IPLA Collective events at Bouda Gallery

The IPLA collective (Matt Sokulsky, Danica Ignacio, Cameron Wade, Eleanor Wilders) have done a brilliant job running their debut exhibition in Notting Hill, a group show of conceptual and visual poetry and art. I’m happy to have had a little part in their work as a group and really pleased to see how much joy they’ve taken from running events over their show run. Six events in all, with dozens of poets, growing their community and announcing a new reading series for London and the UK. They’ve curated the events with warmth and charm, hosted some amazing performances, and I’ve been a part of two of the nights, with my latter performance here

Babs in Mercurius anthology

I’m happy to be part of this very ambitious anthology with poems by Babs the purple cat. https://www.mercurius.one/books/the-surreal-absurd-an-anthology-of-contemporary-surrealist-and-absurdist-poetry

It contains works by friends Ian McMillan, Tom Jenks, Aase Berg, Julia Rose Lewis, Dan Power, Luke Kennard, David Spittle, Stephen Sunderland, Mark Waldron, Ailbhe Darcy and many others

”Mercurius's ground-breaking Surreal‑Absurd anthology invites you into a realm where the everyday fractures into the uncanny, and the absurd gleams with mind-bending clarity. From fabulist prose‑poems to dream-logic nonsense, each piece is a tiny revolt—a refusal to accept realism's boundaries…. Born from a flash of invention and years of volunteer devotion, the Surreal–Absurd unites a once-scattered constellation of 80+ voices into a single, vibrant movement. Edited and curated by Thomas Helm, Marcus  Silcock, Vik Shirley, and Ben Niespodziany—each a surreal-absurd poet in their own right—this edition celebrates a golden age of surrealism: alive, open‑ended, and insistently popular. Read the introduction to the anthology here

Buy from one of these online stores UK

Barabus into Czech for Revue Prostor

The first chapter of my upcoming novella Barabus has been translated into Czech by Sylva Ficova for the Revue Prostor. https://revueprostor.cz/english Revue Prostor, founded in 1982 in Czech Republic, is a collective of journalists, academics, and writers.

Poet Peasant - closing the exhibition with film-poetry

Three weeks in Bouda Gallery for my exhibition Poet Peasant came to an end with a saturday afternoon poetry film event curated by David Spittle. It was indicative of my time in Notting Hill with my weird poetry show, www.stevenjfowler.com/poetpeasant thanks to Czech centre London - relaxed and charming. Thanks to all the friends and well wishers who came out over this time and the four events, to hang out and perform and make the summer a memorable one. The video below has some of my closing remarks and highlights from the screening

A note on : IPLA collective and their upcoming exhibition

I’m really happy that following my exhibition at Bouda Gallery, four poets will be following me with their own exhibition, as a way of announcing their new collective, which will likely be a feature of the British modern contemporary innovative literary and art scene for the foreseeable future. All four of them are talents, Danica Ignacio, Eleanor Wilders, Matt Sokulsky and Cameron Wade.

Their exhibition will be open for many days during August, Weds to Saturday from August 9th, 12 to 5pm, with more details here https://london.czechcentres.cz/en/program/the-sun-can-be-an-ipla-collective-exhibitionThe Sun Can Be: an IPLA collective exhibition, showcases the works of four young British-based poets operating in the fields of visual poetry, experimental textual poetry, text art, and the asemic. The works of the exhibition range from multimedia poetry, self-portraiture, and 3D poetry to typewriter art, lino print, and a prose-puzzle poem series exhibiting material, form and method as conveyors of shifting, alternate realities. From a triptych of calligrams that echo the Surrealism of Guillaume Apollinaire to a series of text art pieces, to conceptual poetry that reinterprets perspective. The Sun Can Be expands on these themes through unconventional and diversified aesthetics that redefine traditional poetry, and serves as a translation of the artistic intentions of the IPLA poets.”

There are six events all told, all visible here https://inparentheses.cargo.site/ all free and at 7pm. I’ll be performing on the 16th and 23rd of August, seen below.

EVENT 3 - SATURDAY 16TH AUGUST 2025
The third event in our series features an array of bespoke new readings and performances from the IPLA collective, and poets such as:SJ Fowler and Vanessa Onwuemezi, Irena Skopljak Barić, Victror Rees, Regina Avendano, and more to be announced!

