Bibliopoe at Small Publisher Fair

I'm really pleased to have the exhibition at the Small Publishers Fair this year - October 28th and 29th 2022, 11am to 7pm, at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London. smallpublishersfair.co.uk/bibliopoe-books-by-steven-j-fowler-exhibition-2022

"Bibliopoe showcases books by poet, writer and performer SJ Fowler. With over fifty publications since 2010 made with many different imprints, Fowler’s books reveal the strength and diversity of British small press publishing.

Ranging from formal poetry collections to innovative collaborative selections, from letterpress limited editions to poetry stickers, bags and posters – Fowler’s unique engagement with the British indie publishing scene has seen him reimagine the process of disseminating experimental literature.

Bibliopoe captures his distinctive approach, where publications reveal context and process as well as content and product. Fowler’s prolific output suggests poetry not just as a rarefied act of self-reflection but as an active and collaborative means of understanding the world around us through language.

Featured publishers include Dostoyevsky Wannabe, Hazard Press, Hesterglock Press, JOAN, Knives, Forks and Spoons, Penned in the Margins, Penteract Press, Prototype Publishing, Shearsman Books, Tenement Press and Veer Books.

Artist’s books and ephemera relating to print collaborations will be on show including books made with Angie Butler (ABPress) and Pat Randle (Nomad Letterpress). There’ll be displays of new visual poems and launches for publications made with Barrie Tullett, Egidija Čiricaitė and Jules Sprake.

Many of the publications on show will be on sale from SJ Fowler’s table on the stage. Fowler will also curate a short series of readings in the Green Room on Saturday afternoon."

A note on : Big Doom Above Me (45 Minutes in my MUEUM) on Montez Radio

Mueum continues to generate things beyond itself as a piece of fiction. Thanks primarily to Dominic Jaeckle it has to be said. This sonic piece for Montez radio is a unique blend of an interview Eley Williams very generously conducted with me on the book, some of my street ramblings and a reading of the most modernist chapter in the book when the protagonist is fogged up in the reading room. All has been stitched in a singular piece with some David Antin in there, and soundscapes too. And a video film of this also, below, which also contains poems I wrote while in the museum, never before published.

“BIG DOOM ABOVE ME is a patchwork quilt of readings and field recordings anchored in SJ Fowler's debut novella MUEUM (https://tenementpress.com/M-U-E-U-M). Introduced by a brief exchange between Fowler and author Eley Williams, the broadcast recording features a reading from the text—a suite of unpublished poems (from a pamphlet entitled THE MUSEUM OF DEBT)—and concludes with a brief lecturette from the author on (and around) a condition called "museumitis."

BIG DOOM ABOVE ME is scored by Yamachan (https://soundcloud.com/yamachantapes) and was produced and mixed for the radio by Tenement Press. First broadcast on Montez Press Radio (22/09/22).”

* THE ORDER OF THINGS 00.00 – An exchange between Eley Williams & SJ Fowler 23.36 – (Leaves from) MUEUM 42.57 – (Leaves from) THE MUSEUM OF DOUBT [†] • Prelude ("museumitis – unknown to medical science ...") • xxvi. 'disney underwater; it kicks the nun & wins a prize' • xxvii. 'the fat duck is worth every penny' • xxviii. 'the 77 lives of Jahangir Robinson' • xxix. 'wrack of the Nile' • xxx. 'Cherry Cola / Screaming Eagle' • xxxi. 'maximym securitii black dolphin' • xxxii. 'Morlock' • xxxiii. 'Falcor' • xxxiv. 'the thin blue line between front of house & back of house' 53.17 – Diagnosing "museumitis" † A suite of poems (SJ Fowler) and photographs (Alexander Kell).”

A note on : The Onions Boys - October 9th at Hundred Years Gallery

http://hundredyearsgallery.co.uk/music-the-onion-boys/

Music : The Onion Boys: Steven J. Fowler & Benedict Taylor / Blanca Regina & Reuben Sutherland. Sunday 9th October 15:30 The Onion Boys: Steven J. Fowler & Benedict Taylor + Ongoing Book Launch: MUEUM by S.J. Fowler (Tenement Press). Doors 3pm | performances from 4pm | entry £8 cash

The Onion Boys – ‘their creative juices will make your eyes water’ (Anon 2022)

The Onion Boys are Steven Fowler and Benedict Taylor. They’ve worked together and crossed paths through sound art, poetry, music, film & improvisation circles, and through chatting and larking about, for many years, albeit with some large gaps amongst these meetings.

