A note on: Upcoming performances & events in March and April

March 3rd: Praxis at Parasol Unit, London
Performing a new work responding to Julian Charriere's amazing exhibition, alongside Maja Jantar, Sharon Gal, Simon Pomery and others. http://parasol-unit.org/poetry-innovations-praxis

March 5th & 6th: Stanza Festival, St.Andrews, Scotland
On a panel exploring poetry and the body, responding to a film about bp nichol, and leading a workshop about collaboration, alongside two performances. http://stanzapoetry.org/festival/poets-artists/fowler

March 18th: Soundings IV with Tamarin Norwood
A performance work for video, situated in Wellcome Library itself, responding to materials given by the librarians for the artist Tamarin Norwood and I to respond to. http://www.stevenjfowler.com/soundings

March 20th: The Essex Book Festival, First site Gallery, Colchester
Curating a Camarade with 10 pairs of poets for the festival, and reading with David Berridge, to launch our book, 40 feet, from Knives forks and spoons press. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/essex

March 24th to 26th: The Iskele Kibatek International Poetry Festival in Cyprus
Part of the 7th Annual Iskele Municipality Culture and Art Days, this festival sees poets from around Europe present their work, including Nurduran Duman and Jennifer Williams.

March 31st: Kakania returns at Austrian Cultural Forum, London
Kakania in London once again, with new commissions in the evening and a symposium of new presentations in the day. New work from Steve Beresford, Diane Silverthorne, Declan Ryan & more. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/kakania2016

April 2nd: The English PEN Modern Literature Festival - Rich Mix, London
30 English writers celebrate 30 writers at risk currently supported by English PEN with brand new works of literature. 2pm til late, all over one day. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/englishpen

April 6th: The Night-time Economy Exhibition opening - The Riverfront, Newport, Wales
A new exhibition between myself and the photographer Kate Mercer, poetry and photography exploring the fractious energy of Newport's nightlife. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/nighttimeeconomy

April 23rd: The University Camarade
Curating a Camarade which pairs 20 students from creative writing departments of 5 different universities to create 10 new works in pairs. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/unicamarade

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Published: 2 limited editions released in March: Tractography (Pyramid Editions) & 40 Feet (Knives Forks & Spoons press)

Very pleased to see two new publications emerge in March. 

Tractography is the first of a new series of poems, called Neurocantos, and is launched in a boutique limited edition by Pyramid Editions, edited by Owen Vince. The poem is partially built from the words of a paper by the neuroscientist Daniel Margulies. http://pyramideditions.co.uk/

40 Feet, written with David Berridge is to be launched at the Essex Book Festival Camarade, on March 20th 2016, 40 Feet is published by Knives Forks and Spoons press. http://knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/ 

40 Feet is a poem in dialogue. 40 poems as 40 moments, 40 fragments, 40 conversation starters / enders. It is a poem deliberately broken, misheard, overheard and overlapping. It is a record of meeting, writing, witnessing; mulching and reflecting London in 2013, where both poets lived and frequently met. 40 Feet is the events of that time and the character of that place, fixed in the subjective, the miniature, the specific - through an open-ended poetics of expression and conversation. 

An excerpt featured in Enemies: the selected collaborations of SJ Fowler (2013) and is now published in it's entirety by Knives, Forks & Spoons press. And you can read more about David's work herehttp://verysmallkitchen.com/ 

A note on: Buenos Aires

One of the most amazing experiences I've had, travelling with poetry. I could not have experienced more hospitality and generosity, and the quality and enthusiasm of the Argentine poets was remarkable.

I've fashioned a whole page dedicated to the Enemies Project in Buenos Aires, which has pictures, videos of all the performances and in depth travelogue of what we did. http://www.stevenjfowler.com/argentina

A note on: Praxis at Parasol Unit, performing alongside Maja Jantar, Sharon Gal et al

I'm really excited to perform at Parasol Unit on March 3rd, as part of Simon Pomery's brilliant new series Praxis alongside a remarkable lineup, including two artists who've influenced me so much, Maja Jantar and Sharon Gal. http://parasol-unit.org/poetry-innovations-praxis

I'll be presenting a brand new performance piece and then collaborating with Sharon and Maja, responding to Julien Charriere's exhibition, currently in situe at Parasol Unit, a gallery and institution I've admired for years. Nice this is the occasion I first get to perform there, and here is the last time Maja and I collaborated, for Soundings. 

PRAXIS is an innovative poetry and sound art series curated by Simon Pomery and Lala Thorpe of the Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, as part of the Poetics Research Centre Events at Royal Holloway. The inaugural PRAXIS will be held at Parasol on Thursday the 3rd of March, 2016, 7-9pm. 

Maja Jantar is a multilingual and polysonic voice artist living in Ghent, Belgium, whose work spans the fields of performance, music theatre, poetry and visual arts. A co-founder of the group Krikri, she has been giving individual and collaborative performances throughout Europe and experimenting with poetic sound works since 1995 – weaving operatic, poetic, noise, and abstract influences together to vocal sound works. https://majajantar.wordpress.com/

Sharon Gal - Artist, vocal experimentalist, musician, composer, and founding member of Resonance 104.4 FM. Her solo works have been released by Ash International/ Paradigm records/ Chocolate Monk / Emanem / Ecstatic Yod /American Tapes & The Tapeworm Labels, with the recent Voice Studies, on My Dance the Skull. http://www.sharon-gal.com/

