EPF #10 - Slovenian Poetry Celebration

Quite something to say this was the most intense event of the festival, especially after the Swiss event, but I think it was. Boiling hot, completely full, out in Ealing enjoying the unusual hospitality of Mandie Wilde at Open Ealing, our three Slovenian poets were each so fully committed to their collaborations and performances, something came together here, something heady and surreal at times. The sense of camaraderie was really distinct too. https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/slovenia22

For my part, literally put together minutes before and arranged the night before, I did a quick improv collaboration with Maud van Hauwaert. Her work is so attractive, accomplished, we gelled I think, and could’ve done an hour.

EPF #9 - Flanders Poetry Celebration

My first time working with Flanders Literature and it was such a positive experience, thanks to Patrick Peeters there, but also because of the three Flemish poets, Paul Demets, Maud van Hauwaert and Lies Van Gasse. I’ve followed their work for a long time, and their collaborators – Eley Williams, Bettina Fung and Mischa Foster Poole – are so good it couldn’t be a bad event. Chris McCabe was also on hand being super hospitable at the National Poetry Library, and to a packed crowd the performances were memorable. https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/flanders22

EPF #8 - Latvian Poetry Celebration

One of the most generous and consistent supporters of the festival, Latvian Literature, once again allowed us to host three visiting Latvian poets, this time at Kingston University, where I teach, for a packed out event in the award winning town house building. This was a special night not just for the brilliant collabs made by the Latvians and myself, and two Kingston Uni graduates, Kayona Daley and Maria Celina Val, but also for the first meeting of the entire Popogrou collective. This collective has grown up around some of my courses in the lockdown and some further workshops since then. Members are uniformly talented and kind people, and they brought their people, and it was such a generous, interesting evening. Two book launches marked the night too, Vicki Kaye’s Fractured Light and Simon Tyrrell’s presently.

For my own part I collaborated for the third time with Krisjanis Zelgis, who has become a friend and one of my favourite performance partners. We discussed a lot but planned little, until the day itself, when we met and it all came together so smoothly. Our first work involved drinking water and shampooing hair, our second was wrestling. The third closed the circle of our rituals, with brotherhood evoked in closeness, carrying and grooming. Or something like that. So wonderful that Alban Low was also on hand to make these drawings too.

EPF #7 - Lithuanian Poetry Celebration

Back at Rich Mix one week after our Swiss event, this time celebrating Lithuanian poets. Another brilliant weird heady slightly unhinged night of performances with a lovely friendly communal atmosphere. Ideal really, and amazing so many people came, it was packed out. Some brilliant live works all watchable here https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/lithuania22

I did a quick last minute collab with Mikael Buck as my original partner couldn’t make it, and that’s often my role, jumping in to work with those who have lost their partner, or throwing something together on the day. All the better. We did a live photoshoot of sorts, and celebrated Johnny Crayons

EPF #6 - Finnish Poetry Celebration

The first time I’ve curated a Finnish event, and in the midst of the tube train strikes, and on a boiling day, and with planes being cancelled, it ended up being a brilliant, communal, playful, memorable night. Candid arts hosted us, down in a basement space that is the kind of venue rarely seen in London nowadays, really atmospheric. Milka Luhtaniemi and Callie Michail / Sini Silveri and Prudence Chamberlain-Bussey / Ko Ko Thett and Susie Campbell led the way with new collaborations alongside Max Höfler and Patrick Cosgrove / Sophia Mold and Julia Rose Lewis / Agnese Graudina and Hanna Komar / Xelis de Toro. Some stand out work here, all worth a watch on video https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/finland22

EPF #5 - Austrian Poetry Celebration

These are always good. I owe a lot of the festival’s beginning to the austrian cultural forum, who ‘vouched’ for the unique nature of my events to many cultural agencies, and the austrian scene is so rooted in performance and complex poetry, it’s hard not have a good event. This was a lift for me, a packed room, no space at all, and six great performances. Hannah Bründl and Han Smith, Max Höfler and David Spittle, and myself and Fabian Faltin as the centrepiece. Loads of friends came too. Such a good atmosphere. Loads of pics and videos here https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/austria22

