A note on: Kakania Berlin – May 9th at Österreichisches Kulturforum

A wonderful thing to be able to travel to curate something, to be able to leave my home and bring together artists who genuinely excite me, in Berlin. A chance to watch people who offer permission to push boundaries and to learn. Thanks to the generosity of the Österreichisches Kulturforum, I was able to put together a Kakania project in Berlin. I brought together 5 artists from across Europe and each presented a new work responding to a figure of the Habsburg Era, 100 years ago or so. We were in the grand performance space of the Österreichisches Kulturforum itself, just off Tiergarten, an imposing curved hall with giant curtains and high ceilings. The Österreichisches Kulturforum couldn’t have been easier to work with and the performances on the night had some real highlights, definitively making an impact on the audience with some of the best sound poets in the world interspersed with conceptual text performances. There was a really dynamic energy to the evening and a clear enthusiasm and intensity, as I’ve often felt in Berlin. Just great to spend time around so many artists I admire under such professional conditions, and to visit Berlin again, having time to bop down Kurfürstenstraße with old friends.

All the performances are here http://www.theenemiesproject.com/kakaniaberlin

A note on: The first ever European Poetry Night

May Saturday 14th : 7.30pm : Free entry / Rich Mix The Enemies Project presents London's first ever European Poetry Night as part of  in 2016. An opportunity to see some of the most exciting contemporary poets from all over Europe, as over 20 poets travel to London to share new collaborative poems, premiered on the night, in pairs, across languages, styles & nations. These are some of the most dynamic literary and avant-garde poets of the 21st century, from Iceland to Turkey, from Ireland to Russia, from France to Slovakia, all presenting brand new works and performances. Curated by SJ Fowler. www.theenemiesproject.com/epn

European Poetry Night 2016 in London. May Saturday 14th: Rich Mix / 7.30pm - Free Entry. 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA
http://www.richmix.org.uk/events/spoken-word/european-poetry-night

Vanni Bianconi & Billy Ramsell  -  Alessandro Burbank & Alexander Filyuta
Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir & SJ Fowler - Ulrike Ulrich & Jen Calleja
Nurduran Duman & Jonathan Morley - Christodoulos Makris & Martin Bakero
Niillas Holmberg & Peter Sulej - Efe Duyan & Livia Franchini
Tomica Bajsic & Colin Herd - Ghareeb Iskander & Ahsan Akbar
Ariadne Radi Cor & Iris Colomb - Ana Seferovic & Agnieszka Studzinka
Rufo Quintavalle & Ian Monk

Featuring poets from Switzerland, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Germany, Iceland, England, Malta, Turkey, Cyprus, France, Lapland / Finland, Slovakia, Croatia, Scotland, Serbia and Poland. The inaugurual EPN is the last event of European Literature Festival in London and supported by EUNIC, led by Czech Centre London and curated by Jon Slack. 

The European Poetry Night is supported by Arts Council England, The Embassy of Switzerland in the United Kingdom, Culture Ireland, Francis Boutle Publishers and Literárne informačné centrum Slovakia (LIC - The Centre for Information on Literature).

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European Literature Night 2016 in Edinburgh. May Friday 13th 2016

For the second year running The Enemies Project curates European Literature Night 2016 on behalf of UNESCO Edinburgh City of Literature. ELN Edinburgh presents the best and brightest of a new generation of avant-garde and literary poets from over a dozen countries across Europe with two events in the city. Curated by Colin Herd, Theodora Danek and SJ Fowler. www.theenemiesproject.com/eln

Event One: 5pm - 6.30pm at North Edinburgh Arts Centre
Performances from selected poets Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir (Iceland), Nurduran Duman (Turkey), Billy Ramsell (Ireland), Alessandro Burbank (Italy), Alexander Filyuta (Russia / Germany), Christodoulos Makris (Ireland / Cyprus), Efe Duyan (Turkey).

Event Two: 8pm-10.30pm at Summerhall - Red Lecture Theatre
Performances from European poets and local to Edinburgh poets followed by a specially commissioned collective performance.