Steven J Fowler is a poet, artist, curator & vanguardist. He has published multiple collections of poetry and been commissioned by Tate Modern, the British Council, Tate Britain, Highlight Arts, Mercy, Penned in the Margins, the London Sinfonietta and the Wellcome Collection with Hubbub group. He is the poetry editor of 3am magazine, curator of the Enemies project, and teaches at Kingston University. Enthusiasm was published by Test Centre in 2015.  http://www.stevenjfowler.com/

The event also features performances and readings from the excellent Will Montgomery http://selvageflame.com/ Robert Hampson, Gareth Damian Martin jumpovertheage.com and Simon Pomery himself  http://cargocollective.com/simonpomery  

Published: Poem in which a knife bursts a bubble in Poems in Which: Issue 9

Very pleased to have a poem in the brilliant Poems in Which journal, headed up by a committee of really fine poets, a collective edited magazine. This is a great issue too, has work by friends whose work I admire very much, Harry Man, Joe Dunthorne, Ella Frears and many other fine poets. Issue 9 in it's entirety here https://poemsinwhich.com/issue-9/

& my poem, Poem in which a knife bursts a bubble https://poemsinwhich.com/2016/02/22/poem-in-which-a-knife-bursts-a-bubble/

Published: Hugh the Iron in the Black Market ReView

very happy to have one of my Gates of Paradise poems, part of a series of texts I've written over the years about the history of christianity, this time about the child crusade, published in the Black Market ReView, edited by Luke Thurogood and co, all student led at Edge Hill University.

A great edition, features Robert Hampson, Daniele Pantano and other fine poets http://blackmarketre-view.weebly.com/

A note on: Ovinir - Icelanders in London - January 30th

Hosting the Icelanders who had been so hospitable to me in Iceland, Ovinir visited Rich Mix on January 30th with four poets visiting, writing new collaborations with local poets, and three new collective performances, made up of younger poets, or those newer to the Enemies project, from courses I've run at Kingston Uni, Poetry School and Tate Modern, to round off a remarkable night. More than 120 people packed the venue to standing room only, and the works presented were of the highest quality. Wonderful to see the Icelanders get the audience and reception they deserved, and to see them, everyone involved so satisfied with what was an example of what the Enemies Project can do when all is aligned in our favour.

It was also the night of my favourite work of the project, from my own creative standpoint, my collaboration with Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir. A work full of raw energy, a desire to confront, to amuse, to inculcate awkwardness alongside humour. A product too, as often the best collaborations are, of a growing friendship, and an immediate kinship between Asta and I, one felt from the first moment we met, owed to the project. We create a kind of performance triptych, from the invasive performance, to the poem and song, to the metadialogue and humour valve. I've rarely been so satisfied with a live work, all owed to Asta's brilliance. www.stevenjfowler.com/iceland

A note on: Iceland - Reykjavik & The Library of Water, Stykkishólmur - January 2016

For more pictures & videos visit my page dedicated to Iceland www.stevenjfowler.com/iceland

Part One: In Reykjavik, Ovinir at the Iðnó Theatre - January 22nd 2016

I had the chance to spend a few days in Reykjavik before the Ovinir: Enemies Project event at the Iðnó theatre. A privilege, and all the more so because I was fundamentally not needed. Valgerður Þóroddsdóttir, my co-curator of Ovinir, has the gift of being as organised as she is talented. I stayed right in the centre of the city, in a plush hotel, thanks to the support from UNESCO Reykjavik city of literature and had the chance to meet old friends like Bryndís Björgvinsdóttir and Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, and make firm new ones in Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir and Matthías Tryggvi Haraldsson. A strange few days in many respects, Reykjavik’s creative output so well known and fetishised by the hordes of tourists, so much more conspicuous than London being as it is a small place, that a certain pressure for beauty and inspiration sits on a city which can be stunning in its starkness and idiosyncrasy but is also quite brutal in its architecture and self-aware in its culture. I’ve always felt a little alienated when visiting. What perhaps is best about this is the juxtaposition the city itself provides to its inhabitants, those I have got to know at least, who, once known, are uniformly hospitable, generous, down to earth and funny. 

The event itself was a huge success, and quite rightly this fell on Valgerður's shoulders. Way over a hundred people crammed into the Iðnó theatre, a hall that must be one of the grandest places the Enemies project has visited. Poets, writers, artists, performers and rappers were invited to collaborate, twenty of us in ten pairs, as ever with a design to mix communities, inculcate a closeness of exchange through collaboration and speed. I cannot speak Icelandic so I was lost to the content, but all the more aware then of how engaged the audience was, and how so many of the pairs took risks in experimenting with theatre and concept in their literary works. Such a range, the accentuation of difference improved each new work. Valgerður and I read a poem we had fed to the other eighteen performers in bits, so their voices popped up from the audience, synchronising with ours as the poem grew, creating a chorus. A nice way to mediate our roles as organisers, though once again, this was a rare night where I had almost nothing to do but watch and offer my congratulations to her and the other 18 poets who performed. 

Part Two: Vatnasafn / The Library of Water, Stykkishólmur - January 23rd 2016

The inarguably oppressive architecture and social posture of Reykjavik was left behind as we drove out of the city, following the west coast of Iceland, Valgerður having rented a car to take myself, Asta and Matthias on a roadtrip to Stykkishólmur, to the Library of Water, Vatnasafn, where we would perform with Bryndís Björgvinsdóttir and the musician Marteinn Sindri Jónsson.