Fabian and I have a rare collaborative relationship. He’s one of the very best I’ve worked with, so so sharp, never a moment lost in doing improvised performance, and remarkable with concepts too. Our work together in 2019 is one of my favourite collaborations, and this was a sequel. Video coming soon. It involved a microwave, which you can see below from Alban Low’s remarkable drawing from the event (he did a whole set viewable here http://artofjazz.blogspot.com/2022/06/austrian-poetry-celebration-european.html)

We also launched a new anthology on the night. A pamphlet from Sampson Low Ltd that chronicles a selection of the collaborations from previous ACF EPF collaborative events too. It came out beautifully. It can be bought here https://sampsonlow.co/2022/06/24/an-anthology-of-poetic-collaborations-from-across-europe/ “From its inception the European Poetry Festival has worked in partnership with the Austrian Cultural Forum London to present remarkable events that celebrate live literature, innovation in poetry and collaboration. Since 2018 poets from across Austria have visited the UK annually, to present new works made in pairs with local, British-based counterparts. These live poems, made for these nights, find themselves in print, for the first time, for this special, limited edition anthology. From the multi-lingual to the visual, from the the theatrical to the conceptual, these poems are as dynamic on the page, newly fashioned for that purpose, as they were when shared live, in the remarkable venue of the ACF London. An anthology of poetic collaborations from across Europe : Hannah Bründl and Han Smith, Fabian Faltin and SJ Fowler, Cornelia Hülmbauer and Ollie Evans, Max Höfler and Iris Colomb, Sophie-Carolin Wagner and Vilde Bjerke Torset, Robert Prosser and SJ Fowler, Daniela Chana and Phoebe Power, Verena Dürr and Magdalena McLean”

A note on : Poem on canal for J&L Gibbons, Urban Mind and Canal trust

The next chapter in my longstanding residency with the remarkable J&L Gibbons landscape architects.https://jlg-london.com/Steven-J-Fowler-Residency

A poem for their Urban Mind & the Canal & River Trust project, whom have recently developed an ambitious nation-wide citizen science project exploring the mental health benefits of spending time beside water. https://www.urbanmind.info/canal-and-river-trust-study

I have spent so much time exploring and walking the canals of England, doing the Grand union from London to Birmingham even. Magic to have this poem published and so well received as part of this research.

A note on : Millfield school film poems

I loved this project. Absolutely remarkable job by James Knight to curate new poems for students at Millfield school for them to respond with brand new film poems. The results were screened together and are available on youtube here. The presentation, the range of invention, and specifically to have my work essentially translated, quite a thing.

At the very end I had the chance to offer a little commentary on the four films made specifically about my poems written for the studnets, 57.20.

A note on : Ghosts in the Machine group show in Hong Kong

Excellent to have a work in this group show

World Book Night 2022 - Ghosts in the Machine / Hong Kong Design Institute Library (LRC) - Until 19th September 2022

An exhibition organised by WBN participants Jessica Ho Yuk Ching and Yau Wai Man, the images have been printed on Tree free- FSC Certified 250gsm recycled paper, sponsored by Antalis (HK). Hong Kong Design Institute, 3 King Ling Road, Tseung Kwan O, Hong Kong. https://www.hkdi.edu.hk/en/about/#tabs-about-campus

Published : onesided fistfight in

https://shipwrightsreview.org/onesided-fistfight-9d0d9c571214 Over ten years ago I published this sound poem, which i wrote at the writers forum in london and was in my FIGHTS collection, in a swedish journal called shipwrights review. they’ve just revived and kindly let me know they’ve republished. weird and wonderful to see the work i was doing a long time ago. the link also has an amazing audio feature where you can listen to a roboto pronounce my neologisms

A note on : my TYPOETRY visual poem on the streets of East Ham

An amazing thing, my poem up on the walls of East Ham. And my reading next to it here, eating chipsss

This poem by Steven J Fowler, designed by Noam Benatar, can be found at The Old Fire Station, 1 High Street South, East Ham, London E6 6EN

The fish on the brink of the borough's best t-shirt says
easy come easy go, life ain't easy though.
Here the flats contain the houses,
and where there used to be trains, now there are horses.
A lot of us codeswitch. A lot of us have corners to beware…..

all poem here https://www.weareswitzerland.uk/posts/typoetry-steven-j-fowler-noam-benatar

EPF #4 - Typoetry walking tour in Newham

This was a brilliant, well attended and unique event, walking around the borough of Newham, with performances by poets whose poems are displayed on the streets as part of the TYPOETRY project https://www.weareswitzerland.uk/topics/typoetry