EVENT 5 - SATURDAY 23RD AUGUST 2025
The penultimate fifth event in our series features an array of bespoke new readings and performances from the IPLA collective, Richard Marshall, SJ Fowler, Golnoosh Nour, Matt Martin, and more to be announced!

A note on : The publication of Cosgrovia

Patrick Cosgrove is one of the most influential poets of his generation in the British 21st century contemporary innovative landscape. He’s certainly been a big influence on me. For the launch of his long awaited selected poems, Cosgrovia, I was happy to help host it’s launch at my poet peasant exhibition and to write an essay for the book itself. Below are images from the event, and Patrick performing, and me reading excerpts of the essay I wrote.

Poet Peasant exhibition events 1 & 2

July 24th and 26th, many friends and kind visitors crammed into my exhibition to watch readings, performances, soundings, improvisations. Two lovely events, giving the exhibition new life. Highlights were watching Charles Boyle and Stephen Watts move people to tears recalling Sheila Ramage, who ran the bookshop where the gallery stands for 40 years. First readings for Sophia Rahim and Alex Murphy. Performances bigger than the space from Jonathan Boyd, Lavinia Singer, Victor Rees. The great quartet of the IPLA collective ever present. And my collaborations with Colin Herd - celebrating 10 years since the release of our book on Kokoschka - and Vanessa Onwuemezi - our second purely improvised sound poetry duet. All watchable www.stevenjfowler.com/poetpeasant

Poet Peasant : exhibition opening

July 11th saw the opening of my new solo exhibition, and the Czech Centre London did a grand job promoting it and getting a few people along. This video below shows clips from the event and includes a detailed tour of what’s in the exhibition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlTmBxT4EoI

Also I did a podcast, Art Talks with Sabina Tocháčková talking about the exhibition and more wide ranging things about poetry https://london.czechcentres.cz/en/blog/2025/07/when-art-talks-poet-peasant / https://open.spotify.com/episode/0qwqSgU9vsl2ddiWAO5TV1?si=9yOSv_8PQFy4OdqvDtFinQ

A note : collaborations at European Poetry Festival 2025

https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/2025 For my performances this fest I collaborated with Krisjanis Zelgis (a pro wrestling match), Vanessa Onwuemezi (a sound poetry improvised duet), Katarina Krupickova, twice (two dance poetry pieces, the first a contemporary dance with abstracted actions, the second a spinning talking performance), Maria Barnas (an anti-comedy talking performance) and Tom Jenks (a new batch of our Proverb poems). Some were perfect, some faltered, all good in the spirit of the thing as I tried to blend live work new to me with that which was familiar. All the videos below

Appearing on BBC Radio 4's The Verb

Really uplifting to be asked back to appear on the Verb after a few years since I last popped on. I’ve been treated so well by the show over the years, first on promoting the electronic voice phenomena tour in 2013 and then doing a couple of new commissions for them in the years to come. One of the best things I’ve ever written, in my opinion, was for the Verb (the Worm in it’s Core). This time I had the chance to discuss my festival, how I curate it, and read a poem I had written with Krisjanis Zelgis for the fest, with Ian McMillan. Quite the privilege to read with Ian. It was all really relaxed and fun and I was proper happy they left a few of my jokes in. It can be listened to here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002f6pf and at the video here, edited with my bits.

A note on : Poet Peasant on Culture Calling and the Upcoming

https://www.culturecalling.com/london/news/czech-centres-summer-artistic-residency

really nice my upcoming exhibition at the Bouda Gallery has been flagged by Culture Calling, it’s going to be a great month in Notting Hill. we have four events planned and the content of the exhibition has ended up being a really weird celebration of conceptual poetry as found objects and flotsam

nice too the exhibition was shared by The Upcoming too https://www.theupcoming.co.uk/2025/07/09/visual-poetry-exhibitions-open-for-summer-at-notting-hills-bouda-gallery/


A note on : Overly Verbal Ape by Julia Rose Lewis and Wil Franklin

Really something this has just come out

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Overly-Verbal-Ape-Studies-Fowler/dp/1916590160

Overly Verbal Ape: Studies in the Work of SJ Fowler

Fowler has emerged as a force in the world of experimental poetry and his work deserves serious critical engagement; therefore, The authors utilize The Great Apes as an entry into his larger body of work. He is so prolific because his work as an artist, collaborator, organizer, teacher, and writer provide fuel for his other practices….

