Steven J. Fowler or SJ Fowler (born 1983) is a contemporary English poet, writer and

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

artist, and the founder of European Poetry Festival.

Work

Fowler has produced a diverse body of work across poetry,

performance A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Management science In the work place ...

experimental theatre Experimental theatre (also known as avant-garde theatre), inspired largely by Wagner's concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, began in Western theatre in the late 19th century with Alfred Jarry and his Ubu plays as a rejection of both the age in particular ...

visual poetry Literary theorists have identified visual poetry as a development of concrete poetry but with the characteristics of intermedia in which non-representational language and visual elements predominate. Differentiation from concrete poetry As the li ...

concrete poetry Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct mea ...

and

sound poetry Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging literacy and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words". By definition, sound poe ...

, short stories and non-fiction.. He has received commissions from

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It ...

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also featuring. The st ...

Whitechapel Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the f ...

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in E ...

The London Sinfonietta The London Sinfonietta is an English contemporary chamber orchestra founded in 1968 and based in London. The ensemble has headquarters at Kings Place and is Resident Orchestra at the Southbank Centre. Since its inaugural concert in 1968—givi ...

Wellcome Collection Wellcome Collection is a museum and library based at 183 Euston Road, London, displaying a mixture of medical artefacts and original artworks exploring "ideas about the connections between medicine, life and art". Founded in 2007, the Wellcome C ...

and

Liverpool Biennial Liverpool Biennial is the largest international contemporary art festival in the United Kingdom. Every two years, the city of Liverpool hosts an extensive range of artworks, projects, and a programme of events. The biennial commissions leading ...

. Since 2012 he has been associate artist at Rich Mix Arts Centre, and since 2014 poet in residence at award-winning landscape architecture firm J&L Gibbons. Fowler is lecturer in Creative Writing and English Literature at

Kingston University , mottoeng = "Through Learning We Progress" , established = – gained University Status – Kingston Technical Institute , type = Public , endowment = £2.3 m (2015) , ...

, and has taught at Tate Modern, Poetry School and

Photographer's Gallery The Photographers' Gallery was founded in London by Sue Davies opening on 14 January 1971, as the first public gallery in the United Kingdom devoted solely to photography. It is also home to the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, established i ...

. Fowler is the poetry editor at '' 3:AM Magazine''.

Poetry

Since his debut in 2011, Fowler has published nine collections of poetry.

Visual art

His work with visual art reflects an active contemplation of the aesthetic qualities of language or linguistic mediums in concrete poetry, photo poetry, writing art, calligrams and asemic writing. Building on traditions like

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...

ism and calligraphy art, it explores writing materials, the composition of handwriting and mark-making and the role of illustration and legibility in determining poetic meaning. He has been exhibited at the

Victoria & Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

Southbank Centre Southbank Centre is a complex of artistic venues in London, England, on the South Bank of the River Thames (between Hungerford Bridge and Waterloo Bridge). It comprises three main performance venues (the Royal Festival Hall including the Nati ...

, and in galleries in Vilnius, Berlin, Copenhagen, Lugano and Virginia.

Sound poetry

Featured in ''The Liberated Voice'' (2019) exhibition at

Palais de Tokyo The Palais de Tokyo (''Tokyo Palace'') is a building dedicated to modern and contemporary art, located at 13 avenue du Président-Wilson, facing the Trocadéro, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, 16th arrondissement of Paris. The eastern win ...

, which recounted the history of phonetic and sound poetry in the 20th and 21st century., other projects include ''Lunalia'' (2018), a collaboration with artist and opera singer

Maja Jantar Maja Jantar is a multilingual and polysonic voice artist living in Ghent, Belgium, whose work spans the fields of performance, music theatre, poetry and visual arts. A co-founder of the group Krikri, she has been giving individual and collaborat ...

, Soundings, a project with

Wellcome Library The Wellcome Library is founded on the collection formed by Sir Henry Wellcome (1853–1936), whose personal wealth allowed him to create one of the most ambitious collections of the 20th century. Henry Wellcome's interest was the history of m ...

and several collaborations with celebrated improviser

Phil Minton Phil Minton (born 2 November 1940) is a British avant-garde jazz/ free-improvising vocalist and trumpeter. Minton is a highly dramatic baritone who tends to specialize in literary texts: he has sung lyrics by William Blake with Mike Westbrook' ...

. He is a member of Minton's ''Feral Choir''.

Performance

His work has become known internationally for his "innovation in the field of live literature", in a practice that reflects the ideas put forth by performance artists like David Antin. Concerned with the potential of liveness, as opposed to the traditional poetry reading, his repertoire spans a diverse range of experimental practices, including improvised talking performances, action painting and pugilistica.

Film

''The Animal Drums'', premiered at Whitechapel Gallery Cinema in December 2018, "charting the particular, baffled and morbid character of English attitudes to mortality." Projects prior to include ''Enthusiasm'' (2016) with Noah Hutton, which looks at the collision point between internal and external languages. ''Disappearing Wormmood'' (2020), a collaboration with filmmaker Tereza Stehlikova, explored the overlooked aesthetic of

Borough of Brent The London Borough of Brent () is a London borough in north-west London. It borders the boroughs of Harrow to the north-west, Barnet to the north-east, Camden to the east, the City of Westminster to the south-east, as well as the Royal Borough ...

