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.

SJ Fowler : a small folio of poets : engerland

 

SJ Fowler :: introduction

 

Ben Jenner :

Victoria Kaye :

Sylee Gore :

Rushika Wick :

Susie Campbell :

David Hayward :

Stephen Emmerson :

Tom Jenks :

 

SJ Fowler : a small folio of poets : engerland : introduction

a small folio of poets : engerland

 

 

 

 

the selection of poets i admire here is no survey. in fact it is the precise opposite. a sliver. a glimpse. a blink of poets. there is no pretence of anything else in the choosing. it's just a few poets from engerland, working in the 21st century, right now, whom i admire, whom i think are inevitably underappreciated in a nation that has (without rancor or doubt or recourse to unhelpful binaries i say this) a really old school tradition that is linguistically and methodologically conservative, and that gently ignores / abhors anyone who might do something that isn't easily discernable, comforting, emotionally insightful in poetry. factful. but we all know, those who want to, english poetry has produced innovative, exciting, contemporary, experimental poetry of great magnitude for hundreds of years. these poets are held together, if by anything, by a particular sensitivity to the visual, the concrete, the asemic, the conceptual, the sculptural, the artistic, and it might be said they are to be found in places other than what most would call the poetry space.

this bevy of poets is then a small thing of celebration, championing, to encourage you to seek them out further and to acknowledge their work, their constancy, but not against anyone else, not in negation, but in complex non-linear appreciation for what is a grand time in british poetry all considered, whether that is reaching beyond the borders or no. there are hundreds, really hundreds of poets doing brilliant work across the isles. and this is a great thing, that there is too much going on for much of it to be exalted, and there's a levelling taking place. we're all dirty together for playing in the sandbox of british innovative poetry, the BIP.

 

 

 

 

SJ Fowler is a writer, poet and artist who lives in London.

His work has been commissioned by Tate Modern, BBC Radio 3, Somerset House, Tate Britain, London Sinfonietta, Southbank Centre, National Centre for Writing, National Poetry Library, Science Museum and Liverpool Biennial amongst others.

He has published eight collections of poetry, five of artworks, six of collaborative poetry plus volumes of selected essays and selected collaborations. His writing has explored subjects as diverse as prescription drugs, films, fight sports, museums, prisons and animals.

He has won awards from Arts Council England, Jerwood Charitable Foundation, Nordic Culture Fund, Danish Arts Foundation, Arts Council Ireland and multiple other funding bodies. He was part of the first ever Hub residency at Wellcome Collection, and is currently poet-in-residence at J&L Gibbons architects and formerly at Kensal Green Cemetery. He is associate artist at Rich Mix.

He has been sent to Peru, Bangladesh, Iraq, Argentina, Georgia and other destinations by The British Council and has performed at over 50 international festivals including Hay on Wye, Cervantino in Mexico, Berlin Literature Festival and Hay Xalapa.

His feature-length films have premiered at Whitechapel Gallery and his plays have been produced by Penned in the Margins and Dash Arts. He was nominated for the White Review prize for Fiction in 2014 and his short stories appear in anthologies such as Liberating the Canon. His visual art has been exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo, V&A, Hardy Tree Gallery, Jerwood Space and Mile End Art Pavilion, with installations at Kielder Forest and Tate St Ives. His librettos have been performed at LSO St Lukes, Wigmore Hall and Guildhall Music School. His articles have appeared in Nature, Vice Magazine and Jacket2.

He’s been translated into 27 languages and produced collaborations with over 150 artists. He has pioneered the fields of performance literature, literary curation, collaborative poetry and Neuropoetics. His asemic writing, sound poetry and concrete poetry have also become known internationally.

He is the founder and curator of The Enemies Project and Poem Brut as well as poetry editor at 3am magazine and former executive editor at The Versopolis Review. He is lecturer in Creative Writing and English Literature at Kingston University, has taught at Tate Modern, Poetry School and Photographer's Gallery and is a Salzburg Global Fellow. He is the director of Writers' Centre Kingston and European Poetry Festival.