SJ Fowler

Yes But Are We Enemies?

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Beginning on September 18th in Belfast and visiting Derry, Galway, Cork, Dublin and finishing in London on September 27th, YBAWE is a multinational project about collaboration and innovation in contemporary poetry.

Six core poets, 3 Irish, 3 English, will present new collaborative works across the six date tour. At each reading they will be joined by numerous pairs of locally based poets. Every event features never before seen collaborative works.

Yes But Are We Enemies, co-curated by Christodoulos Makris, is fundamentally about the creation of new collaborative works and the integration of differing poetic communities, and has only been possible through the generosity of a series of organisational partners, first and foremost The Arts Council of Ireland / An Chomhairle Ealaíon and The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, through their Touring and Dissemination of Work scheme.

More here.

Auld Enemies

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7 locales : over 40 poets : a national tour of Scotland and brand new innovative poetic collaborations : a Scottish Enemies project, organised by SJ Fowler.

The Enemies project: Auld Enemies is a transnational poetry collaboration where six poets will work in rolling pairs to produce original works for readings across the breadth of Scotland. Each event will also feature numerous pairs of writers from the region, who will be presenting brand new poetry collaborations as well. Auld Enemies is a groundbreaking exploration of contemporary Scottish poetics through the potential of collaboration.

​​​Auld Enemies will commence with a six date tour of Scotland, taking in Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Lerwick in the Shetlands and finishing with Kirkwall in the Orkneys. It will conclude with an event in London, at the Rich Mix Arts Centre, on July 26th, which will feature many of the new works from the tour, new collaborations and a documentary screening about Auld Enemies.

Cabaret Hrabal

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hrabal_vizual

 

One of the boundless figures of late 20th century Czech literature, Bohumil Hrabal was a novelist, a drinker, a bon vivant, an avant gardist, a railway dispatcher during the Nazi occupation, a traveling salesman, a steelworker, a recycling mill worker, a stagehand… His novels, which include Too Loud a Solitude, Closely Observed Trains, and I Served the King of England, were censored under the Communist regime, yet have since been translated into nearly thirty languages. A survivor of both the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Czechoslovakia, much of Hrabal’s work juxtaposes the darkness of history to the comic, human-scale happenings of the every-day. His oeuvre is as inimitable as his novels are unforgettable.

Through a half-dozen brand new commissions from some of the most exciting UK based poets, artists, conceptualists, theatre makers and dramaturges, Hrabal will be evoked and enveloped, transposed into some of the most exciting literary experimentalists of contemporary London.

Featuring Zoe Skoulding (sound poetry), Sarah Kelly (book sculptures), Joshua Alexander (film art), Stephen Emmerson (conceptual performance), Marcus Slease (poetry), Tom Jenks (literary experiments), Eva Danickova (stage reading) and Lucinka Eisler (theatre), this is a chance to discover, or rediscover, a great European writer through new and exciting works that pay their debt to the remarkable achievements of Hrabal in the essence of their happening.

Read more at the Czech Centre London site.

Petrarch -a Celebration of Tim Atkins

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Sat 28 June, 7pm at Rich Mix, 35 – 47 Bethnal Green Road, London, E1 6LA.

Launching the remarkable collected Petrarch poems by Tim Atkins, clocking in at over 400 pages and published by Crater press, over 20 poets read from the book to celebrate this groundbreaking British poet.

Long heralded as one of the leading lights of the British 21st century avant garde poetry, here the work of Tim Atkins is revealed and celebrated by the key figures in the contemporary British vanguard of experimental writers.

The Rottweiler’s Guide to the Dog Owner

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SJ Fowler’s The Rottweilers guide to the Dog Owner is made up of 13 different sequences or commissions, including works written for VerySmallKitchen, Zimzalla, The Enemigos project, Lush & the Wortwedding gallery and features works that call on, or celebrate, the poetry of Anselm Hollo, Tom Raworth and Jack Spicer.

The book is out now on Eyewear and will be launched on May 21st, 7pm, at the London Review of Books bookshop 4 Bury Place, Bloomsbury, London, WC1A 2JL.