It’s definitely the biggest published critical engagement with my work, which is wonderful. The copy mentions there hasn’t been a lot of critical engagement with my work, which doesn’t feel true to me anyway with Richard Marshall’s book length essays, Robert Sheppard’s extensive writing on my work and collaborations, David MacLagan on my asemic writing, Eric Jett’s writing on I will show you the life of the mind (on prescription drugs) etc. But all the same, I suppose this is relative because I’m not in or interested in the academic critical field.

Finished - European Poetry Festival 2025

www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/2025 All videos and photos at this lunk.

11 events, near enough 1000 people attending and 100s of poets too. I’m happy with it all, a fun vision to be into practise. It’s hard to describe the experience, prepping it for six months, welcoming so many people travelling in, old friends, new poets, going from night to night in this few weeks, venue to venue, performance to performance. Watching over 100 performances back to back. It’s intense, and enthusiastic. The stress is minimal, all physical. This year, more than any year before, I felt the culture and mission of the festival was understood by almost everyone involved. That it is a space for play, risk, experiment. People are free. And that it is supposed to be as communal, friendly, funny, welcoming as possible in experience, so the work can be as weird and strange as possible. That it doesn’t matter if the performances or poems are perfect, but that there is a culmination through each event of people building friendships through collaboration and innovation. This was consistent throughout each night in 2025.

I could write an essay about each event, the 125 people at the first Cypriot event, the synchronicity of the Flanders event, the communality of the Estonian event, the ritualism of the Lithuanian event, the wildness of the Norwegian event, the wit of the Austrian event, the wryness of the Latvian event, they were all really good. Wonderful to get to Norwich, Kingston, Liverpool, to engage the communities I’ve got to know around those places. It’s best to just let the videos and photos speak for the thing. There is extensive documentation of everything at the links below, please do click on them and have a watch of some of the performances.

I look forward to next year and want to say thank you to the people who dug in to support me in 2025 - Eleanor Wilders, Danica Ignacio, Matt Sokulsky, Cameron Wade, Katerina Koulouri, Caitlin Nugent, David Spittle, Julia Rose Lewis, and who were there, helping almost every night and with the documentation. 100s more too, so many friends amplified, and it worked.

Published : Levels of Care with Krisjanis Zelgis

Six years in the making this booklet is a record of a friendship, full of collaborative poetry and photos documenting the performances that instigated the poems. It’s come out so well, such high quality work from Alban at Sampson Low, as ever before. https://sampsonlow.co/2025/06/17/levels-of-care-krisjanis-zelgis-sj-fowler/

“Expanding the stomach, with water, in a bookshop. Hairdressing while on piggy back, in a university. Olympic wrestling, in the German embassy. Baby carries and leg drags in an arts centre. Human sculptures and gymnastic lifts in the Poetry Society. These are the things of poetry, naturally, if you are Krišjānis Zeļģis and SJ Fowler. In a Latvian-British collaborative duo that has gained it’s own strange kind of fame, through five performances in six years, a collaborative form has been generated, pioneered, that blends, uniquely, laconic, elegiac, dialogic literary poetry with physical, uncanny, generous conceptual performances. This book is then a inversion of the liveness that has made these collaborations whole, it is a return to the written word, an emphasis of that, and evidence all the same, of friendship, and of the potential of collaboration in literature.

LEVELS OF CARE : KRIŠJĀNIS ZEĻĢIS & SJ FOWLER
Published June 2025. ISBN 978-1-915505-52-1 / A5 Size
32 printed pages. Colour. Cimera Series #7. Print run of 200
Price – £4.99 BUY LEVELS OF CARE (£4.99 + £2.20 P & P)

This book was launched at the opening event of the European Poetry Festival 2025.

A note on : Concrete poem in Aswirl

Really happy to have a concrete poem in the summer edition of Robin Boothroyd’s Aswirl publication. The poem is taken from my Frog Circles series, using enso circles based on real inks I did in Japan, with poetry I wrote there too. Aswirl is unique, a really elegant, fold in celebration of the minimal and visual. There isn’t enough things celebrating this kind of poetry in the UK and Robin is doing a grand job.

This is issue 10 and is £4, though you subscribe too https://www.aswirlzine.com/product-page/issue-ten-summer

European Poetry Festival program completed! Final events added, please come!