Whenever they would meet, they would delve deep – moving a step towards the core of their shared creative thoughts and ideas; peeling the layers of an onion if you will. In a similar sense, following these various creative encounters, they were left with lingering and increasingly strong and developing flavours of what the other was up to and where they wanted their collaboration to go; as with the glorious flavours and fragrances of all types of Allium, whether it be garlic, leeks, chives, scallions, good old common onions and so on. Steven and Benedict are thrilled to bring these essences to the public sphere now, with the first performance of The Onion Boys.

stevenjfowler.com - benedicttaylormusic.com - M-U-E-U-M

A note on : Japanese UK Poetry Exchange in Norwich and London

JUPE in the UK : At Dragon Hall, Norwich and Candid Arts, London : Sept 16th & 18th 2022 A great start to the long delayed and much enjoyed JUPE project for three UK events. At National Centre for Writing’s amazing Dragon Hall venue in Norwich we travelled to Glasgow, and then to a remarkable Camarade event at Angel’s Candid Arts Basement Gallery. Very different spaces, all brilliant events. All told over 40 British based poets welcomed visiting Japanese poets Fukudapero and Kyoko Yoshida, alongside UK based Shina Shihoko Naga and Hinako Matsumoto. As ever before with these camarade collaborative events, it was a real range of what poetry can be, from all angles, and styles, and ages, and approaches, in the midst of two friendly, playful, supportive nights of literary performance. Click the link for more on each event September 16th in Norwich : National Centre for Writing / September 18th in London : Candid Arts

A note on : Guillaume is coming ... letterpress collaborating with Angie Butler and Pat Randle

My work with Pat Randle and Angie Butler is the kind of thing academic conferences are built around but don’t actually, often, manage to do. An immensely creative, live, collaborative process built on an authentic enjoyment of each other’s company and the right environment, built on goodwill and expertise (on their part). For the second phase of our recent, second, collaborative publication, we spent two days together as a press in the Cotswolds. I came with a new set of poems written to the specifications Angie and Pat offered me to do with the practical letterpressing of the eventual publication. The type would be wood, and they would go up in size, ascending. So only so many characters per page. Already then the poems were shaped by this constraint. But over the two days, in real time, the poems were rewritten, made far far better, on the hoof, by us literally searching out the possible letters for each wood type set! Often limited by an absence of certain letters, we would then change words, quickly and collectively, while chatting. And none of this was planned. And the poems are lively, weird, hopefully funny, and together we just made them, with these constraints, with Angie and Pat’s knowledge. It’s one of the most pure forms of collaboration I’ve encountered, full of breaks and asides and laughter too. I’m excited, next year, to present what we’ve been making. It’ll be the first of a new sequence I’m into about Guillaume IX, the first troubadour, and crusader, and the eventual publication will be a bit special as a thing itself.

A note on : MUEUM launch at Brick Lane Bookshop : October 5th

October 5th, 7pm, at Brick Lane Bookshop, my debut novella - mueum - will be launched alongside readings from Iain Sinclair, Chris McCabe and Chloe Aridjis. More on the event bricklanebookshop.org/events/#mueum and tickets at £5

The novella is available here tenementpress.com/M-U-E-U-M

As part of the book's launch, here is a long-form interview with Gareth Evans, shot at Resonance Extra studios in London, discussing the origins of MUEUM.

A note on : Severn Arts mentoring and Faith Taylor

For over a year I have had the pleasure to work with Severn Arts, a remarkable charity, mentoring their young poet laureate of 2021, Faith Taylor. Faith has been a brilliant young writer to collaborate with, she is so talented, mature and ambitious, and our conversations over the last year have taught me a lot. So much of work in sharing ideas is with adults, though my background in teaching martials was often with younger people, so this has been a really rewarding relationship.

Faith has a page on the charity’s website https://www.severnarts.org.uk/faith-taylor and her own page here https://faithtaylorpoetry.square.site/

A note on : Versopolis - a letter to Europe

Each year Versopolis commissions and shares a letter to Europe by a poet. I worked with Versopolis as an executive editor on their magazine out of Ljubljana for many years, and to mark this year’s letter i was asked to help curate it’s being shared, in print, online and at events.

