really kind of yessica klein to feature me, and of alexander kell to take these snaps of me in my studio https://thatpoetrything.substack.com/p/16-steven-j-fowler-poet-writer-and
Herri, founded and edited by Aryan Kaganof, is consistently one of the most complex, best designed and interesting online journals in the world. I read the issues with great attention, as they emerge from South Africa. I mean seriously, just leaf through this
I am very pleased then to have the latest issue feature a feature on my asemic writing and visual poetry.
https://herri.org.za/8/steven-j-fowler/
In my feature there are two brand new collaborations with Mikael Buck, him using AI.
Then 4 works from Unfinished Memmoirs of a Hypocrit, my visual book
Then 1 work from I fear my best work behind me, my art poem book
Then 4 works from my Selected Scribbling and Scrawling, my selected asemics
Then essays from that same book, from David Spittle, and an interview between myself and Tom Jenks https://herri.org.za/8/steven-j-fowler/#text1
The design of this feature, and the whole enterprise, is remarkable, and to connect with Aryan and his colleagues is uplifting.
Gorse is one of the most remarkable literary journals in the world, in print, and recently dormant, and now back in the world, and I’m very lucky to have a collaborative piece, with Rike Scheffler in the 11th edition, just out, miraculous
here is a piece by christodoulos makris on the journal’s release http://yesbutisitpoetry.blogspot.com/2023/01/gorse-no-11.html
gorse No. 11 has been produced as a tête-bêche (meaning 'head-to-tail', where a publication is printed in two halves, upside down and back-to-back, so you can read one half then flip it over to start reading the other) and which reflects the issue's guiding concept of 'Borders', with a North/South (Whins/Furze) editorial structure.
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1356694271/living-with-other-people-an-anthology?
Alongside some great poets, and edited by the Corrupted Editions team, Fiona Larkin, Michelle Penn et al, I’m happy to have a poem in this new anthology.
The poem is an excerpt from my 2022 book The Great Apes, but it has been graphically designed into a concrete poem of sorts
Deeply pleased to start 2023 with an online publication of some of my favourite poems from my poems on films collection from 2021, Come and See the Songs of Strange Days. Congo is a terribly wonderful film that I watched a lot as a child and these poems are peak level weird. I like also how the journal, entitled SYNCHRONISED CHAOS, has listed me as a photographer. Yes yes
https://synchchaos.com/photography-from-s-j-fowler/
Some of my best photo poems? My best photoshop poems
If you happen to be in Tokyo on January 7th https://express.adobe.com/page/5A9iHji3GpHkU/
or Kyoto on January 9th https://express.adobe.com/page/wo05oAojFRvea/
Please come to the first ever Camarade’s in Japan! Should be an extraordinary few nights of poetry and collaboration, with Japanese and Gaijin poets presenting new works.
I am happy to be doing more gigs in Japan too, a tour of sorts, and to be working with Fukuda Pero, Colin Herd and Kyoko Yoshida once again. More soon on this.
A new poetry film. One that documents a walk led by Stephen Watts, a great poet and person, across East London, earlier in 2022. It is another short film in the London I series I have been doing over the last few years, leading to a full feature in the next few years. It features an appearance by Babs too.
I owe Penned in the Margins a great deal. Electronic Voice Phenomena, Enemies and Dagestan were all firsts in fields for me, and they lifted my work, taught me loads. Sad to see Penned quiet, but an amazing legacy. Thanks to Tom Chivers.
Check out, from the heyday of Penned foray’s into experimental literature
The Electronic Voice Phenomena performance tour https://www.stevenjfowler.com/evp
My selected collaborations Enemies https://www.stevenjfowler.com/selectedcollaborations
My debut play Dagestan https://www.stevenjfowler.com/dagestan
Anthologies with my work including Mount London, Marginalia and Adventures in form https://www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk/index.php/category/books/books-anthologies/
A podcast on performance hosted by Tom Chivers https://soundcloud.com/pennedinthemargins/sets/penned-podcast-1-poetry-and
https://www.berfrois.com/2022/12/we-dont-surf-and-excuse-me-rocks-by-sj-fowler/
Berfrois has been around since 2009, before I even started writing poems. I’m sad to see it go, but as a parting salvo Berfrois kindly published two poems from a new 2023 publication entitled
Recently Attracted Reality Influencers : the selected screenshot and meme poems of SJ Fowler
coming in spring from Overground Underground Press, edited by Michael Sutton.
5 times they published some of my weirdest work, helping me in many ways, as they did for many many writers. All here https://berfrois.com/tag/sj-fowler/
This is going to be a special start to 2023 for me https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/events/talks-and-conversations-friday-lates-tour-and-poetry-readings-writers-kingston-20-01-2023
Poet and performer SJ Fowler brings together writers for a unique evening of readings around the Gallery. This event is part of Friday Lates.