A note on: Soundings IV with Tamarin Norwood

The next instalment of the Soundings project, this time in Wellcome Library itself, with the brilliant Tamarin Norwood. The piece was fashioned just for the camera itself, a closed performance, intended to respond to and interrogate the notion of film editing or performance video, and how it relates to notions of authenticity and naturalness, while all the while following the process central to Soundings, that we respond to Wellcome Library resources provided to us by the librarians and 'sound them out' in conversing. Thanks to Ed Prosser for his brilliant camera work too. www.stevenjfowler.com/soundings

A note on: Rich Mix 10 Year Anniversary Camarade - May 2nd

Lovely to be invited to present a Camarade event, where poets write new collaborations in pairs, to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Rich Mix as part of the festival of events and general festivities put on for the occasion. I owe Rich Mix so much, and without it, there'd be no Camarade and Enemies project I think. The event was wonderful, with 10 new works, all of which complimented in their difference and compelled in different ways. Great to get such a nice audience too, on a rainy bank holiday Monday at 6pm. A grand birthday for us all. All the videos www.theenemiesproject.com/richmixcamarade

A note on: The University Camarade - April 23rd

A wonderful, positive evening with new collaborations from student, and inherently young, poets, from six universities across the UK. I decided to curate this event for multiple reasons - to show that collaboration is immensely helpful for the development of young poets (into interesting directions anyway), to show that creative writing programs deserve more respect for the quality they can produce, to get past the supposed 'competition' between creative writing departments and to begin to inculcate communities between young writers, or at the very least, to make them feel there are communities out there for them, that people do want to hear and value their more innovative ideas.

The works on display were genuinely brilliant, across the board, the event had been taken so seriously by all 20 poets. Everyone felt it had a been a grand success and will likely happen again www.theenemiesproject.com/unicamarade

Kakania Berlin - May 9th : 7.30pm at Österreichisches Kulturforum

7.30pm at Österreichisches Kulturforum Berlin kulturforum berlin: kulturforumberlin.at 
ree Entry - May Monday 9th 2016
Stauffenbergstraße 1, 10785 Berlin. T: +49 30 202 87-114 E: berlin-kf (at) bmeia.gv.at

Very happy to announce that the Kakania project will debut in Berlin, with six new literary performance commissions from contemporary artists, each of whom will present a work that celebrates / responds to a figure from the Habsburg era. The event is free to attend if you're in Berlin, please share with friends in the city if you're not http://www.theenemiesproject.com/kakaniaberlin

Book your place here: http://www.kulturforumberlin.at/veranstaltung/kakania/

Max Höfler on Ludwig Wittgenstein
Maja Jantar on Lou Andreas Salome
Stephen Emmerson on Rainer Maria Rilke
Tomomi Adachi on Josef Matthias Hauer
Ernesto Estrella on Gustav Mahler
Ann Cotten on Otto Neurath

This is the first of two Kakania events that will take place in Berlin in 2016, supported by Österreichisches Kulturforum Berlin and follows six events, a symposium, two publications and over fifty new artist commissions in London from 2014 to 2016 thanks to the Austrian Cultural Forum. www.kakania.co.uk 

About Kakania

There has been no one city's culture, at one singular time in modern history, more widely influential on contemporary thought than that of Habsburg Vienna a century ago. A time so densely constituted with intellectual revolution in fields as diverse as poetry, fiction, journalism, music, composition, philosophy, psychology, art … that it seems it can often only be evoked through a wistfulness that belies the melancholy, the energy and the seismic change that constituted it.

With Kakania, decidedly contemporary, avant-garde, original works of text and art are presented in an attempt to be as complex and genre testing as the works, and the people, they are responsive to. This is a project where the past, and our understanding of it, is not be refracted through historical analysis, but the creative process, and one that is utterly contemporary. Kakania is an opportunity for audiences to discover the Habsburg era in a wholly new guise, as our era.

2016 so far: Beijing, Buenos Aires, Tractography & more

A rundown of recent publications, programmes, projects and performances from 2016 so far. 

Commission: BBC Radio 3’s The Verb
The Worm in its Core was commissioned as a new poem / performance by Radio 3's The Verb in response to Hearing the Voice - a project which explores, and demystifies auditory verbal hallucinations. www.stevenjfowler.com/theverb

Commission: Forumstadtpark Graz - Glory Hole
Manners Maketh Man was commissioned by the Forumstadtpark in Graz as part of their public art series Glory Hole, projected onto a screen in the city centre.  http://www.stevenjfowler.com/blog/gloryhole

Buenos Aires: Enemigos with El Tercer Lugar
One of the most extraordinary Enemies Projects so far, a week of collaborations and performances in Argentina; new collaborations with Julián López, Anahí Mallol, Camilo Sanchez, Leonce Lupette & Patrick Coyle. http://www.stevenjfowler.com/argentina

Beijing: CCTSS Conference & Festival
A poetry readings held in Beijing to mark the Chinese Culture Translation and Studies Support (CCTSS) global literary conference featuring poets from across the world http://www.stevenjfowler.com/beijing

Tractography, published by Pyramid Editions
A limited edition pamphlet of 50, the first of a new series of poems exploring neuroscience.