The stunning terrain of Iceland, it’s scale and shocking beauty were apparent within minutes of leaving the city. Mountains rising out of the bay, wild horses, volcanic scrub. Matthias, Valgerður and Asta could not have been better company, witty, generous and energetic. Everything good about the country is in these people. It became apparent that leaving the city with my new friends was the best thing I could've done, knowing of course my experience of any place, so briefly, is purely subjective and shallow, and that I was completely foreign to the place. But the energy between us, and the curiously affecting atmosphere of a roadtrip offered me a really inspiring experience. About an hour of Asta’s cockney accent and my explanations of English idioms, and why red headed people are derided in the UK, passed the time before we stopped off at Borgenes, where the wind was so strong coming into the inlet that the water seemed to snake across bay and you had to lean into the gale to walk.

The occasional piece of brutalist concrete, a plant or works or factory, or the occasional abandoned house dotted the landscape as we cut across land to Stykkishólmur, away from the sea, stopping to briefly stare into a volcanic valley. We arrived in Stykkishólmur about four hours after we left Reykjavik, but I would’ve had it go on twice as long if I could. We immediately went to the Vatnasafn, an art installation as a permanent gallery, obscurely (and wonderfully) situated in a fishing village, albeit a particularly beautiful one. Roni Horn founded it and it has housed many writers, living in the apartment below the gallery, as residents. The space has numerous lighted tubes, filled with water from local glaciers, known as hotspots for psychic energy, as the town is known for ghosts. Lots to draw from for the performances. 

The evening’s events in Vatnasafn was really remarkable and it'll stay long in my memory. Our crowd were less than double figures, just us, the six of us sharing work, and a handful of people from the town. The light of the water tubes, a few white chairs, a reading followed by music followed by performance, it felt natural and bracketed, a closed world for a small group of people, who were able to engage directly with each other. Bryndis talked about her children’s literature, Marteinn played beautiful, gentle songs with his guitar, Asta provoked the smattering of locals with pointed questions about her dislike of cucumber water and disputed, to herself, how much of her own constitution was liquid, Valgerður and Matthias circled their warped reflections in the water tubes while reciting. I tore up my book, shared it with the audience, burnt the pages, doused them in a tub of water and then submerged myself in that water, reading as I had to emerge, breathless. I pasted the wet pages of my destroyed books to the tubes and Asta and Marteinn finished the evening, their enviable musical talent picking between the charred paper and puddles of water I had left. I watched them play, from behind the small crowd, watched my friends, most of whom I had not know two days before, entranced as a whole, as Marteinn and Asta sang.

Everyone helped clearup the mess I had made and the local restaurant Valgerður had worked in as a teenager, Sjávarpakkhúsið, stayed open late to cook for us. The food, like the hotel, were free, an act of amazing hospitality. The six of us talked and ate, as naturally as old friends, before a group of slightly drunk (friendly) local men entered. One emplored Marteinn to play the piano we were sitting beside. Marteinn, a classically trained pianist, gently, reluctantly, turned to play, and soon had the entire room singing in Icelandic. I took this video. It’ll seem cloy to describe how beautiful a moment it was, an impossible series of events had to happen for it to take place, and Marteinn’s talent, so generously shared with us on that evening, displayed in such improvised circumstance, when in flow, was like witnessing the room slowly filling with water. A beautiful moment to close my time in the country.

A note on: The Enemies Project - Spring Programme 2016

The Enemies Project Spring Programme 2016 includes Icelandic, Argentinian and Georgian Enemies projects, Camarade events in Essex and St.Andrews, the return of Kakania in London and Berlin, a collaborative exhibition in Newport, a collaborative event involving five Universities and a one day festival celebrating English PEN and their writers-at-risk project. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/springprogram16/ 

January Sat 30th: Ovinir: an Icelandic Enemies project in London
Rich Mix Arts Centre : 7.30pm : Free entrance
Óvinir brings together two generations of Icelandic poets and writers to the UK to premiere brand new collaborations with British poets following events in Iceland. A unique chance to see some of the most interesting performers in Europe, feat. Valgerður Þóroddsdóttir & Jack Underwood, Eiríkur Örn Nörðdahl & Hannah Silva, Joanna Walsh & Andri Snær Magnason, Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir, Inua Ellams, Vahni Capildeo & more. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/iceland

February 3rd to 10th: The Enemies Project: Argentina
The Enemies project in Buenos Aires; an embedded collaborative program between a host of poets from Argentina and the UK, writing brand new collaborations over nearly a week in the Argentinian capital. Featuring Julián López, Anahí Mallol, Camilo Sanchez, Patrick Coyle & more. Co-curated by Flavia Daniela Pittella. www.theenemiesproject.com/argentina

February 29th: Respites: Wellcome Collection - London
Respites is a carefully curated series of day-long gatherings, exploring ideas and activities about rest, pleasure, contentedness, critical thinking and creativity. It is aimed at being a generative and respectful series of engagements with people who need and deserve more respite than they receive. Respites is curated by Ayesha Nathoo, Lynne Friedli and Steven J. Fowler, and is supported by, and part of, the Hubbub group, in residence at Wellcome Collection. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/respites

March Saturday 5th: The StanZa Camarade – St.Andrews
http://stanzapoetry.org/festival/events/stanza-camarade-performance
Camarade Workshop - 13:00 - 16:00 (The Town Hall, Queens Gardens - Upstairs Foyer) followed by the performance 15:55 - 16:10 in the Supper Room
The StAnza Camarade will see new collaborations written by poets both attending and participating in the festival, and a collaborative workshop beforehand. The StAnza festival are pleased to offer the opportunity to take part in the workshop and performance for a small group of attendees. Anyone who would like to participate in the project should email a short biography to stanza@stanzapoetry.org. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/stanza

