HESTERGLOCK PRESS

This is a considerable book of poetic inarticulation, swamping somewhere in between poetry, notation for future projects forever unrealised, forgetful scrawlings, childhood dream illustrations, erratic geometry, collage and quotation. Memmoirs attempts to operate on multiple fronts, and fails, as is the history of such abundance conflict. In such rich, potent territory Steve presents us with a number of possibilities;

• the handwritten as a viable poetry
• the notebook as a finished poetry
• to emphasise context over content, or at least blend and blind the two
• to be as strange and unfortunately amusing as living mostly is
• to be about where it was made (Spain, mostly) and what it was made from (a single notebook of bone coloured paper, a christmas gift, and some bad black pens, and some fingerpaint)

It is the fifth entry in SJ Fowler’s Poem Brut publication series, which as a press and as a poet have supported with enthusiasm This series strives to embrace environment affecting writing and writing affecting environment. Joyously celebrates the obscure movement of the hand, writing, lining, drawing – deliberately plain, worked, smoggy. This series of books are definitely about the grid, the box, the cloud, the tree, where the words are meant to make you squint, to battle for legibility, rather than you be able to pinch and extend your thumb and forefinger against the page to get a closer look. Steve's Poem Brut work and project foregrounds handwriting, illustrating that it is more interesting than type, as are crossings out, as are notes, strange lines, grids made with rulers – constant gestures toward the homemade, the amateur, towards composition and motion. The Poem Brut is very much an invitation to head towards liquid and wood, attractive ugliness, toilet wall draughtsmanship, doodled portraits, minor collage. SJ Fowler is a poet and artist. He works in the modernist and avant-garde traditions, across poetry, fiction, theatre, sonic art, visual art, installation and performance. He has published various collections of poetry and text, and been commissioned by Tate Modern, BBC Radio 3, The British Council, Tate Britain, Liverpool Biennial and Wellcome Collection. He has been translated into 21 languages and performed at venues across the world, from Mexico City to Erbil, Beijing to Tbilisi. He is the poetry editor of 3:AM Magazine, Lecturer at Kingston University, teaches at Tate Modern and is the curator of the Enemies project.

READING IN PUBLIC IS ALWAYS A PERFORMANCE: SJ Fowler explores the role of poet as performer & artist

more on SJ Fowler's website