Hidden Door films

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Films from SJ Fowler’s Enemies event at the Hidden Door festival in Edinburgh are now online, including this performance from Jow Lindsay and Samantha Walton. Full list below:

Graeme Smith & Anthony Autumn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x178S_I8mS8
Daisy Lafarge & Anne Laure Coxam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKJRX-hTeXQ
Greg Thomas & Lila Matsumoto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7J2491JF-0
Ryan Van Winkle & Sarah Kelly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNI5bAl5R-8
nick-e melville & Ross Sutherland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3shpmr-hCKA
The Walking tour

 

Fjender films

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Held on March 15th 2014, at the Rich mix arts centre in Shoreditch, London, Fjender (part of the SJ Fowler’s Enemies project) celebrated cutting edge avant garde poetry from Europe, centred around contemporary Danish poets. A selection of British poets were asked to write original works as commissions in response to the themes of Morten Sondergaard’s Wordpharmacy,  including Stephen Emmerson, above.

Whale Hunt

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Poet and vangardist, SJ Fowler, strives to encounter and confront all disciplines in the poetic tradition. His latest work starts from a root of Norse mythology and carves a path through contemporary poetics and language construction.

Whale Hunt is a curated section of Fowler’s Vikings work and is published as an illustrated pamphlet by Annexe.

 

Wrogowie films

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Wrogowie, organised by SJ Fowler, celebrated contemporary Polish poetry in collaboration with British poetry on February 8th 2014 at the Rich mix arts centre in London. Six pairs of poets premiered original collaborative works specifically for this event, including Marcus Slease and Grzegorz Wroblewski, above. Links to the other performances below.
Amy Cutler & Ula Chowaniec http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6LdC442EKk
Angus Sinclair & Laura Elliott http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrH3G34BQ_M
Francesca Listette & Joanna Rzadowska http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZukpdL6Cxk0
Philip Terry & Adam Zdrodowski http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHzymaGAgPQ

Maintenant #98 –Volodymyr Bilyk

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At the heart of a new Ukraine, as poetically as politically, the work of Volodymyr Bilyk, and it’s worldwide repute, as is tied to the new possibilities of technology in the 21st century as it is the quality and innovation that defines it. Bilyk is the new face of a nation whose poetic history is as often entrenched as its political, and his groundbreaking visual, minimalist, conceptual, sound and artpoetry has been published across the globe, due in no small part to his willingness to embed himself within internet culture and its potentialities. Moreover, his immediacy as a poet, as evident in his poetics as in his colloquially eloquent, unpretentious mode and manner, reveals itself as the expression of an individual willing to commit utterly to the ideal of democratic freedom in his homeland. This interview is conducted during the unyielding protests, and the resultant government violence and oppression, wracking the Ukraine in late 2013 / early 2014, of which Volodymyr Bilyk, the 98th respondent of the Maintenant series, is a central and formidable part.

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-98-volodymyr-bilyk

Tom Chivers & SJ Fowler Double Launch

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Candid Arts Trust, 3 Torrens Street, London, EC1V 1NQ .

Wednesday 26th February
7pm (reading commencing at 7.30)
FREE

_
Flood Drain
Tom Chivers
“I had a dream: a drift
on the spirit-level of a river
or a drain or a dyke
being a river in the clothing
of a straight edge”

Inspired by the extraordinary dream visions of the medieval poets and catalysed by a two-day exploration of the liminal terrain of the River Hull floodplain, contemporary writer Tom Chivers has crafted a long poem that meditates on the dual themes of dreaming and drainage.

Annexe is publishing Flood Drain as a limited edition two-tone pamphlet and cartographic artifact of Chivers’ drift along the River Hull.

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Whale Hunt
SJ Fowler
“Time began with a bear then it became a Viking
family tree over grandfather to all of us (that matter)
the polite, the gentle born of the power to display force
but choosing not to do so in company resounds its glow”
Poet and vangardist, SJ Fowler, strives to encounter and confront all disciplines in the poetic tradition. His latest work starts from a root of Norse mythology and carves a path through contemporary poetics and language construction.

Whale Hunt, part of the Introducing series, is a curated section of Fowler’s Vikings work and is published as an illustrated pamphlet.

More here.

Enemies reviewed

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“This is a compilation of some of the collaborations which Fowler has undertaken with over 150 artists, writers, sculptors and musicians in a project funded by the Arts Council and the Jerwood Foundation. The scale of the work has been enormous and is a testament to Fowler’s commitment as a kind of impresario of the avant-garde (or vanguard, as he prefers to call it): alongside this anthology, numerous discreet publications have emerged with small presses.”

Read the complete review of SJ Fowler’s book of collaborations at Sabotage.

Enemies: Slovakian poetry

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Videos from the recent Slovakian poetry event at the Rich Mix arts centre are now online:
Sarah Hesketh (&Cristina Viti) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpLyGuU2kic
Mark Waldron & Martin Solotruk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84klLN9kNXc
Peter Milcak & Stephen Watts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhCVTxaNEPo