Stephen Watts Celebration - Poetry

Stephen Watts

Writers Kingston event #58
December 6th 2022 

Town House Building
Kingston University

Celebrating the work of Stephen Watts

Cristina Viti

Stephen Watts, simply put, is one of the UK’s most extraordinary, influential and respected poets of the last forty years. His remarkable works, and his commitment to his writing, stands as an example to generations of poets that follow him, in his beloved London, and beyond. To mark the publication of Journeys Across Breath from Prototype Publishing, which gathers all of Watts’ published works between 1975 and 2005 – as well as a number of unpublished pieces appearing for the very first time – this event celebrates his works and life through readings by the poet himself and his peers. https://prototypepublishing.co.uk/product/journeys-across-breath/ 

Rory Cook

With readings from Stephen Watts, Cristina Viti, Rory Cook, SJ Fowler, Adriana Diaz Enciso, Chris Gutkind, Dominic Jaeckle, Vicki Kaye.

Adriana Diaz Enciso

In addition this event celebrates the continued brilliance of Sampson Low, our publishing house partner at Writers Kingston.. The work of the press has bolstered the careers of dozens of students and local writers since we began our partnership with them in 2018 and continues on, thankfully for us, into 2023. To represent the press, launches from Lucy Furlong and Martin Wakefield. https://sampsonlow.co/wck-pamphlets/ 

Lucy Furlong

Lucy Furlong - Amniotic City
11 years after its first publication, Lucy Furlong revisits Amniotic City in a series of new explorations, once again poking her nose in the nooks, passageways and liminal spaces therein. She discovers new terrain and new stories in this second edition of her poetry map.
https://sampsonlow.co/2022/10/13/amniotic-city-lucy-furlong/

Martin Wakefield

Martin Wakefield - Emptpy Poems
“Martin Wakefield’s ravishing sequence of ‘Emptpy Poems’ is elegant, spare and haunting. And haunted. The spectral traces of Apollinaire’s poems are still just visible beneath Wakefield’s enigmatic creation. There seems to be a strange attraction between the poems on the surface and the ghost poems beneath such that, in places, the surface poems shiver into italics to mirror the font change of the trace poems. Sometimes this becomes an ‘interference’ caused by the spectral poems, mysteriously pushing at words within the poems above, or pulling them into new spellings, compressions and splittings. This resonates powerfully with the operations of the mind itself and how it responds to the energies and interruptions of its memories, its subconscious, and its physical embodiment, as well as reflecting on the way all language is similarly shaped and inhabited by ghosts.” — Susie Campbell
https://sampsonlow.co/2022/12/06/emptpy-poems-martin-wakefield/

Chris Gutkind

Vicki Kaye

SJ Fowler

Dominic Jaeckle

SJ Fowler - MUEUM launch

SJ Fowler

Steven J Fowler introduced his first novella MUEUM at Waterstones, Kingston on Wednesday 13th October 2022. MUEUM is a work of 'watchers and the watched, a testament to the fact that people are always more interesting—and far stranger—than things. [...] An essential artefact for our troubled times, proving that travel of the mind is always more powerful than the real thing.' (Chris McCabe)

Kayona Daley

Poets and writers from Writers' Kingston (Kingston University's literary cultural institute) joined with their own work, exploring museums and museum culture. With Kayona Daley, Martin Wakefield, Simon Tyrrell, Agnieszka Studzinka, Dominic Jaeckle, Julia Rose Lewis and Jessica Sequeira.

Martin Wakefield

Steven J Fowler's work has become known for its exploration of the potential of poetry, alongside collaboration, curation, asemic writing, sound poetry, concrete poetry, and performance. He was nominated for the White Review Short Story Prize, 2014, and his short stories have appeared in anthologies, such as Isabel Waidner’s edited collection, Liberating the Canon (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2018).

MUEUM is published by Tenement Press, and edited by Dominic Jaeckle, BUY IT HERE

Dominic Jaeckle

About MUEUM:
Suspended in unknowable time there is a city; in the city, an event, a conflict. Amid the ash, fog and cloud, there is the manufacturing of a space—a many-winged museum on the make. On the plinths, exquisite remnants of life present and past—adorning the walls, portraits of gentle torture sit hand in hand with brutal and statuesque portrayals of camaraderie—and the gift-shop is littered with plastic curios and gilt revulsion.

Goya, as atmosphere rather than artwork, hovers amid iron age ghosts, bronzed ideas, and antiqued anxiety.

Julia Rose Lewis

Pacing the hall, atrium and corridor, there are those who keep the museum—the various midwives to the building’s demands—and those, like the reader, who merely visit; those who pass through the vacant galleries adrift with questions. What can I touch? What is next to Egypt? What is hidden in Mesopotamia? Where do we eat? Drink? Where is the entrance? The exit?

Simon Tyrrell

Following the tradition of the Nestbeschmutzer authors (“one who dirties their own nest,” vis-à-vis Bernhard and Gombrowicz, et al), in Fowler’s curt, spiralling, and acute work, the museum’s keepers will answer..

Jessica Sequeira

Agnieszka Studzinka