Unfinished Memmoirs of a Hypocrit

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. UMOAH attempts to operate on multiple fronts, and fails, as is the history of such abundance conflict. It wishes to present the handwritten as a viable poetry. It wishes to present the notebook as a finished poetry. It wishes to emphasise context over content, or at least blend and blind the two. It wishes to be as strange and unfortunately amusing as living mostly is. It wishes to be about where it was made (Spain, mostly) and what is was made from (a single notebook of bone coloured paper, a christmas gift, and some bad black pens, and some fingerpaint).

Published by Hesterglock Press. More at www.stevenjfowler.com/memmoirs

Sample poems from the book have been published online at
Berfrois www.berfrois.com/2019/06/no-one-really-understands-me
Tentacular www.tentacularmag.com/issue3b/steven-fowler
Hotel Magazine https://partisanhotel.co.uk/S-J-Fowler

“It is the fifth entry in SJ Fowler’s Poem Brut publication series, and strives to embrace environment affecting writing and writing affecting environment. It celebrates the obscure movement of the hand, writing, lining, drawing – deliberately plain, worked, smoggy. A book 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. Handwriting illustrates, 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. Towards liquid and wood, attractive ugliness, toilet wall draughtsmanship, doodled portraits, minor collage.”