Forty Feet, published by Knives Forks & Spoons press
A new collaborative poetry collection written with David Berridge, 40 Feet is a poem in dialogue. 40 poems as 40 moments, 40 fragments, 40 conversation starters / enders. http://www.stevenjfowler.com/40feet

The Night-Time Economy Exhibition in Newport
A new collaborative exhibition in Newport with the photographer Kate Mercer, images & poetry exploring the often fractious energy of Newport's nightlife http://www.theenemiesproject.com/nighttimeeconomy

Lexicon: performance at Marsden Woo Gallery
Responding to the work of artist and sculptor Alida Sayer at the remarkable London gallery Marsden Woo http://www.theenemiesproject.com/lexicon

StAnza Festival
One of the UK's principle poetry festivals, a great week reading, talking, curating and collaborating in St.Andrews http://www.stevenjfowler.com/stanza

Cyprus: The Iskele Poetry Festival
A memorable week in Northern Cyprus reading at the 18th Iskele-Kibatek poetry festival http://www.stevenjfowler.com/iskele

The English PEN Modern Literature Festival
An amazing experience curating nearly 30 authors responding with new works to writers-at-risk supported by English PEN. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/englishpen Including my poems and performance for Khadija Ismayilova and appearing on BBC Azeri world service.

Reykjavik, The Library of Water and Ovinir: Icelandic Enemies
Ambitious Enemies Project collaborations in Iceland, a new self-drowning performance in the Library of Water in Stykkishólmur, and a remarkable London reading to a nearly 200 strong crowd. http://www.stevenjfowler.com/iceland

Kakania at Austrian Cultural Forum
A symposium and six new commissions at the Austrian Cultural Forum – contemporary artists responding to figures of Habsburg Vienna. All performances and my own on the great Robert Musil.

The Essex Book Festival
Great to curate a Camarade with 18 poets and one family performing new works for the day, from the Colchester area & beyond. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/essex Including my collaboration with David Berridge

& new poetry has appeared in Gorse magazine, Poetry Wales, Karawa (new translations into German), Poems in Which, Black Market Review, Country Music, For Every Year and Wazogate. Thanks to all the editors. And to everyone who has read this far down. Happy Springtime to you all, Steven

A note on: Reading in Beijing

The Chinese Culture Translation and Studies Support Festival & Conference – April 2016: A fascinating week spent in China on the invitation of the CCTSS in Beijing, who try to create cross-nation collaboration with a view to bringing more Chinese contemporary poetry to countries outside of China, and to collaborate in doing so. This was designed as a mini-festival and conference, with literary organisers, poets, translators and publishers from across the world coming to share their experience, expertise and approaches. Overall, it was admirably informal and open, full of frank discussion between the participants and with a host of adventures in and around Beijing in between readings and panels. 

I've written a kind of travelogue here www.stevenjfowler.com/beijing

A note on: writing an introduction to Volodymyr Bilyk's Heartbeat, Footclick, Machine Gun Vocalises

A privilege to write the introduction to Volodymyr Bilyk's new work out with the brilliant M58 press edited by Jez Noond and Andrew Taylor, based in the UK. It's a hugely important work of avant-garde visual poetry emanating from real purpose and I've scanned (wonkily) my introduction in below. You can buy it here for £5 and I urge you to do so. http://www.m58.co.uk/post/141316776709/heartbeat-footclick-machine-gun-vocalises-by

Exhibited: Manners Maketh Man, my commission for Graz Forumstadtpark Glory Hole series

So happy to have been commissioned by the amazing pioneering Forumstadtpark in Austria, curated by the equally groundbreaking Max Hofler, to produce a videotext work, part of their Glory Hole series. This series has been going for years and involves a video with text projected against the side of the Forumstadtpark itself, blown up like a bat signal, in the middle of a huge, beautiful park in the middle of the city. Loads of people see it, and for my work, which runs throughout April, this is true as its being screened while a film festival goes on. Really i had fun making it too, they promote my kind of work. You can see all the glory hole commissions here : https://vimeo.com/forumstadtparkgraz, some great ones, and my edition, the 31st, below

