SJ Fowler : How the Crocodile Tear Waterfalls Flow…

 

 

 

 

 

Things are what they are where they are. This has been one of my pre-occupations. The poetry collection is never a suite of singularities, it is poems changed by the poems around them, the physical design of the book, the blurb, the cover, and indeed the endless unknowable subjectivities of the reader - their mood, prior knowledge and more. Nothing exists in a vacuum, and so content should then be cognisant of context, it is responsible to it even! And so so much of my work has tried to walk into this volatility, be it with textual, visual, conceptual or live poetries. Here then is not really a selected uncollected visual poems, but a new book made out an ambitious idea – what can a visual poem be? What is a visual poem?

That many poets concern themselves only with semantics is fair enough I suppose, though confusing for me when language, written, printed, plastered or carved, is innately visual as well as semantic. Inherently so. Leaving design to the publisher is one thing, but collectively being uninterested in how meaning changes as the appearance of language changes is another. Suffice to say, as I have passed a dozen years writing, the various modes and means of visual poetry have taken me in - concrete poems, asemic writing, handwriting poetry, collage poetry, photo poetry, film poetry, poster poetry, art poetry, minimalist poetry, parietal poems, conceptual poems, constraint poems, sculpture poems, illustrative poems and more. The found, and made, the painted and inked.

This book is about range, and moments in my learning process. A funny, weird, pleasant little passport of visual experiments that is trying to show what is possible for the curious. And trying to show those who think visual poetry a novelty are themselves naïve, or under exposed to the history of human written culture. This has been another passion of mine, rooting modern methods of poetry to historical context, and this floats around this book, the originary sources of our written literature, from cave poems to calligraphy.

What the book contains is something like 30 works from 10 sequences, projects and exhibitions. They are all works outside of my eight published volumes of visual poems as of now 2023. They have been chosen from 100s of pieces, and this choice was not made with a sense of what was best, but what was best for this selection, for what would fit the specific contents and confines of this book. So that together, this selection, would present a glimpse into my ten years of researching, collecting, sharing, and teaching, having shared these modes and methods to thousands of people across the UK and Europe.

Crocodile Tear Waterfalls is a bringing together of the best of the lost, the glimpse of potential books that will never be and the various experiments across what is a vast and profound field – poetry that cares what it looks like.

             SJ Fowler, 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SJ Fowler is a writer, poet and performer who lives in London. His work explores an expansive idea of poetry and literature - the textual, visual, asemic, concrete, sonic, collaborative, performative, improvised, curatorial - through 50 publications, 400 performances in over 40 countries, 4 large scale event programs, numerous commissions, collaborations and more.

Kim Fahner : A Celestial Crown of Sonnets, Sam Illingworth and Stephen Paul Wren

A Celestial Crown of Sonnets, Sam Illingworth and Stephen Paul Wren
Penteract Press, 2021

 

 

 

          Anyone who writes sonnets impresses me as I’m a free verse, lyric kind of poet. Whenever I’ve tried to shove my foot into the glass slipper of rhyme or iambic pentameter, I sort of panic and tell myself I should stick to the less structured poems. In A Celestial Crown of Sonnets, the poets tell a story of astronomy by way of ‘an heroic crown of sonnets,’ which is also known as a sonnet redouble. The fourteen sonnets are Shakespearean or Elizabethan in origin, following the traditional fourteen-line structure, and the last line of each sonnet is the first line of the proceeding one. A fifteenth poem, known as a ‘mastersonnet,’ in which the poets use “the first lines from each of the fourteen previous sonnets” makes up the final piece in the book. Enter the book and quickly find yourself swept up into the mystery of a night sky, and into the minds and hearts of early and contemporary astronomers.

          The list of astronomers who feature in this corona of sonnets reads like a Who’s Who of a study of the heavens: Thales of Miletus, Plato, Aristotle, Shi Shen, Claudius Ptolemy, Aryabhata, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, Ibn al-Shatir, Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, and William Herschel are all included. They share one quality in common—a deep curiosity about the stars and planets, and how the sky worked. In the earliest days of astronomy—as one can imagine when one reads about the work of the more historical figures named in this list—studying the constellations would have seemed an odd thing to do. At the time, they would have been going against common (mis)understandings of science, in an age when the Catholic Church posed a real threat to any scientist’s life. The obvious threat for those who lived and researched in the time of the Inquisition might have dampened their quest for answers but, in many cases, only served to make them more certain and passionate in their studies.  