TYPOETRY has been one of the biggest curatorial undertakings of my year, and it’s been so good to work with David Beck and Julie Zeller. This event was a culmination of a lot. A small documentary has been made of the day, which captures the spirit. Some lovely pictures of the day too, below. https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/newham

EPF #3 - Swiss poetry at Rich Mix

This event had its own energy. I had perhaps overloaded the card with highly experimental performers in the best possible way and it created a kind of chain reaction. The swiss poets were brilliant, standouts, and some of the pairs really brought remarkable new collaborations, Skapin Naffis-Sahely, Torgersen Fariello and others. All the videos with tonnes of pictures https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/swiss22

My own work was with the remarkable Tine Melzer. We had never met before. She was so so sharp. She is an expert in parrots. We inaugurated an award. Losers got prizes.

EPF #2 : Norwegian poetry at St Johns on Bethnal Green

The second event of the fest at the unique St Johns on Bethnal Green this time hosting Norwegian poets. More of a grand camarade and with some really exceptional performances, and a real range of approaches to what poetry actually is. From local poet psychiatrists to AI to improv to live transcriptions, it was a lovely and constantly interesting night. For my own part, my collaborator didn’t show, so I did a Babs…

All photos and performances here https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/norway22

EPF #1 : Swedish poetry at National Poetry Library

A charming opening to the 2022 fest! A searing hot night at the Southbank centre was marked by four performances by Ida Börjel and James Byrne, Lucija Stupica and Rushika Wick, Anna Svensson-Stoltz and Kayona Daley, Madame Cryptica and Chris Kerr. Really the event happened because of my partners in the enterprise, Pia Lundberg and Sofia Lundstrom of the Swedish embassy and Chris McCabe of the NPL. And it was so good to mix these poets, friends, old and new, visiting from Sweden and those local to London.

All performances on video here https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/sweden22

A note on : My collaborations at the European Poetry Festival 2022  

One of the greatest privileges of running the European Poetry Festival is that I get to collaborate with some of the poets coming for the festivities. I mean, one could argue it’s narcissistic that I participate at all, given I curate it all (for years I didn’t, because I feared it appears this way). But then again, I’ve done so many collaboration performances I have found, over recent years, my own shenanigans tend to relax others sometimes, that as long as my work has a humorous edge, it can set a positive tone. Anyway for the mega EPF 2022 I am collaborating eight times. Some old friends, some poets I have never met before. Cassius Fadlabi, Tine Melzer, Fabian Faltin, Alessandro Burbank, Krisjanis Zelgis, Phil Minton / Audrey Chen / Jaap Blonk, Tom Jenks and Nick Roth. A more intimidating lineup you perhaps could not get. The reality is, collaboration is pedagogy. I learn every time I work with another poet. Moreover, it is pressure. It forces invention. Without committing to these collaborations so often and in such volume over the years I am sure I would’ve never developed my improvisation poetry work as I do it now. Each one of these poets is remarkable in their own right, but here are works I’ve made before with Fabian, Burbank, and Krisjanis for example, and wow the quartet with Minton Chen Blonk, a dream, and Jenks again, and Nick Roth in Ireland, an amazing musician. Please come and watch me fail while others succeed, multiple times over. https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/2022

A note on : W:ORTE Festival in Innsbruck, collaborating with Robert Prosser

I first met Robert Renk, the director of the W:ORTE festival in Innsbruck after a performance I gave to open a festival in Frankfurt in 2019. It became quite well known in Germany as there were like 200 people in the audience and long story short I ended up eating the flowers on display and they called an ambulance. He liked that and invited me to his festival, delayed to June 2022, now, and I had the chance to open the festivities with a new collaboration with my old friend Robert Prosser.

Robert and I, to a slightly shellshocked audience in the Innsbruck library, did a nearly hour long improv performance which involved a fake press conference, staredown, chess, a manta ray, singing, me being mary Magdalene, skipping etc… The pictures here speak to the mood, and there was actually a 4 camera setup, so that footage is going to be good.

Apart from that the fest was so so lovely – hospitable, sociable, even a bit luxurious, very funny, relaxed. The atmosphere was so polite, friendly but layered with Austrian irony. I made loads of new friends. This really reminded me of the best experiences of my pre pandemic poetry travels, which were such a big part of my life – a miracle thing, to be invited to travel to share weird poetry, that never wears off.

