Published : The Selected Scribbling and Scrawling of SJ Fowler

Years in the making, The Selected Scribbling and Scrawling of SJ Fowler (me) is now available from Zimzalla. zimzalla.co.uk/051-sj-fowler-scribbling-and-scrawling-2nd-edition/

From the publisher - The Selected Scribbling and Scrawling of SJ Fowler is an assembly of hand-drawn, instinctive visual poems from beyond the ragged edge of language. Arguably the most comprehensive book of asemic poetry ever published in the UK, this sizeable revamped new edition includes images of live asemic performances alongside over 100 visual poems divided, and introduced, in chapters. Asemic neurons butt up against poetic constellations, portraits and diagrams. The volume is bookended with new articles on the asemic endeavours of SJ Fowler from David MacLagan, Tim Gaze, Michael Jacobsen and David Spittle, plus a written interview between Fowler and Zimzalla editor Tom Jenks. Click here for a sample.

Click here to buy for £11.99 in the UK.

I'm happy to announce the release of my latest visual poetry book, collecting the vast majority of my asemic writing in one beautifully produced volume. I had the best time working on this, developing the first edition, working with Tom Jenks. It means the world to me too that the volume is full of brilliant reflections on my scribbles by such luminaries in the asemic world - David Maclagan, Tim Gaze, Michael Jacobsen, they all influenced me a lot, and the long critical piece by David Spittle is brilliant. I spent all summer tinkering, theorising around these abstract writings, really working hard on my intros to each section, and this book is the result, a true consolidation of my travails into asemia

A note on : The Selected Scribbling and Scrawling...coming soon

I’ve put my heart in this one. So much of my lockdown summer has been thinking through asemic writing / poetry, what I’m doing, what it is, who has come before me. I’ve found so much work that was new to me and shared some things too, for example doing this online lecture for Arnolfini UWE for example.

This is a 2nd edition of a book published in 2018 with Tom Jenk’s longstanding and brilliant Zimzalla avant objects press. It’s become twice the size, multiple chapters of asemic poetry with introductions, over 100 works, plus appendices including essays by David Spittle, David MacLagan (who is an incredible figure in promoting outsider art ideas and scribbling - the pioneer, critically, of the field) and others, and a long interview.

This will be the 3rd in the poem brut series, but now the 5th.

It’s a great time to be sharing this book, which should be out late September, early October, and in the meantime, I’m encourage any purchases of the Zimzalla backcatalogue, which is extraordinary https://zimzalla.co.uk/

Published : Asemic poems for Love in the time of covid

Big thanks to Vaughan Rapatahana in NZ for this publication. He’s part of a project that (from the site) “offers an unprecedented opportunity for voices all over the world to share, in quality fiction and non-fiction, poetry and dialogue, art and music and more, the collective experiences of the international community during COVID.” https://loveinthetimeofcovidchronicle.com

My asemic poems are very recent, taken from my upcoming book The Selected Scribbling and Scrawling of SJ Fowler with Zimzalla Press. One is a crystal and one a landscape. https://loveinthetimeofcovidchronicle.com/2020/08/07/asemic-s-j-fowler/

Here is what I wrote for the site “i suppose, in a sense, a great deal of the experiences we have all gone through, if not the actual horrible sickness of covid itself, has been one of self-confrontation through lockdown’s pragmatic and practical limitations on our movements and space. in this sense then, i am interested in a poetry that acknowledges its inability to eloquently express inner dialogue, mood swings, clouded thought patterns, meaningless and often banal swings of feeling, and the expression of that. i think asemic, or semantically fraught poetry, gets to that. these poems are about synapses flashing and other things you can’t see but see anyway.”

A note on : Poetry of rearguard consciousness on The Learned Pig

The Learned Pig is a really considerable online journal and recently they’ve been publishing thematic issues. The latest is on Rhythm, edited by Rachel Goldblatt and I have a series of asemic poems in the issue. http://www.thelearnedpig.org/the-poetry-of-rearguard-consciousness/7780

I wrote “The scribble or scrawl is not a secondary product born of distraction, but a primary neurological output triggered when concentration moves downwards, expressing the minds fundamental rhythm of brain to hand movement. The poetry of rearguard consciousness, it is more often a product of writing than visual art. So why does poetry, the language art, not hold scribbling closer to its chest as a mediator of our internal writing rhythm?”