Poet Peasant : July 11th - August 5th, a new exhibition at Bouda Gallery

https://www.stevenjfowler.com/poetpeasant

Poet Peasant : an exhibition by SJ Fowler
The Bouda Gallery – July 11th to August 5th 2025

An exhibition of poetry as curios, discovered text and found literary sculptures drawn from previously unseen works, selected asemic writing and the poetic props of performances across the globe. Drawing from fifteen years of rabid activity, this exhibition evidences the breadth of visual and conceptual poetry from one of the definitive experimentalists of the British 21st century literary scene. On the site of the former Notting Hill Books, a formative space for many, including Fowler, this exhibition emphasises the potential of the marginal, peculiar, detritus-as-poetry mode so removed from the medium’s stereotypical obsession with neatness, craft and clarity. From bear suits to homemade skeletons, handwritten novels to concrete poems, Poet Peasant represents some of the core aesthetic concerns of SJ Fowler - playful, eclectic and anti-singular, it is a deliberate mess of fun and weird visual literature that stretches the bounds of what poetry is.  www.stevenjfowler.com/poetpeasant

A new novella, Barabus, coming this winter

Excited to share this news https://tenementpress.com/BARABUS

PREORDER DIRECT FROM TENEMENT HERE  Following the 2022 Tenement publication of Fowler’s MUEUM,
shortlisted for the 2022/23 Republic of Consciousness Prize
for Small Presses, a second novella in his percolating trilogy of
fictions on the lore and estrangements of work and violence.

I have seen the world.
Voltaire, Candide

What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job.
I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg.
Luke                                         16:3

A medic roams an English city, going from call to call. As our protagonist roves from station to station they encounter accident, amusement, injury and error—minor ailment and major catastrophe alike—as they mis/adventure in the functionary detachment of applied temporary medicine. Whilst one tragedy seeds, another never materialises; whilst fear germinates and unease blooms, the plod and pace of a more pedestrian iteration of life prevails.

In a thread of instances laced with blood and banality, gore and gratuity—horrors both benign and ballooning—the medic is Fowler’s working witness to the body’s frailties. In their encounters, they see the structures and strictures and hierarchies of lived experience. How life can be boiled down to the ‘job,’ how a crisis can be crystallised in a single conversation, how calamity can overwhelm the senses, how hope hides in small rooms.
In riverine prose cooked down to concrete, this is a book about long, hard and strange work. The weird of exhaustion, the colour of tarmac, and the breadline of spirit. About the people that attend to the possibility of our continuity. About moral honesty, and what it costs to live in service of the needs of others. BARABUS is a novella about pragmatism in practice and the principled contradiction compounded in the idea of assistance and help. In our witness, we’ve the inversion of a god complex. A take on the idea of salvation lampooned in the function of a worker ‘on call,’ and the prospect of salvation sitting just a phone call away.

If a body is our ‘soft machine,’ as William S. Burroughs would put it, BARABUS is a book keen to picture the hard-edged horizon line of morbidity. A midnight-dark comedy with the bite and temerity of Chris Morris, the acerbity of Peter Weiss, Fowler’s second novella is a paean to the disarming directness of such authors as Yoram Kaniuk and, with the crunch of Anthony Burgess, is a book about our unnamed maladies and all our efforts to overlook them, override them, and correct them.” 

Final National Gallery commission of 2025 with Dan Abnett et al

https://www.stevenjfowler.com/nationalgallery/ Event IX - May 23rd 2025, With Dan Abnett, Danica Ignacio, Harper Stringer and Eleanor Wilders, the final event of 2025 and a superb walking tour poetry event led by art historian Fiona Alderton and curated by Joseph Kendra. I’ve admired Dan’s work for years so it was brilliant to see his fantastic readings. I’m a proper fan of his so it was grand to get to know him. I was very proud of three of my graduating students too, they did so well. Thanks so to all the kind folk who came along despite Trafalgar sq being thronged with Sunderland football fans.

Improvising with Benedict Taylor at ImproVox

Curated by Brian Webb and Stuart Wilding, ImproVox held it's 9th event at Bridewell Bar in the city of London on May 19th 2025. As part of a wider lineup, Benedict Taylor and I performed an entirely improvised duo. I was cold fogged so a bit much, but it did go well as it came out and the event was so welcoming and interesting and a venue in a part of London with huge significance for me. Benedict is a superb dance partner too