SJ Fowler - Small Publishers Fair 2025

 

SJ Fowler

Small Publishers Fair 2025
Launch of SJ Fowler’s Found Photo Poetry Postcards
and
A Zed and two 0s

SJ Fowler
Matt Sokulsky
Eleanor Wilders
David Spittle

Eleanor Wilders

The Small Publishers Fair is the annual gathering of books by writers, artists, poets, musicians, book designers and their publishers. It takes place in London’s historic Conway Hall, centre of humanism and literary Bloomsbury.
https://smallpublishersfair.co.uk 

Matt Sokulsky

a zed & two o’s
An anthology of poems on the animals of Shaldon Zoo
Shaldon Wildlife Trust is a zoo like no other. Nestled on a hill, a stone’s throw from the sea, in a beautiful corner of South Devon. It is a residence to binturongs, loris’, armadillos and poets. In 2024 and 2025, SJ Fowler, as part of his residency in the zoo, organised a series of walking tour events, inviting poets from across the UK, to read to an audience of various animals. This pocket-sized anthology brings together the best of those new poems, each written for and read to an animal of Shaldon. The anthology also includes an introduction by Zoo director Zak Showell.
Featuring the work of SJ Fowler, Colin Herd, Danica Ignacio, Will Rene, Matt Sokulsky, David Spittle, Vilde Bjerke Torset, Cameron Wade, Eleanor Wilders and Ellen Wiles.
Published by Sampson Low Ltd

David Spittle

Found Photo Poetry Postcards
In theorising what is possible for the photo poem while teaching at the Photographer’s Gallery, SJ Fowler proposed four possible ways the two mediums can interact. With each other, separately. With text upon image, somehow. With text made of image or language evoked with image, in sequence or otherwise. And finally, a photo of language. How would this last method be more than just documentation? When the photo was necessary, when it was intrinsic?
This limited edition set of twelve postcards, Obi wrapped as a bundle, presents photographs of language found in the world, and thus, photo poems. It is a sequence that demonstrates that language found on a high street, when divorced from context, can be more poetic than an ode. It suggests that the language people use and misuse when branding their business is often more creative than the best-selling novel. It is twelve simple photos that insist that conceptual poetry can be relatively funny, and oddly personal.
Published by Sampson Low Ltd

Poem Brut - Writers Kingston event #92 - October 2025

 

"Mass Sokulsky" by the IPLA Collective
Eleanor Wilders, Danica Ignacio, Cameron Wade

Writers Kingston event #92
Poem Brut October Thursday 9th 2025
Kingston University Town House

Julia Rose Lewis

Stephen Sunderland
Nikolai Duffy
Miya
Nadia Jordan, Mia Hale-McLeod and Cerys McVea (Students of the ‘Experiments and Innovations’ module, Kingston University)
Julia Rose Lewis
IPLA Collective: Eleanor Wilders, Danica Ignacio, Cameron Wade
Popogrou Collective: Bob T Bright, Vicki Kaye, Patrick Cosgrove and Simon Tyrrell
Lily Ferret
Bella Weerasinghe

Nadia Jordan, Mia Hale-McLeod and Cerys McVea

A truly unique evening of expansive literary performances involving staff, students and alumni of Kingston University alongside visiting writers, artists and musicians from across the UK and beyond. Poem Brut is an event series that embraces aesthetic possibility and all possible artistic poetic methods of writing, making and presenting poetry.

SJ Fowler and Miya

MIYA visited from Tokyo, presenting improvisation, while Stephen Sunderland launched his ground-breaking surrealist novel The Cinema Beneath the Lake. Both the Popogrou and IPLA collectives gave us lively collaborative performances while students from the ‘Experiments and Innovations’ module at Kingston University unwrapped a new live work. An energising evening of live literature, celebrating originality in all its forms. No wonder the Writers Kingston community continues to flourish as it nears 100 events since its inception in 2017.