's Willesden Junction and

Wormwood scrubs Wormwood Scrubs, known locally as The Scrubs (or simply Scrubs), is an open space in Old Oak Common located in the north-eastern corner of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London. It is the largest open space in the borough, ...

, "striving to see a closer place, alien, idiosyncratic and yet familiar".

Theatre

Two full-length plays, ''Dagestan'' (2015) and ''Mayakovsky'' (2017), were performed at Rich Mix, London. ''Dagestan'' was produced by Penned in the Margins. "Set in the shadowy world of global security", ''Dagestan'' invited the spectator to "enter the minds of private military contractors to uncover a culture of violence, gallows humour and moral uncertainty". ''Mayakovsky'', commissioned by Dash Arts for the Rich Mix's centenary commemoration of the Russian Revolution, explored the life and death of Russian poet

Vladimir Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (, ; rus, Влади́мир Влади́мирович Маяко́вский, , vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ məjɪˈkofskʲɪj, Ru-Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky.ogg, links=y; – 14 Apr ...

, a prominent figure of the

Russian Futurist Russian Futurism is the broad term for a movement of Russian poets and artists who adopted the principles of Filippo Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism," which espoused the rejection of the past, and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence, ...

movement.

Curatorial projects

European Poetry Festival

Fowler is the founder and director of the European Poetry Festival. Since its inception, the festival has seen more than 100 European poets gather in front of audiences across UK and Ireland for events pioneering performance and collaboration in contemporary European literary and avant-garde poetry.

Writer's Centre Kingston

In 2017 he was appointed director of Writers' Kingston, Kingston University's "literary cultural centre dedicated to creative writing in all its forms with an annual program of events from talks, to workshops and festivals".

Poem Brut

He is founder and curator of Poem Brut, an initiative that has generated more than a dozen events since 2017, alongside multiple exhibitions, workshops, conferences and publications. Its aim is to "offer an alternative understanding of 21st-century literature" by "embracing text and colour, space and time, handwriting, composition, abstraction, illustration, sound, mess and motion,

o affirm O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), pl ...

the possibilities of the page, the voice and the pen in a computer age".

Enemies Project and the Poetry Camarade

In 2013 he launched the Enemies Project, which curates original collaborative works, performances and exhibitions between poets, artist, photographers, sculptures and other creative practitioners. His "Camarade" events asks pairs of poets, many of whom have never met before, to produce new collaborative works for the night of the reading.

Collaborations

In his own practice as well as his curatorial work, Fowler is a pioneer in collaborative inter-disciplinary practice. Collaborations include poets, artists, photographers, dancers, sculptors, film makers and writers. He has published two books based around the concept of collaborative practice: ''Enemies'' (2013) and its sequel ''Nemesis'' (2019).

Selected bibliography

Poetry

* ''Come and See the Songs of Strange Days'' (Broken Sleep Books, 2021) * ''I Will Show You The Life of the Mind (on prescription drugs)'' (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2020 * ''The Guide to Being Bear Aware'' (Shearsman Books,, 2017) * ' (Test Centre, 2015) * ''The Rottweiler's Guide to the Dog Owner'' (Eyewear Press, 2014) * ''Enemies: the selected collaborations of SJ Fowler'' (Penned in the Margins, 2013) * ''Fights'' (Veer Books, 2011) * ''Minimum Security Prison Dentistry'' (Anything Anymore Anywhere Press, 2011)

Art books

* ''Sticker Poems'' (Trickhouse Press, 2021) * ''Crayon Poems (Penteract Press, 2020)'' * ''Aletta Ocean's Alphabet Empire'' (Hesterglock Press, 2018) * ''I fear my best work behind me'' (Stranger Press, 2017)

Selected collaborators

Aase Berg Aase Berg (; born 1967) is a Swedish poet and critic. Aase Berg was among the founding members of the Stockholm Surrealist Group in 1986 and published an early book on their publishing company ''Surrealistförlaget'' in 1988. During the late 199 ...

Jerome Rothenberg Jerome Rothenberg (born December 11, 1931) is an American poet, translator and anthologist, noted for his work in the fields of ethnopoetics and performance poetry. Early life and education Jerome Rothenberg was born and raised in New Yor ...

Joe Dunthorne Joe Dunthorne (born 1982) is a Welsh novelist, poet and journalist. He made his name with his novel '' Submarine'' (2008), made into a film in 2010. His second novel, ''Wild Abandon'' (2011), won the RSL Encore Award. A selection of his poems w ...

Sam Riviere Sam Riviere (born 1981) is an English poet and publisher. Education and career Riviere was educated at Norwich School of Art and Design and completed a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in 2013. While at art school, Ri ...

* Eirikur Orn Norddahl * Morten Søndergaard * Zoë Skoulding * JR Carpenter * Luke Kennard *

* Rebecca Kamen * Lotje Sodderland

References

External links

Official website

European Poetry Festival

Poem Brut

The Enemies project

Writer's Centre Kingston
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fowler, Steven J. 1983 births Living people Alumni of Birkbeck, University of London Alumni of Durham University English male poets