March Sunday 20th: The Essex Camarade – Colchester
at the First Site Gallery - 1pm to 3.30pm - Free Entrance
Commissioned by the Essex Book Festival, this Camarade will see a series of brand new collaborations written by poets in pairs, from the Essex area or attending the festival especially. Feat. James Davies & Philip Terry, Vicki Weitz & Isabella Martin. Anna Townley & Lawrence Bradby, Jeff Hilson & Tim Atkins & more. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/essex

March Thursday 31st: Kakania at the Austrian Cultural Forum: London
Kakania returns to London after five extraordinary events in 2015, and two unique publications. Contemporary artists present new literary performance commissions, each responding to a figure of the Habsburg Era. www.kakania.co.uk (date to be confirmed)

April Saturday 2nd: The English PEN Modern Literature Festival
Over 30 contemporary English writers present works new works, each in tribute to a writer who is part of the English PEN Writer's at Risk programme, writers living under oppression around the world. The one day festival takes at Rich Mix, 2pm onwards, in 3 sessions throughout the day. All are free to attend but attendees are encouraged to join English PEN. Feat. Mark Ravenhill, Caroline Bergvall, Sam Winston, Emily Berry, Emily Critchley & many more. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/englishpen

April Thursday 7th: The Night-Time Economy: an exhibition, Newport
The Riverfront Theatre & Arts Centre: Newport. 7.30pm. A collaborative exhibition of photography and poetry from Kate Mercer and SJ Fowler exploring the often violent environment of Newport's nightclubs and pubs. This special view event will feature readings and is supported by Arts Council Wales and Poetry Wales. The exhibition runs for three weeks. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/nighttimeeconomy

April Saturday 23rd: The University Camarade
Entrance is free. 7.30pm doors for 8pm start http://www.richmix.org.uk/
The University Camarade will present over 10 new collaborative works, premiered on the night, written by pairs of young poets, all of whom are undertaking study in Creative Writing departments at five different UK Universities including Kingston, Glasgow, Edge Hill, York St John. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/unicamarade

May Monday 9th: Kakania in Berlin
8pm at Österreichisches Kulturforum Berlin
Kakania debuts in Berlin, with new literary performance commissions from contemporary artists, each of whom will present a work that celebrates / responds to a figure from the Habsburg era. Featuring Max Höfler on Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maja Jantar on Lou Andreas Salome, Stephen Emmerson on Rainer Maria Rilke, Tomomi Adachi on Paul Wittgenstein, Ernesto Estrella on Gustav Mahler and Ann Cotten on Otto Neurath. http://theenemiesproject.com/kakaniaberlin

May Saturday 14th: The Enemies Project: Switzerland for European Literature Night
A night of new collaborations celebrating contemporary European poetry at Rich Mix, with a cohort of Swiss poets collaborating with British counterparts, amongst others. The event is part of the wider European Literature Night celebrations.

May 16th to 21st: Mtrebi: a Georgian Enemies project in Tbilisi
An Enemies Project in Tbilisi, three British poets visit the Georgian capital to create new collaborations with local writers. Feat. Luke Kennard, Sarah Howe & more. Co-curated by Davit Gabunia.

Supported by UNESCO Reykjavik City of Literature, The British Council, Norwich Writer's Centre, International Literature Showcase Fund, El Tercer Lugar, The StanZa festival, The Essex Book Festival, English PEN, Arts Council Wales, Austrian Cultural Forum London, Österreichisches Kulturforum Berlin, University of Kingston, Glasgow, Edge Hill and York St. Johns, Rich Mix & more.

www.theenemiesproject.com

A note: my commission for The Verb on BBC Radio 3 - January 15th broadcast

A new page for my second appearance on The Verb, a brilliant, inspiring day at Media City in the company of Ian McMillan, Charles Fernyhough, Jennifer Hodgson and David Morley. 

www.stevenjfowler.com/theverb 

Amazing to be able to write this new piece of poetry, or theatre / performance as I see it, for The Verb and on such a wonderful topic and project. One of my favourite commissions I’d say.

"The Worm in its Core was commissioned as a new poem / performance by Radio 3's The Verb, hosted by Ian McMillan, for broadcast on January 15th 2016, in response to Hearing the Voice - a project which explores, and demystifies auditory verbal hallucinations. A great privilege to write something responding such a vital and intelligently conceived project, and to share it on The Verb, which has always maintained a laudable balance between all forms and modes of literature, bringing them where they belong, together, in brilliant conjunction."

A note on: Camarade 61 at Apiary Studios - January 16th 2016

The 61st time I have paired poets in a great grouping to share new collaborations. This time it was to continue to energy of last year’s teaching, with people I’d met from my courses at Kingston University, Tate Modern and the Poetry School, along with some other new faces who have crossed my path, participating. We were housed in the bar adjacent to Apiary Studios, a new space, and it proved a energetic, encouraging and memorable night. Lots of very young poets, either in age or in writing experience, and it’s inevitably gratifying to see the curatorial model working so well to help good people develop and experiment. Some wonderful works on the night and a pleasure for me to once again collaborate with Prudence Chamberlain.

All the videos are here, with some pair picture portraits too. www.theenemiesproject.com/camarade

A note on: Magma Poetry's National Conversation Event: Peel & Portion - Jan 15th 2016

A real pleasure to spend an evening the company of the Magma magazine audience, for an event exploring drafting, its process and concepts, curated by John Canfield and hosted by Patrick Davidson Roberts. I always enjoy speaking to people who aren’t perhaps familiar with my work, or even the philosophies that underpin, who see modernism or the avant-garde as something alien (though I don’t want to assume too much). It was an evening where the insights given by Rebecca Perry and Kathryn Maris, both of whom spoke wonderfully, complimented my more discursive, fundamental questions and ideas. And the audience really seemed to engage with this, the collective impetus of the event, and the notion that I want to question certain assumed ideas about what drafting means, from the creative impulse, to the notion of a language idea, to refining, to what might be called a finished piece. And that these questions aren’t necessarily antagonistic to more confirmed notions, that seem to proffer control of language in poetry. I was really touched to have quite a few people stop me after speaking and share their thoughts and enthusiasm and was very grateful to John and the team at Magma for having me involved in a really positive event in the lovely environs of the Teahouse Theatre in Vauxhall.

A note on: a World without Words V - January 9th

The last event of the first (and I hope not last) year of a World without Words, which has been curated by Lotje Sodderland, Thomas Duggan and myself. We returned to Apiary Studios, where we began, and hosted artists Sarah Kelly, Christian Patracchini, who both offered powerful, intimate performances, alongside neuroscientist Daniel Margulies, curator and art historian Elena Agudio, and resilience therapist Gillian Bridge. Once again we were fortunate to have a great turnout and feel gratified that our open, eclectic, immersive curatorial approach, to let discussion and performance sit by side by side, to allow technical information blend with avant garde art, seemed to effect people in the best possible way. www.aworldwithoutwords.com

< 2015

As the year dies off, it's a chance to reflect on a really remarkable 12 months past and say a few thank you's to those who  have been so generous as to make everything that transpired, mentioned below, so remarkable. Here is 2015 in review:

• a launch for my latest book {Enthusiasm} this June past, published by the amazing Test Centre press. Gratitude to Jess Chandler & Will Shutes. A discerning review here by Richard Marshall.

• debut solo exhibition, Mahu, took place across June and July, at the Hardy Tree Gallery in Kings Cross, a book handwritten onto the walls, with 11 events across the run. Thanks to Cameron Maxwell & Amalie Russell, and the over 50 poets and writers who contributed.

• Throughout 2015, I was in residence with Hubbub group at Wellcome Collection, sharing the space with neuroscientists, social scientists and other researchers. I launched my Soundings project with Hubbub and Wellcome Library, performing with Emma Bennett, Dylan Nyoukis & Maja Jantar. Thanks to James Wilkes, Kimberley Staines & many others.

• a debut play, Dagestan, was produced to scratch at the Rich Mix Theatre, thanks to an amazing cast, director Russell Bender and producer Tom Chivers, of Penned in the Margins.

• I performed a new commission for Tate Modern in June, and then taught a course for the institution in November. Thanks to Joseph Kendra & Marianne Mulvey, and everyone who attended.

• Really wonderful to join the faculty at Kingston University, as a lecturer in the Creative Writing department.
  
  With The Enemies Project, I had the pleasure of curating multiple international collaborative projects:

• Gelynion, with Nia Davies, thanks to Arts Council Wales. Remarkable events from Newport to Bangor, finishing at Hay-on-Wye Festival.

• Feinde, with Austrian poets, thanks to the Austrian Cultural Forum, including multiple events & an exhibition celebrating concrete poetry.

• Croatia, with Tomica Bajsic & co, thanks to Croatian PEN and others, a wonderful mini-tour of Croatia and an event in London.

• Enemigos, with Mexican poets, thanks to British Council, Conaculta and the London bookfair.

• Wrogowie, with Polish poets, thanks to Polish Institute London.

• Nemici, with Italian poets from across Europe.

• Kakania, celebrating Habsburg Austrian culture, supported by Austrian Cultural Forum, saw memorable events in the Freud Museum, the Horse Hospital and the ACF, with over 40 new commissions. It also produced two books – an anthology of the project’s work and a new collaborative collection written by Colin Herd and I, about the life of Oskar Kokoschka.

• a launch of the 2nd edition of my book Fights, published by Veer Books, at Apiary Studios in October. Big thanks to the publishing committee at Veer and the authors who celebrated the sport of boxing with me on the night.

• A World without Words, curated with Lotje Sodderland and Thomas Duggan, saw 4 events in 2015, including at Somerset House and the Frontline Club. A remarkable success exploring the human brain, language, neuroscience & art with some amazing thinkers, not least Lotje & Tom.

• I spoke at the School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt University, Berlin, thanks to Daniel Margulies, and became a Salzburg Global Fellow, for a conference on creativity and the brain. also attended the International Literature Showcase in Norwich thanks to the British Council and Writer’s Centre Norwich, and contributed to a panel on technology and literature.

• attended the Berlin Poetry Festival in June and curated a Camarade with Lettretage while visiting the city. The same organisation kindly hosted me for their Literary Activists Conference in February.

• attended Festina Lente in Paris in March, hosted by Martin Bakero and collaborated with the brilliant Zuzana Husarova.

• curated many stand alone events, including the European Camarade, which brought together 18 poets from across the continent, the Norwich Camarade, thanks to Writer’s Centre Norwich and UEA, Global Cities for Southbank Centre & the London Literature Festival, European Literature Night in Edinburgh and a Cemetery Romance, thanks to Czech Centre London. Pleased to be a part of the Globe Road Festival too, leading an artists tour of the road.

• had the privilege of being hosted by Edge Hill University, thanks to James Byrne, and co-curate a Camarade in Liverpool, which included a launch of my collaborative book with Tom Jenks, 1000 Proverbs, from Knives forks & spoons press.

• amongst readings / performances: at Whitechapel Gallery for the launch of the New Concrete, edited by Victoria Bean & Chris McCabe, at the Stoke Newington Literature Festival & at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, on Henri Gaudier-Brzeska’s The Wrestlers, thanks to Sarah Victoria Turner & co.

• Wonderful to again teach for the Poetry School, sharing my passion for European and world avant-garde movements in the courses Maintenant and Mondo. 

• continued in residence with the brilliant J&L Gibbons landscape architects and had the pleasure to share the stage with them at the Garden Museum, London for the Big Tree Debate.

• Amongst some lovely conversations / interviews documented this year, this one on Sabotage Reviews with Will Barrett really stood out and I was grateful to the response of many to my short article on the passing of Tomaz Salamun. 

• Poems in Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry Wales, Test Centre, Gorse, Long Poem magazine, Lighthouse & others, thanks to the editors. My work was also included in the Poetry Archive.
  
  And knowing no one is reading at this point, simply, it was a great pleasure to collaborate in one form or another with so many extraordinary artists in 2015 - Noah Hutton, Rebecca Kamen, Tereza Stehlikova, Endre Ruset, Alessandro Burbank, Joe Dunthorne, Eurig Salisbury, Zoe Skoulding, Rhys Trimble, Daniela Seel, Anna Cady, Amanda de la Garza, Harry Man, Prudence Chamberlain and Tom Jenks among them.

I'm grateful to have met and worked with so many generous people throughout this year. There is more to come in 2016.

A note on: Richard Marshall reviews {Enthusiasm} on 3am magazine

A really discerning review, one that roots my work in the world and gets to the heart of of much of my purpose. I have (or try to have) an ambivalent relationship to reviews, but then reviews are different from criticism. None the less the nature of my work means that I always feel lucky when someone seems to connect with it, let alone extrapolate what Richard Marshall has here. I can't pretend it's not enlivening, that it doesn't fill me with optimism, to read how clearly and incisively he's recognised the purpose and philosophical context of much of what I'm trying to do, especially in {Enthusiasm}. http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/enthusiasm-review/

{The pictures below are my own, from various travels over the last year, a way of repositioning this text as a new thing in this new space.}

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"Fowler works in the line of poetics that sees poetry as a way of changing its reader perhaps first put out in 1751 by Sam Johnson in ‘The Rambler’ where he writes of ‘the Force of Poetry’ being able to change and shape its readers. Pound writes of poetry’s rhythms being ‘forced onto the voice’ of reader’s speech. W.S. Graham, who haunts this collection as a lost poetic daemon, wrote in 1946 about a ‘poetry of Release’ which makes ‘the readers change.’ What Fowler is doing, it seems to me at least, is evoking a readership, seeing poetry as an activation in living and an intersubjectivity in reading. All sorts of things tug at this idea. JS Mill wrote of poetry being something overheard in contrast to being heard, a view resulting in the private vector of its influence;

‘ … the peculiarity of poetry appears to us to lie in the poet’s utter unconsciousness of a listener. Poetry is feeling confessing itself to itself in moments of solitude.’

Well there’s something valuable in this. Fowler’s war poetry – I’m labeling it thus just to exaggerate a point – can be read as ‘apostrophes directed elsewhere’, to use Coleridge’s useful phrase, to emphasise that Fowler’s poetry protects poetry’s special value, & is much much more than mere propaganda. Yeats as always helps: Fowler is assuredly quarreling with himself not others in this. Yet his imaginative links are nevertheless public too, as public as Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’ or Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ and if Mill helps there’s always the fear the definition pushes poetry further into the unheard margins. His poems require more from us than brooding reflection and mute feelings in domestic solitude. There’s a somatic demand: poetry urging us to rewire body and nervous systems as well. The disturbances of syntax and unexpected diction are ‘political engagements with consciousness’ to bring about the ‘making of the reader.’ And it’s not a one way street. As Auden writes in his Yeats elegy; the words of poets are‘ … modified in the guts of the living.’"

"Reading this collection in the context of terrorist threats, Syria, the inequality class wars, domestic hells, all the nightmares roosting, what we realize is that Fowler is our war poet, breeding his lilacs out of the blood soaked April ground of current history:

‘should I begin as if it were a story for in (not during wartime)/ they mistook a story for a poem as often as/I’m not saying you never had it so good/but that is a fact , isn’t it?’.

He’s grappling with the extreme consciousness of these mediated discharges of extreme violence, the weird collision of mutable elements of the everyday with an excessive, unavoidable degradation of sensibility constantly bombarded by violence and names of violence and symbols of violence and effects of violence and rumours, denials, gratuitous, unclear, unclean of such. ‘You’ve never had it so good…’ is where the war starts, and places the reader squarely there, ‘in’ not ‘during’. If taboos are a way of vanquishing violence from the everyday then our contemporary context is where taboos are being reversed. Fowler mixes actor and costume, mask and dance, plays choric master to the Dionysia of this reversal , is a voiced chorus of phallic tragedy played across the broken-hipped syntax of polyphonic marginal identities.

‘ how long would you like to fight? You pick the term/ for we are not under bombing we are facing it/what is feared is a story that explains itself/ so much it almost isn’t there upon its ed/the helicopter gun that’s known as birth control.’