Stephen Sunderland

The Cinema Beneath the Lake by Stephen Sunderland is a secret history of Surrealism, drawn from the hidden life of the Muse. Suzanne dreams her own revolution, summoning a band of impossible adventurers, she journeys toward the “Méduse” — the cinema beneath Lake Pavin — which will project their film-dreams to the clouds as riddling clues to our resolution in the world. 

Nikolai Duffy

Common, by Nikolai Duffy, tells the story of Robert, who in the aftermath of his aunt's death, travels from his home in Manchester to Hampshire to settle her affairs. In her house, faced with the left-behind detritus of an eccentric life, Robert makes the decision to leave his family and build a hut on the local common. This is a novel that explores death, memory, the long impact of brutality in childhood, and Robert's aunt's insistence that a person should live an 'unroofed life'.

Popogrou Collective: Bob T Bright, Vicki Kaye, Patrick Cosgrove and Simon Tyrrell

The Popogrou Collective is a group of poets whose work celebrates innovative writing practice at the cutting edge of contemporary literature. This collaborative jumble of creatives gather together language art, textual and visual poetry from nineteen active members. Popogrou, a worldwide collective, emerged from writer and artist SJ Fowler’s online Potential Poetries workshop programme, established during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

Bella Weerasinghe

Lily Ferret

Raymond MacDonald & Neil Charles - Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music

Raymond MacDonald (Solo Saxophone)

Friday 3rd October 2025

The Lit and Phil ‘Members Library’
Raymond MacDonald (Solo Saxophone)
Neil Charles (Solo Double Bass)

The Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music lit up the city with 12 concerts and 4 workshops, spread over 7 days. Venues included the Jesmond Swimming Pool, Ouseburn Victoria Tunnel, The Cumberland Arms, The Globe, Newcastle Civic Centre, Gosforth Civic Theatre, and The Literary and Philosophical Society.
www.newcastlefestivalofjazzandimprovisedmusic.co.uk

Neil Charles

In the wonderful atmospheric Members Library at the The Lit and Phil we were treated to two solo sets. First Raymond MacDonald with his saxophone, combining both mournful dirge and zesty desire lines. Followed by Neil Charles on double bass, whose Ellington shaped stepping stones helped him navigate from the reference section to the thriller shelves.
Look out for Neil's latest release, Dark Days, on Jazz In Britain's ‘new music’ imprint JAZZ NOW at
https://jazzinbritain1.bandcamp.com/album/dark-days

Tea House Theatre Jazz Jam - Ben Gasiglia and friends

 

Benet McLean

Ben Gasiglia - guitar
Benet McLean - violin
Rio Kai - bass
Eric Ford - drums

Tuesday, 12th August, 2025
Tea House Theatre
139 Vauxhall Walk, London, SE11 5HL, UK

Ben Gasiglia

Jazz jam session on every second Tuesday of the month. House band 8-9.15pm, Jazz Jam 9.30-Midnight. A night of spontaneous improvisation, smooth rhythms, and electrifying performances.
London's finest jazz musicians in the most relaxed of environments, fabulous teas and cakes. Perfect for younger jazz fans as well as though that like listening to jazz in an easy chair. The night I sketched EJ Guy from Vancouver opened the jam session on drums.

Eric Ford

Next jam Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Pat Levett: Harmonica, Sam Leak: Keyboard, Ben Gasiglia: Guitar, Eric Ford: Drums, Spencer Brown: Double-Bass

Rio Kai

iyatraQuartet - Wild Green Launch

iyatraQuartet

Alice Barron - violin
Rich Phillips - cello
Will Roberts - percussion
George Sleightholme - bass clarinet
www.iyatraquartet.com

13 Apr 2025
John Lyon's Theatre, City Lit, 1-10 Keeley St, London WC2B 4BA

A special album launch concert by the iyatraQuartet to introduce their new spring 2025 album Wild Green. Sung in English, Occitan (medieval French) and Middle English the album is a collection of original compositions that are an enchanting exploration of the beauty and strength in the cycles of the natural world.

Performing together for the last twelve years – violin virtuoso Alice Barron, master clarinetist George Sleightholme, leading cellist Rich Phillips and global fusion percussion maestro, Will Roberts – fuse roots-based, folk and global music on orchestral instruments, with captivating four-part vocals.

