Poem Brut

I began Poem Brut in late 2017 as a series of events, exhibitions, books and online publications, in order to make a space for a kind of literature I felt was overlooked. It has formed a community of poet-artists, a movement of people exploring certain poetic techniques and ideas. I’m proud to have worked with and commissioned poets like Jacqueline Ennis Cole, Paul Hawkins, Imogen Reid, Simon Tyrrell, Julia Rose Lewis, Patrick Cosgrove, Saradha Soobrayen, Mischa Foster Poole, Martin Wakefield, Sarah Dawson, Karen Sandhu, Iris Colomb and many others. / This page explores the events of Poem Brut and my performances associated with the project.

• Please visit www.poembrut.com for much more.

• My Poem Brut publications are all listed www.stevenjfowler.com/artbooks

Poem Brut celebrates artistic creative writing and its relationship with neurobiology - embracing text and colour, space and time, handwriting, composition, abstraction, illustration, sound, mess and motion - affirming the possibilities of the page, the pen, the process, the performance and the voice in a computer age. It is a project that celebrates genuine authentic originality in poetry, without overt recourse to biographical context and identity, and resists a literature of control, neatness, poise and direct, didactic meaning. Through over a dozen live events, nearly 100 commissions, exhibitions at The Poetry Society and Rich Mix, a series of new books and online publications on 3am magazine, Poem Brut has offered an alternative understanding of 21st century literature since 2017.

Poem Brut embraces aesthetic possibility and all possible artistic poetic methods of writing, making and presenting poetry. At the same time, it roots it’s activities in a mindful thinking through of the potentials and possibilities of neurological and physiological diversity for a literature that expands our understanding of what the medium can do. It is also, somehow, aberrantly and quietly, a discussion of the implications of psychology, psychiatry,, biology and neurology - a neuropoetics. Rooted in an exploration of cognitive difference, of everything from autism, dyslexia, aphasia and dyspraxia to mental health conditions, Poem Brut seeks to ask whether it is in service to original and powerful writing for writers and poets with these experiences to try and ‘escape’ them into sense and order, rather than embracing how their brains understand language.

My Poem Brut performances : 2017 - 2020

Live works concerned with material, paint, destruction, puppets, acting and talking, at Rich Mix, National Poetry Library, Museum of Futures.

Event # 13 - Poem Brut at Rich Mix : November 9th 2019

New performances and commissions by Kathy Pendrill, Richard Marshall, Jacqueline Ennis Cole, Khaled Hakim, Lizzy Turner, Paul Hawkins, Martin Wakefield, Mischa Foster Poole, SJ Fowler, Michael Sutton and Lisa Alexander.

A packed house watched another extraordinary and weird Poem Brut event exploring the fundamental and innovative potential of what a live poem might be. Poets, writers and artists, working in their own traditions, presented new works, made for the night, as performance. Live poems explored language against space, time, mess, colour, writing, speaking and moving.

EVENT #10 - POEM BRUT : MARCH TUESDAY 5TH 2019 - MUSEUM OF FUTURES

Event #9 - Poem Brut at Rich Mix: November 10th 2018

A really beautiful evening of more than adequate even considerable even beguiling night in east london, at rich mix, my home for Poem Brut, with 11 new performances from artist poets who all took to the task of the project with quite remarkable professionalism seriousness enthusiasm and vivacity. The works ranged from readings to naked wine baths, from bird paper throwing to choral sound poems, from live art peeling to cellophane octopi. My own performance I came up with about 45 minutes before talking to James Caley. I came up with around 10 phrases and repeated them each 5 times.

Event # 8 - Poem Brut at National Poetry Library, London - June 6th 2018

A brilliant event amongst the stacks of the NPL in Southbank Centre.

Event #6 - Poem Brut at Writers Centre Kingston - March 22nd 2018

Event 5 - Poem Brut at Rich Mix, London : March 17th 2018

Poem Brut is an exploration of artistic creative writing - poetry and colour, handwriting, composition, abstraction, scribbling, illustration - a project that aims to engage and energise poets, writers, artists, readers and listeners. Poem Brut affirms the possibilities of the page, the pen, the pencil for the poet in a computer age - generating over a dozen events, multiple exhibitions, workshops, conferences and publications.

Poem Brut aims to ask what is in the shape of a letter? What images do words recall? What is the meaning of colour in poetry and text upon the page? And white space? How does the situation of a poem change its meaning? Why is composition not a concept that applies to a medium that is innately visual? In literature, why has content overwhelmed context? Why has product dominated process? Poem Brut, in a playful, creative and accessible manner, aims to redress some of these concerns.

Poem Brut, conceptually, aims to not only support contemporary practitioners, but to illuminate an alternative history of modern poetry while exploring how innovative methods of poetry are often utterly purposeful - emerging from alternate experiences of language and consciousness in the world. In this way, Poem Brut aims to bridge a gap between poetry and art, and to support artists and poets who often have to navigate an unfortunate binary of outsider / insider.

Poem Brut will evidence the brilliance of poets working in underexplored traditions or whose work responds to their own alternative experience of consciousness, be that through neurological disorder, intellectual disability or mental health experience. It is a project which aims to share their methods and means, to create new works and bring light, primarily, to the inspiring potential of a poetry of colour, shape, composition, geometry, handwriting and material.

The project supposes that returning to the gestural and instinctual methods, often mistakenly associated with ‘high art / poetry’, can have an extraordinary effect on many individuals who are often ill at ease with formal learning of literature. In doing so, Poem Brut aims to create a narrative through historical poets who have explored this exciting territory, to show audiences and participants interested that they are part of a tradition. 

Poem Brut will be an examination of words that are meant to make you squint, to battle for legibility, rather than you be able to pinch and extend your thumb and forefinger against the page to get a closer look. It will be a celebration of scribbling, crossings out, forgotten notes, strange scrawls - the odd interaction between paper and pen, and pencil, and the colours that randomly collide. It is a project about the page as a block, about geometry, about lines that sever meaning, about inarticulate shapes, about minimalism and collage. It is about making, gesturing towards the handmade, the amateur, the outside, liquid and wood, ugliness, toilet wall draughtsmanship and mess. 

The Artists Supported by institutions like Rich Mix, Arts Council England, Wellcome Library, 3am magazine and more, Poem Brut will engage, publish and commission works from artists like Imogen Reid, Carlos Keshishian, Paul Hawkins, Hiromi Suzuki, Stephen Emmerson and many others. The project begins will a focus on the art poetry of SJ Fowler, as a base from which to expand. The brilliance of poets like Henri Michaux, Francesc Sempere, Hélène Smith, JB Murray, Asger Jorn, RB Kitaj, Franz Kline, Basquiat, Karel Appel, Christian Dotremont and many others are central to the project.