This is chorus intruding the action, standing at the centre which years ago didn’t hold but imploded. So the fragmentary, uncentred is everywhere. It’s an ironic usage, ‘ prepared like a kidsaw in a cat’s paw/ happy hinged to lift a black eye..’, with domestic violence and domestic pressure nose to nose with helicopters and bombs somewhere else, but intimately ours nevertheless, addressed simply and partially as it disappears from view in the poem ‘done the line’ for example or ‘Black Eye’, for instance, an experiment as notable as Racine’s ‘Esther’ or Goethe’s ‘Faust II’. What’s the reason for saying there’s a chorus element here? Throughout the sequence there’s an interplay between actor speech and what, loosely, I’m thinking of as a chorus with richer imagery contrasting with the movement preceding. There’s often a pairing of actor voice and choral in the same broken-backed line, so we have ‘I have been to prison and patted down on the way in this sorry event…’ which then is infused with the chorus ‘…my being birth well blue/truffling up the treegrove…’ which seems to abandon its dramatic identity just for that moment before returning it, ‘… I missed my pet/>my training partners> friends>family>wife>children..’ and then letting go again to the margin where images crank up once more, ‘… who in the night were snowly peaks…’ This is interesting because the use of the chorus died out when private subject matter replaced the public. Fowler’s versatility is partly his recognition that the private and the public infiltrate themselves more than ever before, that we’re both bombarded with news of other’s lives whilst channelling private echo chambers of solipsistic narcissism.

"That the mind holds to illusions, that we are able to function as if there’s no horror happening just over the horizon, or even in the same room, is something that Fowler is drawn to again and again. The suffering that grows so deep you can’t bear to pay, though pay you must, is a central theme, and a conceit that makes his war poems resonate with a felt truth about our special kind of modern warfare, for our wars reveal ‘… the possibilities /of the human mind to pretend everything is fine.’ In a particularly subtle physicality his poem ‘the bleached is not a white’ takes the death of a whale as a way of showing the heartbreaking route away from civilization we’ve taken, a place that’s as public and as private as can be, a narrow road to the interior that is literally broken up:

‘… as it perishes it’s heart bursting in attack, the salt/ water damning its arteries, the whale turns eyes down/ to watch its deathplace rise into view…’.

There’s a marvelous, deadly, hard-won simplicity and directness in this that can evoke the physicality of his spiritual journey, a kind of Zen mixed with highest art, Basho’s journey to Oku recalibrated as allegoric caustic satire. He also evokes the elisions we remember from Emily Dickinson, perhaps her ‘a bird came down the walk’, as well as cumming’s ‘since feeling is first’ so like a child, like a foreigner, a joker, he plays, compares, couples, contrasts, double arranges, jams semantic enquiry into fragments, anti-paradigms, colloquial, dialectical, vulgar, irregular arrangements that seem to forget what they started or else never intended a main clause to have any fina closing heft, which after a while may be taken to be a political stance. In this at times he is Beelzebub in Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ who refuses the conventional obligations to honour what he starts with a completion, ie; ‘ If thou beest he; But oh how falln, how changed/From him…’ Milton wrote to confound the poetasters of his day who would put together edifying verse for educative reasons: he deliberately wrote so that his poetry could not be easily chopped into such squeamish morsels. We’re reminded of Dylan here: whatever they’re up to, ‘its not wallpaper.’ Shelley moved towards the impenetrable, shifting expectations by removing closure commas, staying on the side of grammar but posing something unacceptable to the reader not wanting to think recursively.

‘The extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,/The bloom, whose petals nipped before they blew/Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste.’

Shelley is asking the reader to puzzle with him, and reminds us again that language isn’t always, nor essentially, communication, but keeping a difficult score."

"So too the poems track dark nights of the soul where if we’re lucky it’s ‘the smaller death drive today, a near tendency’ and that nearness is the key, as if Fowler is drawing everything from a distance into a circle of reach, his ‘close shaves’ are those at hand and the dark enchantments he extracts are ways of bringing everything, no matter how huge and distant into his circle of intent. If anyone can restore the price of the stumbling block to poetry then Fowler, devouring whole the evil spirits in his figures and tropes, is our best last bet. An abbreviated tour of this road trip reveals the considered will of his haunted poems, the spectral momentum that comes with the names of animals and the numerous maledictions of children and child birth, as if birth was the fault and the gift immersed in the primal, maledicted horror of poetry’s elemental violence.

Our blind activities are overheard as chunks of patter in a public space. It’s like we get what Bruno Ganz’s angel in ‘Wings of Desire’ hears before he resigns himself to the voracity of the human: ‘… painted pink dips, the day of the dead… liver fluke packing ready bags…not born children… elicited sympathy… apart growing closer slower… frosted grass.. the recent meat… non-homo… empty space… new towns like Swindon… off limits… water rats… bear traps… salmon… ghosts of the civil dead… cut bone and cocktails… deaf dolphins… my human skull… cat’s paw… prison… Vietnam doubt/death/debt, bleeding nose and raw potato… comets… a lost jelly eye… your own regret/in gardens… further nosebleeds… vigilante justice… auditioning in szerz/with michelle wilde… born again, born again… the eyes of children… cutting off people’s heads… the venus nebula/is ever expanding… the gypsy wound… a tomb of trinkets… a baby dies in Bristol (if)… thinly veiled my dog is on the fellows… a baby is cruel… muslim.. is a hard hunter… eats the bed… god himself before social services let him down… Cristy’s clit… morals not changed from 2013 years ago in the middle eastern desert… baby mutu… the baby of the north… an alcoholic, unemployed + eating the fatty foods like chops… not good news, not good + abortion… choosing between money and life… the English longbaby made chain/mail redundant… baby men have always had murderers + mistresses… baby in the bath… baby bullet… bad parenting where the baby grows up to be a duck… baby bowie… she runs where once she crawled… a baby being made in the oven… a shoal of baby Orcas… butter my brother says/is very tatty… she’s descended/from sunflowers which is a bath of balls… death throes is not a dance… as ephemeral as it is a colon is not a delusion… day of the dead parade sober… figure hush in the crib… saw to Ealing as a planet earth… a Tetris elephant… the butt of an Angolan rifle smashed the natural eye from his head… older/in the last white sun… horsepower colonies… a filial son, how long would you like to fight? You pick your terms… weeping & smiling fits of those still asleep… Kaspars still dead is missing strings… a victimless act of catharsis… I have not killed a day so small… his black dolphin… spectre of miniature women… a nightmare about a millipede /with pistons… I sniffed the crotch the other girl soiled her underwear… the doctor stands by/fondling the crease… a sheep floats, is all but eight months old, into a black rubber bag… ancient karian on a bier east greek strictly frontal stance… quarter naked who dwarf… my prostation at gunpoint/& a small one… the rains of Castemere… Tatar. tamerline eats babies… slug trails… the will fall blinded…’ These voices convulse with disclosures that come from what is left behind, or is destiny, or a hiding for nothing. Fowler catches the protean energies that tune our sentiments and reasons: he’s showing us the decomposed contagions of our lively souls, their desire to touch and be touched without pacification."