Friday, 20 January 2023. 7.15 - 8 pm Room 22
About For centuries, the artforms of painting and poetry have been in dialogue with each other, with each informing the other, or attempting to translate what makes them unique as their own media into another. In this unique event and across future Friday Lates, poet and performer SJ Fowler will read new ekphrastic poems about chosen paintings in our collection, offering alternative interpretations of their meaning, history and standing.
Fowler is joined by Gallery Educator Katy Tarbard alongside invited guests from Writers’ Kingston, students and staff from Kingston University, as well as further afield, for a tour and poetry performances around the Gallery.
A miraculous reading by Stephen Watts ended a really beautiful evening in Kingston.The last wk event of 2022, people gathered to mark the launches of books by Lucy Furlong and Martin Wakefield with Sampson Low and to celebrate the poetry and person of Stephen with his book from Prototype.
So many of my events are so structurally experimental and playful perhaps in a sense to escape the rote of poetry readings and then in this moment I realised what is lost. Stephen's reading is without hyperbole one of the best I've ever witnessed. In a crowd of friendly cynics there were visible and invisible tears at being moved. Stephen can easily be called the greatest living English poet.His life's work over the last four plus decades speaks to that. as does every poem he writes and reading he gives.Im lucky he's my friend and I've learned so much from him.
The event reflected all this, modestly and sincerely. All the readers were grand and few will forget those few hours in the courtyard space at Kingston uni. In addition Alban Low did some amazing sketches of the readers in action http://artofjazz.blogspot.com/2022/12/stephen-watts-celebration-poetry.html
For the last year or so, after many years of close collaboration, David Spittle has begun shooting a film that explores the work I’ve been doing in and around poetry over the last decade or so. The film is built around a cinematic exploration of my books, my poetry collections and their themes and often hidden concerns. But it also explores my performance work, international projects, teaching and organising and other more ludic, weird and marginal things.
It’s really humbling to have a film-maker and poet I respect so much give attention to what I’m trying to do and after our first film collaboration - Where is everyone austria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmUylSMGNrw its going to end up memorable.
Part three of the serialised audio book of my novella has now been published on resonance extra https://extra.resonance.fm/series/tenement-press-presents-sj-fowler-s-mueum
My mind was a little bit off so I didn’t know, from the inside, why this would get such a response, but it did get a big response. I’d have to thank Benedict, who is so talented and enjoyable to work with. It was our second outing as a duo the onion boys, as part of my european poetry festival winter camarade at iklectik artlab. It was entirely improvisation, we planned nothing. I just tried to listen to what happened before us and to listen to Benedict, and I have been working hard on the technique of talking poems over the last two or three years, so that’s a positive, my experience is growing. It felt this one had its own miniature life unfolding. In the end, I don’t like it, but a lot of kind words on the night and via email since have been appreciated.
A few more great days working with Angie Butler and Pat Randle at the amazing Whittington Press in the Cotswolds. Our publication Guillaume… is coming along, this time proofing and I made a small film that shows and explains here
https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/camarade22
Third event in five days and all of them have been completely full, slightly mad. This maybe the most mad. A really rangey weird mix of literary european poetry collaborations and pure improv roaming play. Fantastic. Exactly what Id want, such an expansive idea of what poetry is, couched by lovely, generous people from all over. 9 performances, 19 poets.
All videos and pictures at this link above and that’s a wrap on the festival for 2022. It will return, Im happy to say, in April May 2023!
https://www.writerskingston.com/camarade22/
A fun night in the ancient market sq of kingston upon thames! 20 poets, 10 pairs, a standing room only of audience with all chairs full and a xmas market vibe wafting up from the st. Really pleasing to be bringing european poets living in the uk in alongside some british poets and some of the best students Ive ever worked with
For my own performance i did a conceptual experimental interview with milo thesiger meacham. Turned out good i think, blending his field recordings with a satire of some literary interviews maybe. Worth checking out the other performances at the link too.
Some brilliant photos from the remarkable Small Publishers Fair a month ago http://smallpublishersfair.co.uk/bibliopoe-books-by-steven-j-fowler-exhibition-2022/ taken by Julie Mitchell © Small Publishers Fair, https://work.juliehmmitchell.com of myself and pals Andrew Kotting, Egidija Ciricaite and with my new publication from JOAN publishing
Another Babs performance, the last of the year, and likely to be in the last on my upcoming cassette release, coming early in 2023, from Stephen Emmerson’s object published house 8ox https://eightox.org/
The cassette will be called : Bab’s London Adventures - talking poems
This Babs was all made up on the spot, what a nice audience, at Poem Brut at Rich Mix, Nov 19th 2022.
Holy moly this was amazing, a very big audience turned up at the rich mix for poem brut’s return with 12 performances from really talented, generous poets. It was great. All the videos here https://www.poembrut.com/2022