A note on : MUEUM, my debut novella, words of support

MUEUM remains up for pre-order, sent out officially very soon and launched this October with a series of events. https://tenementpress.com/M-U-E-U-M

In the meantime some brilliant and generous words of support on the book from authors I admire have been released by the press, Tenement.

A showcase, ransacked with horrid delight: Fowler's MUEUM presents the placid, lurid violences of surveillance and exhibition with startling and brutal stylishness. A seething triumph.
 Eley Williams

A book as powerful, monumental and strange as Alasdair Gray's Lanark in miniature.
 Joanna Walsh

Deeply, beautifully unsettling, and somehow so complete that I have screwed up and rewritten this endorsement seventeen times. As a text, MUEUM seems to eat any potential response to it. Sometimes I called it a mesmerising, bravura meditation on work, power, and subjugation; sometimes I called it the psychopathology of the institution; sometimes I just made sub-animal noises. Initially I just felt awe at how compelling Fowler can make the sheer tedium of labour, in an environment terrifyingly regimented, curious (and intimate, like being let backstage behind existence itself), but this was gradually replaced by an increasing suspense and horror which got its claws into me for the whole last half of the novella. Anyway. It makes me very happy—and also insanely jealous—that works like this are being written.
Luke Kennard

Down in the mire of London's grimpen, above the drained marshlands and drift of the fatbergs, exist the cultural centres that shine like jewels in the mudcake of the greatest city on earth: London's museums. Their great domes are craniums through which pass the crazy, unbidden thoughts of a culture always moving closer to madness. With the apocalyptic vision of Ballard and the acerbic attitude of Céline, MUEUM scatters human detritus over the shiny Perspex of our most dearly loved vitrines. Rimbaud's visits to the British Museum reading room come to mind: scratching himself down for lice as he flicked through the latest encyclopaedias. And Bataille, assembling curios so strange the Surrealists wouldn't touch them wearing gloves. MUEUM is a novel of watchers and the watched, a testament to the fact that people are always more interesting—and far stranger—than things. And nothing is stranger than people's obsession with touching objects from the questionable past. Prepare to travel the world, from Rome to Japan, with a travelling troupe of unforgettable characters who walk the world each day but never leave a building. SJ Fowler's MUEUM is an essential artefact for our troubled times, proving that travel of the mind is always more powerful than the real thing.
Chris McCabe

A note on : TYPOETRY up and running in the streets of Newham!

Typoetry invites residents and visitors to go window shopping for poetry and graphic design inthe London Borough of Newham from 20 May to 17 July 2022.

Typoetry is a showcase of poetry and Swiss graphic design. Around thirty works by poets from Newham, the UK and Switzerland are brought to life through designs by the typography students of the ECAL/University of Art and Design of Lausanne and displayed on the front windows of businesses and public buildings across Newham.

A Swiss-Newham project : Led by the Embassy of Switzerland in the UK, Typoetry aims to bridge art forms, languages and communities. As a multilingual and multicultural country, Switzerland regards intercultural exchanges as essential to sustainable societies. The Embassy found ideal partners in the London Borough of Newham: the collaboration with Newham Council, as well as the enthusiasm of local businesses, were key to the development of the project.

Combining its partners’ expertise, Typoetry is bringing poetry and graphic design to the streets in a bid to foster the well-being of Newham residents, to support an inclusive economy and to spark creativity. Enjoyed in trails, as selective interventions, via events and online, the artworks are awaiting you in East Ham, Forest Gate, Green Street, Manor Park and Stratford.

"Typoetry is utterly unique and has broken new ground for public poetry projects. Not only has it brought together poets across a real range of backgrounds and styles, from age 15 to 70, and celebrated the literary and avant-garde in a w ay rarely given in such ambitious enterprises, but it has done this in collaboration with design, unlocking the visual potential of the w ord. And this bold, brilliant and innovative methodology has all been in service of a purposeful and deeply resonant message - a celebration of the city, in and of the very streets w e live in, specifically the borough of New ham, as a metaphor for how we all experience the urban. I have never come across a project celebrating poetry in the streets of this scope and ambition, and that carries such considerable and complex works in its fundament." – Steven J Fowler, poetry curator and artist

Made possible by Presence Switzerland and The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. View all participants and partners here. https://www.weareswitzerland.uk/typoetry