The letter is by Chus Pato, the remarkable Galician poet and will be found in 10 languages in dozens of publications across the continent. One of the places kind enough to share it has been Berfrois, and it can be read here https://www.berfrois.com/2022/09/chus-patos-letter-to-europe/

Published : Mueum

my debut novella - mueum - is now available to buy from Tenement press tenementpress.com/M-U-E-U-M

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

To be launched with a series of events this October, followed by broadcasts of the audio book on Resonance Extra. More soon, and here

"A novella of ludic menace, a puzzle without pieces, SJ Fowler’s MUEUM pictures the amassing and dismantling of a public edifice, brick by brick, in prose that refracts and breaks the light emitted by history’s ornaments and history’s omissions. Suspended in unknowable time there is a city; in the city, an event, a conflict. Amid the ash, fog and cloud, there is the manufacturing of a space—a many-winged museum on the make. On the plinths, exquisite remnants of life present and past—adorning the walls, portraits of gentle torture sit hand in hand with brutal and statuesque portrayals of camaraderie—and the gift-shop is littered with plastic curios and gilt revulsion. Pacing the hall, atrium and corridor, there are those who keep the museum—the various midwives to the building’s demands—and those, like the reader, who merely visit; those who pass through the vacant galleries adrift with questions. What can I touch? What is next to Egypt? What is hidden in Mesopotamia? Where do we eat? Drink? Where is the entrance? The exit?"

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

A note on : working with Pat Randle and Angie Butler at Whittington Press

so so grand to work again with printer / artists, and friends, angie butler and pat randle at the legendary whittington press in the cotswolds. one of the highlights of 2021 for me, we made a publication entitled 25 poems. the poems were about the process of making the book and letterpress culture / vocabulary and this embedded, cohesive, direct collaboration not only began a new path for me thinking through what is possible with poetry and printed material, but also created a real bond between us. since then we had a couple of events together, to the keep fire burning, and now we’ve returned to work, potentially on another publication. as before, it was just such a blast to hang out with them both, and to learn from their skill

A note on : Japanese UK poetry exchange, coming September

JUPE : Japanese UK Poetry Exchange

September 2022 and January 2023 with multiple events in both Japan and the UK.

With Kyoko Yoshida, fukudapero, Colin Herd and SJ Fowler, and all latest lineups here https://www.theenemiesproject.com/jupe

A remarkable international poetry project, featuring new collaborations made by Japanese and British poets across the globe, performed at six special Camarade events taking place across the UK and Japan. Centred around the creative and curatorial work of Fukudapero, Kyoko Yoshida, Colin Herd and Steven J Fowler, JUPE will see events in Norwich, London, Glasgow, Kingston upon Thames, Kyoto and Tokyo across autumn 2022 and early 2023. Each events will feature the four primary collaborator protagonist poets as well as local poets invited to contribute new duets, made for the night, too. A literary project that aims to break new ground, emphasising the possibilities of poetry and performance over and alongside translation, and to forge new bonds between two nations, exploring what is possible for modern poets working across languages, styles, cultures. / Supported by The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, Daiwa Foundation, National Centre for Writing, Writers Kingston at Kingston University and Glasgow University.

September Friday 16th : JUPE in Norwich https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/whats-on/meet-the-world-japan-to-the-uk-poetry-in-collaboration/
September Sunday 18th : JUPE in London https://www.theenemiesproject.com/jupe
September Saturday 17th : JUPE in Glasgow https://www.theenemiesproject.com/jupe
September Monday 19th : JUPE in Kingston https://www.writerskingston.com/#/japan/

A note on : TYPOETRY comes to a close at Applecart Arts

A beautiful afternoon in Newham, at Applecart Arts centre, a series of the poets from TYPOETRY came together to read their works and celebrate what has been a remarkable project that has done something with visual and experimental and public poetry that few projects in the capital, let alone Newham, ever have done.

For me it was grand to read the poems of some of the poets involved who weren’t there, to meet Laura Accerboni, who travelled to the UK from Switzerland and to say out loud that the day belonged to David Killian Beck, who originated TYPOETRY and worked so hard to make it happen

A note on : Julia Rose Lewis' article on The Great Apes

Brilliant. Readable in full at HVTN https://hvtn.substack.com/p/elaborate-biological-filigrees?sd=pf

“SJ Fowler is inquiring what chimpanzees have to say about our blindness to our life history? It is a mirror not a miracle. Haeckel’s Law states that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Ontogeny refers to the unfolding of the body of the organism in time otherwise known as embryology and developmental biology. Without it, we synthesize again and again and soon we are lost. Haeckel writes: ‘we do not really understand [the facts of embryology] until we trace them to their true phylogenetic causes, and see that each of these apparently simple processes is the recapitulation of a long series of historical changes.’ [2] Phylogeny refers to the unrolling of species in time otherwise known as descent with modification and evolutionary biology.