A note on: opening The Night-Time Economy exhibition in Newport, Wales

A wonderful night to open my new exhibition in collaboration with photographer Kate Mercer, we had a lovely crowd come out to the Riverfront Theatre and Arts Centre in Newport to see readings and discussions. More on the exhibition www.theenemiesproject.com/nighttimeeconomy

Kate has done an incredible job in producing such a beautiful exhibition, the production was really extraordinary, with my poems beautifully framed alongside her wonderful photographs. Good to meet so many friendly local artists and well wishers who came out to support our project, and we managed to fit in three readings as well as a Q&A. A great beginning, the exhibition runs until the end of April and then comes to London, at Rich Mix, in July.

A note on: the amazing English PEN Modern Literature Festival 2016

One of my proudest days as a curator. Not because I had achieved anything myself, but because, at the end of 25 performances, six hours of poetry & performance and a fair few hundred people coming and going, it was clear the simple act of organising something between people, a simple act of emails, could create a feeling of purpose exponentially larger than the sum of its parts. Visit www.theenemiesproject.com/englishpen for all the performance videos

A huge gratefulness stays with me, for the wonderful, generous staff of English PEN, and for the many poets in the room at Rich Mix throughout April 2nd, and around the world, whom were being celebrated in absentia, for their courage and relentless strength of character and purpose.

The sense of responsibility each of the poets and writers felt to their respective charges, the writers at risk currently supported by English PEN whom they had been asked to write about, threatened to overwhelm each and every work. But it never did tip, never spilled into sentimentality or fragility. I truly believe that difficult, complex, intellectual artworks, poetry, maintains a necessary intensity of focus and agility of method to be created and understood, and this kind of work is then best suited to celebrate / evoke the same tragedy of injustice and overloading of guilt and pain we feel at the suffering of others. Fellow writers specifically here, but in general, beyond that. It is best suited to satirise, to send love, to call out - it is something ambiguous and terrifying we were all writing about, and none of us tried to escape our own place in that. We needed to be innovative to not simply condense these feelings into didactic speeches or calls to ethics we all knew we shared anyway. In that sense, for me, it was a comforting day. For others, perhaps challenging. But for me, it was comforting, for I was surrounded by great intelligence, great humility, a collective assuredness of purpose, without pretence and without self-deception. The ethics of such a day, of writing poetry at all, boils down to something (something wrong, something clumsy, something ineffectual?), or nothing, nothing against something, mute from fear of being ineffectual. This was a day of something real.

I'm so glad I could be at the centre of such a day, and I have great hope it'll happen again. Please visit www.theenemiesproject.com/englishpen to watch all the videos, and please visit www.englishpen.org/membership to join the amazing charity.

Published: Night-Time Economy in Poetry Wales

Great to have another collaboration in the brilliant Poetry Wales, being masterfully guided by Nia Davies at the helm. This time poems from my exhibited collaboration with Newport based photographer Kate Mercer feature, with my poems aligned with her pictures. These poems appear in the magazine in unique versions that won't appear elsewhere, deliberately rendered for the publication. 

A great issue too, Volume 51 Number 3 for Spring 2016, full of fine poets. You can buy it here http://www.poetrywales.co.uk/currentissue/

Published: Tractography by Pyramid Editions

An incredible job done by Owen Vince and the team at Pyramid Editions, Tractography is a beautiful, fragile piece of work. Printed in a run of just 50 copies, it contains the first in my new series of poems that centre upon neuroscience and neuroscientific ideas, this time inspired by the work of my friend Daniel Margulies. My sincere thanks to Owen and Daniel, and you can pick up one of the few remaining editions here http://pyramideditions.co.uk/shop

Published: Prism in Gorse: No.5

One of the very best literary magazines in Europe, if not, without hyperbole, the world. The extraordinary Gorse, genuinely cutting new ground in 21st literature has been kind enough to take some of the very first poems from my new sequence about Edward Snowden and GCHQ, entitled Prism. So lovely to be in the journal alongside some wonderful writers and with such production quality. A thanks to Susan Tomaselli and Christodoulos Makris.

Buy the journal here http://gorse.ie/

A note on: appearing on BBC Azeri world service, my performance for Khadija Ismayilova

An amazing day - the English PEN modern literature festival, before more on the whole undertaking, here is a video of my performance celebrating Khadija Ismayilova, which involved a video collaboration with Josh Alexander and then a performance with a book and a multivocal reading involving 9 other poets in attendance.

