with The Great Apes and The Parts of the Body that Stink, that are all long poem collections and satires. Thanks to Broken Sleep for publishing it.

Goblins : a launch at The Poetry Society Cafe - February Thursday 27th 2025

A night of performance and poetry, and a first reading of Goblins, for it’s official launch at the home of the Poetry Society in the heart of Covent Garden. The event featured multiple Broken Sleep Books authors reading from their recently released publications, with Julia Rose Lewis, James Byrne, Katy Mack, Rushika Wick, David Spittle and Cat Woodward. All the videos are here https://www.writerskingston.com/poetrycafe/

A note on : Launching Goblins in Chinatown

For the monthly Broken Sleep Books online launch reading, held on February 28th 2025, I joined the zoom meeting from Chinatown in London and walked the streets while reading. I find zoom readings to be strange, and had my fill during the pandemic, so always now try to innovate them as I do in person performances. This one involved me listening to the other readers in my favourite alley in Chinatown, while Aaron Kent hosted, and then getting to M&M land amongst other places. Weird audio AI seems to have cut out all background noise, giving it a eerie vibe, and in retrospect maybe I wouldnt have held the phone camera under my nose, but it is what it is. A strange short film

Goblins - December 20, 2024 : A note on the writing of the book.

It’s my 12th poetry collection and 3rd with Broken Sleep and it’s the final part of a trilogy of long poem collections with a conceptual structure or theme. Some of these texts include fragments that are a dozen years old and others were written just months ago. Goblins has its roots in what was once singular poems in a book called that which dont concern you, all named after surveillance programs. It also took some material from writings on apocalypses, and one section appeared in long poem magazine, called Ragnarok. Another section was written in one sitting at Dublin music week, watching performances. Another was written for an English PEN commission. The meta-essay that finishes the book, which is supposed to be the only thing written by me, officially, came to me in one go too, after new year’s in I think 2018. The construction of collections as enterprises beyond a series if singular poems has become important to me, creating innovative structures as well as texts, and letting them warp and change and mature and evolve into a final form, because of an idea that follows years of sometimes very different writing. The process of synthesising texts - a kind of self collage - is as important to me as utilising the skills of others whom I rely on as outside editors, poets far more patient than I, This has become my process in recent years, to synthesise and self collage and write through over and again and then get hyper critical outside eyes, asking them to suggest slash and burn edits. Multiple people help me do this. So really this book is many different bursts of writing over many years in many styles, all with one concern or theme. Then it is an intense editorial writing phase turning them into synthesised chapters or long poems. Then it is cutting and working and reworking based on the editorial feedback of others. So in some sense like a fiction process, but not. Decidedly not. The length and intricacy of the long poems are the thing here, as I know they are challenging for some readers who are used to concision. But it is that expanse which draws the process out into something ambitious, wild and rhythmic. These poems are meant to build pace, to almost echo one act dialogues, though they are not that at all either. All this said, I see this book as the last of it’s kind for a significant time to come, so I hope those who read it enjoy it.