The origin of recapitulation means gone through heading by heading, chapter repeating, again diminutive of head. Let us go through the series of readings. Fowler created a film reading of The Great Apes for the Broken Sleep Books Extravaganza on 14th April 2022.[3] [4] The event took place after the face-to-face launch of The Great Apes and before the online launch.[5] [6]…..

Ontogeny unrolls the self. Fowler is unrolling line after line of the chimpanzee poem. He repeats the phrase, it’s a fight, twice in the reading and its echoing creates a stillness in sound and meaning following itself. It’s a fight that’s so still to refrigerator, where the fight is a long unresolved conflict, where the fight is decay slowed to the point of stillness as a refrigerator slows the growth of bacteria and mold. Is he saying refrigerator or refrigerate her, where refrigerate means to hold her body before burial, the reader finds themselves in the middle of grief. Is the fight consuming her or foreshadowing ‘Mary mother of glitter’ in the next line? [9] In the supermarket, it is a fight with consumerism and modernity. Here refrigerate comes from back cold becoming; it is the exposure of the private time in the public. So the supermarket is recalling the human missing the chimp part of himself. There is primate echoing private. Chimps have thick hair down their backs that helps them maintain body temperature in cold and rain and it is missing from humans. Ontogeny unrolls; it is the vase found before the outlines of birth and grief…..”

EPF #14 - Ireland Euro Camarade, the fest finishes

Such a gift of a finish for the fest. This was so lovely, so high standard, and so fun – the travel, the general ambiance of Ireland, the chance to stay away – that it broke the flow in my mind that my festival was one huge boat of work, and instead it felt, at the end, that I was just getting lucky to do a gig in a special place. Christodoulos Makris deserves huge credit for his curatorial work on this event, and the Riverbank Arts Centre is so nice. All the works on the night were excellent, and such a range. Afterwards we decamped to a local pub that felt like it was stuck in time, a rare thing for me, and I was able to see off what has been the biggest single event undertaking of my life in remarkably jovial and relaxed fashion. https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/ireland

For my own part I worked with the musician and artist Nick Roth, whom I’ve known for a few years but worked with for the first time early in 2022. He could not be more excellent to work with, so experienced, present, professional. He is a great improviser too, I had complete trust with him and we attempted something quite rare / pure, to not plan anything but the idea of a conversation between improv talking and sax. The results are something I am pleased with.

EPF #13 - York Euro Camarade

This event really popped the balloon of 12 events in London and pressure. It made the festival process feel easier, more adventurous, less entirely on my back. That is in no small part thanks to my co curator JT Welsch at the University of York, but also all the poets this night, who were so good and so nice, including really dear friends Dave Spittle, and Hungarian poets Kornelia Deres and Peter Zavada, with whom I travelled up and down with. Just really communal, generous, supportive atmosphere with excellent pairs work. https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/york22

For my own part, the third poet collaborator I had dropped out on the day so I did a weird solo thing, which I think worked quite well but also maybe came across a little more intensely than I planned it. Worth it to do but maybe 13 events effects you.

EPF #12 - Netherlands Poetry Celebration

A brilliant event, but a challenging one to curate and perform at, purely because the task of doing a 45 minute sound poetry improvisation with legendary figures Phil Minton and Jaap Blonk, along with Audrey Chen, while also introducing and helping others was a stretch. Worth it though.

Asha Karami visited from Netherlands and gave a great performance with Joanne Dixon, as did many of the other supporting poets, and always it’s like going home to work with Isa and Eduard at Iklectik. https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/netherlands-2022

What I am most proud of in my work is its range. My curiosity had led me to practise multiple poetry methodologies at the same time, at what I hope is a high level. I see textual and semantic poetry as one element of many, with visual, asemic, collage, sound, collaboration, photo, film, curatorial, pedagogical etc… They are all branches of the same tree. I choose always my method as well as my subject. And this collaboration, in terms of sound poetry, is one of the high points for me, and likely always will be. To work with Minton and Blonk at the same time connects me to a lineage which isn’t just about their decades of work, but also how they draw from two traditions, arguably – improvised vocalisation and sound poetry – and fuse them. I feel like working with them now, in my mid thirties, will give me scope beyond what I know is possible in improv sound poetry for a long time to come, if I keep doing it of course.

EPF #11 - Catalan Poetry Celebration

The 11th and penultimate London event, and our first at Iklectik Artlab. The last event to be put together for the fest, thanks to the quick work of Marc Duenas and colleagues, we hosted four Catalan poets, including Jansky, who blew me away earlier in the year, alongside Maria Callis and Josep Pedrals, who I met in Macedonia, and my colleague at Kingston university, Albert Pellicer. https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/catalan22

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.