I also had the chance to speak to the Vusal Hamzayev from the BBC Azeri world service, and this interview was broadcast the same day, available here http://www.bbc.com/azeri/multimedia/2016/04/160402_modern_literature_festival

A note on: an interview with Kate Mercer for Wales Arts Review on Night-Time Economy

In the run up to the opening of the Night-Time Economy exhibition in Newport April 6th 2016, Ben Glover of the Wales Arts Review has interviewed Kate Mercer and I on our collaboration. The full interview is here http://www.walesartsreview.org/24536/

"Welcome Kate and Steven, I was hoping initially to find out a little bit about your project The Night-Time Economy. What drew you both to explore the night-time economy?

SJ Fowler: For me, it was meeting Kate, and discovering her work when visiting Newport for a poetry reading last year. I believe collaborations fundamentally grow from relationships between people, creative friendships, and a desire to see them grow, and the concept or direction comes as a secondary focus. Undoubtedly what became the subject of our eventual collaboration emerged from experiences I’d had in years past, things that have shaped my experience in much wider ways, but none of this would’ve been actualised into this exhibition without it being a shared point of contact between Kate and I.

Kate Mercer: I have to concur with Steven. It started from a shared experience that Steven and I found we had much to talk about and identify with. When we began discussing the respective roads we’ve since travelled, for example, pursuing poetry and photography as our careers, it struck us both how pivotal these experiences had been on us as individuals, but equally how far apart these two mediums are with regard to how they communicate with others, either explicitly, emotionally or figuratively. Whilst the experiences, anecdotes and observations we have shared have been helpful through out his project, it has as much as anything been an exploration of the capabilities and limitations of the others’ medium, developing a creative partnership therewith.

How to you think that previously working in this environment has influenced this project?

SJF: I think working in such environments changes your perception. This is true of all work perhaps, that one gains new perspectives when you are present for money and not pleasure. And Britain’s nightlife, it’s social culture, is extraordinarily intense. I think witnessing that intensity, the release people seek in such environments, has formed the underlying impetus for the whole project – because I think we’re not trying to document, nor judge, nor comment even, but rather encapsulate this intensity and its ambiguities.

A note on: Kakania in London comes to an end with a 6th event & symposium

A lovely long day at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Knightsbridge wrapping up a brilliant 18 months with the Kakania project in London, before it goes to Berlin later this year. The amazing Theodora Danek helped me develop the project into something special, and the support of all the staff at the ACF has been really outstanding, Elisabeth Kogler and Zhuo Wang especially.

We had three hours of talks and screenings in the afternoon followed by six new commissions in the evening, including my first creative entry into the Kakania output which has included over 60 new works from artists and two books, over six events so far. All the videos are here www.theenemiesproject.com/kakania-events and my page has been updated too www.stevenjfowler.com/kakania

A note on: collaborating with Tereza Stehlikova on a film about Willesden Junction

For nearly a year I've had the pleasure to collaborate with the artist Tereza Stehlikova, who works in moving image. Our collaboration is about an area of London where we both live, in separate ends, enclosing, one of the few spaces I've really felt as home. Willesden Junction, Wormwood Scrubs, the Grand Union Canal, Kensal Green cemetery... And so far, all we have done is talk, allow the exchange of ideas to be as it should be, exploratory in friendship as well as ideas.

We recently began shooting the film, urged into action because of the plans to completely redevelopment this brilliant, beautiful, industrial, rarely-visited part of London. The Old Oak Development will be one of the biggest in the cities modern history, thousands of new flats, and people. What we are witnessing, the places I walk everyday, will disappear forever.

Here's Tereza's post on our beginning https://cinestheticfeasts.wordpress.com/2016/03/31/nw10/

A note on: teaching at Kingston University

As a lecturer in the Creative Writing department at Kingston University since late 2014 I've the chance to not only share more Avant-Garde, modernist and global writing philosophies, techniques and concepts at an institutional level, but also to help encourage young writers, poets and artists to engage in public events and experiment with their work early in their development. This is hugely important to me and a massive privilege. Moreover Kingston has the most diverse student body of any University in the UK and is a really supportive place to be. 

Long overdue I've created a webpage where videos from students reading at my Enemies project events can be seen with more info on what I teach. http://www.stevenjfowler.com/kingstonuniversity