          From Plato, who “kept the sun and moon and stars all bound,” to Aristotle, who lit fires that “would never cease,” to Galileo, who “claimed the sky was not a holy site,/Observing truth yet tempered with delight,” Illingworth and Wren create stunning images of these men’s relationships with the science of astronomy. There are lovely images in this small book of poems, but it is more the stories that are told within each sonnet that garner my interest and curiosity as a reader and thinker. By the time you get to the final piece in the corona of sonnets, with “Mastersonnet,” you have had time to think about what a struggle it must have been for these early scientists in particular—to have gone against churches and governments when it might have meant certain torture or death. Still, they continued, pressed against that oppression, and asked new questions that begged to be answered—even if the asking or the answering could lead to persecution.

          In the time of which these male astronomers lived, science and poetry would have been more seamlessly woven together. Galileo, for instance, was an astronomer and an astrologer, so those worlds overlapped then. In more recent times, the disciplines of science and poetry have found common ground again, and serious, peer reviewed literary journals—like The Goose and Artis Natura here in Canada, and like Consilience in England—have sprung up to share the beauty that resides at the crossroads of the two fields of study. What once might have seemed an odd coupling now seems less rare and even more valuable, especially in a time in human history when we are faced with a global pandemic and environmental destruction. Poets and scientists who know the value of both worlds can see the similarities and elevate them for readers in both disciplines, so that there is a blending of curiosity, experimentation, and gathering new knowledge. I’m curious—as always—about when and where the women astronomers edged into what has traditionally and historically been a male-dominated field, and their marked absence somehow makes them more present in some ways.

          If you love looking up at the night sky, finding your favourite constellations, and sharing that with a friend, lover, or family member, then you’ll also love Illingworth and Wren’s A Celestial Crown of Sonnets. The last two lines of the final poem sum up the importance of the work those fourteen astronomers have done: “Observing truth yet tempered with delight,/You tamed the sky and welcomed in the light.” So much of what we love about light as poets, and as readers of poetry—from stars, to sun, to moon—is the notion that it dispels darkness in both literal and metaphorical ways. Science does this, too, in its explorations, as well as in its ongoing quest to attain answers to questions. This book of poems bridges disciplines, inviting readers in and asking them to take the time to look up and consider our place in the universe.

 

    

 

 

 

Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. She was poet laureate in Sudbury from 2016-18, and was the first woman appointed to the role. Kim's latest book of poems is These Wings (Pedlar Press, 2019). She's a member of the League of Canadian Poets, the Ontario representative of The Writers' Union of Canada (2020-22), and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. Kim can be reached via her author website at www.kimfahner.com

Ethan Vilu : Cellar, by Anthony Etherin

Cellar, Anthony Etherin
Penteract Press, 2018

Made up of short poems originally posted to Twitter over the course of two years, Anthony Etherin’s collection of constrained poetry Cellar is the result of a sustained, dedicated, and above all exceedingly thoughtful writing practice. Published in 2018 by Etherin’s Penteract Press, whose declared focus is on “constrained, formal, and experimental writing”, Cellar exemplifies this commitment by being comprised entirely of anagrammatic (where every line contains exactly the same letters as each other line) and palindromic (where, by letter, the poem is the same read backwards or forwards) poetry. Despite the aura of stringent, potentially harsh formality which such an approach may inspire, this collection of poems produces the opposite effect – it is a wild book, an exercise in euphony, a linguistic roller coaster.

The subject matter within Cellar varies enormously, from the historical English Wars of the Roses to meditations on exoplanets, forests, rivers, and the nature of poetry itself. This cornucopia of disparate topics, united by their beauty and by the particular, regimented forms of the work, produces a powerful feeling of “entire worlds seeming / to merge in wilderness….” – a vast, generalist’s rumination on everything. It is the kind of thing which one may think would be hindered by constrained writing, but which in this case is profoundly enhanced by it. As such, whether the explicit intent was there or not, Etherin has produced with Cellar an eminently strong argument for the urgency and necessity of constrained writing in a poetic world more or less dominated by free verse. It is an argument, and a beautiful one, for the expansion of our poetic terrain – a noble endeavor, and a wildly fun time all the while.

Ethan Vilu hails from Calgary, Alberta. Their poetry longsheet A Decision Re: Zurich was published by The Blasted Tree in March 2020. In addition to editing for NōD Magazine and filling Station, Ethan is also a fledgling bookseller and collector.