It was the rising collective voice of the quartet that encapsulated the ethos of the album and the launch itself, together the voices lifted us to the sky and wrapped around us like Nature's embrace. The music was more than just the new shoots of spring, but a walk through the complete cycle of life. 

I read in the album notes that the title track, Wild Green, is inspired by the 12th century German writer Hildegard of Bingen but it was the song named after the trobairitz (female troubadour) Beatritz de Dia that I found truly enchanting. Beatriz is sung brilliantly in Occitan by George Sleightholme, and is where the iyatraquartet seem to excel, with an intoxicating mixture of dark and light strands, perhaps encapsulating the duality of nature and life itself. It is a language that I have started to learn too, and is still alive today, although passed from generation to generation by mouth, rather than taught in schools. The language flourishes in local pockets (I learnt mine in the fields around the small village of Cambieure) and is full of humour, vulgarity and pathos. For anyone wanting to explore a little more beyond this song then get your hands on any vinyl from the Ventadorn label. If vinyl is your thing then snap up your copy of Wild Green at www.iyatraquartet.com/product-page/wild-green-vinyl before it sells out. 

National Gallery Poetry Lates - Writers Kingston

Stewart Lee

Lily Ferret
Zara Auckbarallee
Stewart Lee
SJ Fowler

National Gallery
Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN
14th March 2025

A remarkable project which allows Kingston University students and guest poets to write new performance works about paintings in the National Gallery, supported by curator Joseph Kendra and WK director SJ Fowler. Performed to full and generous audiences during the Friday Lates program, this is a perfect example of how Writers Kingston provides Kingston University students with a chance to engage with opportunities at world respected institutions and large audiences.

Zara Auckbarallee

For centuries, the artforms of painting and poetry have been in dialogue, with each informing the other, or attempting to translate what makes them unique as their own media into another. Poet and performer SJ Fowler has pioneered this gallery project with new ekphrastic poems, chosen from the National Galleries world renown collection, offering alternative interpretations of their meaning, history and standing. 

SJ Fowler

The audience join the hundreds of late night gallery goers as they wander the rooms of the National Gallery. Invited guests from Writers’ Kingston, students and staff from Kingston University, as well as further afield, wander from painting to painting experiencing the poetry performances in front of the chosen artworks.

Lily Ferret

Visual Stories - Platform Gallery, Kingston School of Art

Harper Stringer

Eleanor Wilders
Danica Ignacio
Aimee Nimmo
Bella Weerasinghe
Sinnead Singson
Harper Stringer
Patrick Cosgrove
Jules Sprake
Cameron Wade
Lisa Blackwell
Mark Rutter
Laura Davis
Matt Sokulsky
Alban and Natalie Low
Sara Upstone
Regina Avendano
Oscar Rodriguez
Julia Rose Lewis
Steven J. Fowler

The Platform Gallery
Kingston School of Art,
Knights Park.
Kingston upon Thames,
Surrey KT1 2QJ with 

Steven J. Fowler

An exhibition exploring visual storytelling, and how innovative methodologies around language, design, composition can amplify and extend the ways in which we read, and see, a story or tale. The exhibition presents concrete poetry alongside word clouds, abstract art alongside asemic writing, and firmly emphasises what is possible when we no longer take for granted what a story is, on the page, canvas, wall.

Aimee Nimmo

The exhibition special view featured a series of performances by exhibitors. It was part of the Writing Cultures’ Festival of Storytelling which is taking place from January 24th to March 14th 2025, with events at The National Gallery, workshops and happenings across Kingston University, and an exhibition - a centrepiece showcase for students, staff and poets and artists across the UK. 

Danica Ignacio

The exhibition was curated by Steven J Fowler and conceived by Sara Upstone and Kate Scott. It was co-curated by Cameron Wade, Eleanor Wilders and Danica Ignacio.

Matt Sokulsky

Regina Avendano

Julia Rose Lewis

Bella Weerasinghe

Cameron Wade

Eleanor Wilders

Jules Sprake