A note on: performance videos from Soundings I & III, with Emma Bennett and Maja Jantar

Two highlights of 2015, amazing performers and artists both Emma and Maja. So excited I get to do 7 more of these collaborations in 2016 with the help of the Hubbub group in residence at Wellcome Collection and Wellcome Library www.stevenfowler.com/soundings

Published: 'Tempora' in Test Centre Magazine issue Six

The sixth issue of the remarkable Test Centre magazine has just arrived. An amazing lineup in this issue, as ever, and I'm delighted to have the very first sequence of a new larger work feature in the magazine. I marked this issue in my mind for this work in fact, such is the respect I have for the quality of the magazine and its deserved reputation. It is the first part of a very long poem called Tempora, about surveillance, GCHQ and Edward Snowden I've been working on for the last year or so.

The magazine is £10 and only 250 copies exist, you can pick it up here http://testcentre.org.uk/product/test-centre-six/

A note on: The Norwich Camarade at Writers Centre Norwich - Dec 10th 2015

I couldn't have had a better time visiting Writer's Centre Norwich to organise and curate a Camarade featuring poets living in the area. Jonathan Morley and Philip Langeskov of UEA helped put it all together and it was grand to discover lots of young new poets from the creative writing program there, alongside some very well known poets associated with the city, and those leaning towards the more experimental who often aren't. It was a perfect mix, to show that difference in mode compliments, and that we are all speaking the same language with different accents. 

We ended up drawing in 130 people to watch, on a cold, raining thursday night in Norwich and everyone seem very happy. An utterly stressless and joyful evening for me, another very pleasing experience travelling with Camarade. All the ten performances from twenty poets available here www.theenemiesproject.com/norwichcamarade

Published: Modern Poetry in Translation: issue 3 2015

Really delighted to feature in MPT, the legendary magazine under the editorship of Sasha Dugdale, for the first time, with my co-translations of Maryam Alatar, taken from the Highlight Arts Iraq project I attended last year. You can buy the issue here, which also features a focus on new and classic Uruguayan poetry: new translations of Líber Falco, Horacio Cavallo and Ida Vitale, plus a conversation between two women poets from Uruguay: Laura Chalar and Laura Cesarco Eglin http://www.mptmagazine.com/product/no3-2015-the-tangled-route--160/

A note on: my top poetry reads of 2015 on 3am magazine

Tom Jenks, Spruce (Blarts Books)
One of most overlooked poets in the UK, doing the work conceptualism should be doing, getting to the heart of uniquely British ennui through splicing methodology and jet black humour.

Sandeep Parmar, Eidolon (Shearsman Books) 
High modernism powerfully maintained and redeployed by one of the most interesting poets crossing the American / UK scene.

Tom Chivers, Dark Islands (Test Centre)
One of the clearest voices in British poetry in his finest work to date, beautiful rendered, written and designed.

Emma Hammond, The Story of No (Penned in the Margins)
Powerful for it’s immediacy, incredibly sophisticated for it’s lack of pretension in the face of profoundly personal poetry. Amazing book.

Christodoulos Makris, The Architecture of Chance (wurm press) 
This is the future of a poetry which reflects our world of language without dispensing with the expressionistic skill of interpreting that language. Found text lies with lyrical poetry, a thorough achievement to balance them to such effect.

Peter Jaeger, A Field Guide to Lost Things (If P Then Q press)
Clever, resonant and profound, as all of Peter Jaeger’s works are, a fine example of the possibilities of contextual, process-orientated thinking getting to the heart of contemporary poetry.

Bruno Neiva & Paul Hawkins, Servant Drone (Knives forks and spoons press) 
Brilliant collaborative poetry collection (of which there are far too few) taking on a necessary issue in necessarily disjunctive ways.

Michael Thomas Taren, Eunuchs (Ugly Duckling Presse) 
Best possible example of what is possible in contemporary American poetics of my generation. Excessive, authentic, ambitious.

Rebecca Perry, Beauty/Beauty (Bloodaxe Books) 
Reflective and observational in the most well conceived way, a clear poetic experience as a book, it accumulates and resonates as a collection.

Lee Harwood, The Orchid Boat (Enitharmon Press) 
The last work by one of the most interesting poets in the English language in the latter half of the 20th century, a typically beautiful book.