The work is taken from my upcoming book - The Selected Scribbling and Scrawling of SJ Fowler : Asemic Poems - to be published by ZimZalla. The work is a 2nd edition of a 2018 book but will be greatly expanded with over 100 works in a dozen asemic chapters plus lots of appendices like interviews and articles.

A note on : asemic poem in Mellom Press exhibition "Home"

Happy to have a new work in the second Mellom Press online exhibition, curated by Silje Ree. Some excellent visual works in there, worth a look, on the theme of home. https://mellompress.com/home/ My work is about where I grew up, Exeter.

The work is taken from my upcoming book - The Selected Scribbling and Scrawling of SJ Fowler : Asemic Poems - to be published by ZimZalla. The work is a 2nd edition of a 2018 book but will be greatly expanded with over 100 works in a dozen asemic chapters plus lots of appendices like interviews and articles.

Published: Selected Scribbling and Scrawling : - ZimZalla

Available to buy here http://www.lulu.com/shop/http://www.lulu.com/shop/sj-fowler/selected-scribbling-and-scrawling/paperback/product-23659470.html

My new asemic writing / art-poetry collection is now available from Zimzalla Press. It contains over 50 works of writing art, pansemic poems, doodles and scrawls, celebrating poetry that harries semantic content and explores the possibilities of the handwritten and illegible. The book contains essays by Tom Jenks and myself, and will be launched on June 6th at National Poetry Library for Poem Brut.

From the publisher "The scrawl or doodle is not a by-product of distraction; it is an active production of the mind when concentration moves downwards in the brain. It is the poetry of the mind’s rearguard, and it is more often a product of writing, pen in hand, than it is a visual art. So why should poetry, the language art, not have held scribbling to its chest? This volume of SJ Fowler’s collected works in the line let loose tradition attempts to return the wandering shapes of letters and words back to the front. Selected from over 1300 works spanning 11 & ½ years and touching upon asemic and pansemic writing, widely varying in tone, density, form and character, this selection of poems shows SJ Fowler’s fundamental impatience and childishness."

A note on: Selected Scribbling & Scrawling launches June 6th

My third artbook or art-poetry book arrives on June 6th with the remarkable ZimZalla. https://zimzalla.co.uk/ They have been putting out truly avant garde publications for many years and I'm pleased I get to launch it at the National Poetry Library as part of the Poem Brut event there that night https://www.poembrut.com/poetry-library

The scrawl or doodle is not a by-product of distraction; it is an active production of the mind when concentration moves downwards in the brain. It is the poetry of the mind’s rearguard, and it is more often a product of writing, pen in hand, than it is a visual art. So why should poetry, the language art, not have held scribbling to its chest? This volume of SJ Fowler’s collected works in the line let loose tradition attempts to return the wandering shapes of letters and words back to the front. Selected from over 1300 works spanning 11 & ½ years and touching upon asemic and pansemic writing, widely varying in tone, density, form and character, this selection of poems shows SJ Fowler’s fundamental impatience and childishness.

A note on: Museum of Futures: Scribbling & Scrawling exhibition ends

Another magic engagement with Surbiton's Museum of Futures, a unique community gallery that I've been able to work with through Writers' Centre Kingston and Kingston University. Students, local artists and writers, and those able to travel to the gallery nearby contributed to a brilliant month long exhibition of writing art, aligned with my poem brut project, on the theme of scribbling and scrawling. The work was uniformly good and once more, by taking on the labour of an open submission process, I had the chance to meet a load of talented new people, from Nicole Polonsky to Denise McCullough, there was some real discoveries for me. Moreover my students had the chance to see their work walled for the first time, and help me, significantly, in the curation of the show and it's events.

www.writerscentrekingston.com/futures lots more about the exhibition on the site, as well as the launch event here www.writerscentrekingston.com/making