SEEN AS READ :
an anthology of visual, asemic and photo poetry

Available to purchase poembrut.bigcartel.com/product/seenasread £12.99
Published by Kingston University Press in a limited edition first run of 50. Edited by SJ Fowler.

Seen as Read is an ambitious anthology of visual poetries that erases the line between viewer and reader. From stitches to typesetting, beeswax to periodic tables, handwritten abstraction to puzzling collages, this anthology amazes, amuses, and articulates ambiguity with a precision only visual poetry can. Emerging from a series of online programs run by SJ Fowler during the global lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, Seen as Read reaches far beyond the context of its conception, celebrating original work by nearly 40 poets across the world. It explores concrete poetry, asemic writing, photo poetry, conceptual literature and much more. It is a book made of poems alive even before they’re read, remaking visible language before the viewers very eyes.

Featuring works by Brian Baker, Richard Biddle, Mikael Buck, Susie Campbell, Kayleigh Cassidy, Anwyl Cooper-Willis, Patrick Cosgrove, Amelia Crouch, Madelaine Culver, Laura Davis, Beverley Frydman, Sylee Gore, David Hayward, Carolyn Hashimoto, Paul Hawkins, Alex Hegazy, Emma Hellyer, Tania Hershman, Sarah Hymas, Ben Jenner, Victoria Kaye, Chris Kerr, Evalyn Lee, Julia Rose Lewis, Rie Marsden, Ella Skilbeck Porter, Juliet Sprake, Adam Steiner, Agnieszka Studzińska, Stephen Sunderland, Pam Thompson, Simon Tyrrell, Martin Wakefield, Rushika Wick, Lori Wike, Lynette Willoughby

Brian Baker is a Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University, UK. He has published creative, critical-creative and text/image works in Vector, Ballardian, Burning House Press, LUNE, Some Roast Poet and in the 2020 collection of essays Sandscapes (Palgrave, 2020).

Richard Biddle is an experimental poet and visual artist whose work has appeared in numerous zines and anthologies. www.richardbiddle.com

Susie Campbell is currently studying for a practice-based poetry PhD at Oxford Brookes where her research focuses on Gertrude Stein and spatial form. Her poetry publications include The Bitters (Dancing Girl Press, 2014), The Frock Enquiry (Annexe, 2015), 'I return to you'(Sampson Low, 2019) and Tenter(Guillemot Press, 2020). Her poetry has appeared in a number of magazines, anthologies and visual poetry exhibitions. https://susiecampbellwrites.wordpress.com

Anwyl Cooper-Lewis, after a varied career staring in biological sciences, Anwyl took up art, came to Bristol to do an MA in Fine Art and now practices her craft and volunteers at the Glenside Hospital Museum.

Patrick Cosgrove is an artist/poet whose practice includes sculpture, 2-D work and performance. He has appeared at many of S. J Fowler’s Poem Brut events. His work attempts to question the prioritisation of writing and speaking over other forms of communication and intimacy.

Amelia Crouch is a visual artist who lives in West Yorkshire, UK. Her artwork is underpinned by an interest in the relational and mutable nature of meaning and usually begins with words, as content or inspiration. Outcomes range from simple acts of wordplay to more elaborate, performative videos. Past exhibitions include: The Tetley, Leeds (2017); Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (2016), and Coventry Artspace (2016). Amelia holds an MA Fine Art from Manchester Metropolitan University, a BA Fine Art from Leeds University. www.ameliacrouch.com

Madelaine Culver is a writer and poet with a background in arts administration. Based in the North East of England, she completed the Writing Poetry MA at Newcastle University in 2020. Her work has been published by ALIENIST, 3:AM Magazine, The Babel Tower Notice Board, Ink Sweat and Tears, New Boots and Pantisocracies, and the international journal, Shuddhashar.

Laura Davis has lived and worked in the Middle East and Central Africa for the past 15 years, and is currently based in Kampala, Uganda. Her poems have appeared in the Live Canon Anthology 2020, and in Ink Sweat and Tears. She is on Instagram @lauradavis1709 and tweets @LaDaBel.

Beverly Frydman is a New York born London poet. She enjoys walking her dog on Wormwood Scrubs where she also finds poems.

Sylee Gore’s work has appeared at Modern Art Oxford, in Periodicities, on NPR Berlin, and is forthcoming at the Ashmolean Museum. Her literary research is supported by the Rothermere American Institute and the T.S. Eliot Summer School. Gore’s most recent book-length translations from the German on contemporary photography are published by Prestel, Steidl, and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König. She was awarded the Colin Franklin Prize and the Lord Alfred Douglas Prize in 2020.

David Hayward is a writer living in Paris. He can be found on Twitter as @Sime0nStylites and Instagram as @davidhaywardwriter

Carolyn Hashimoto is a visual/experimental writer based in Dumfries and Galloway. Currently studying for the MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, her debut pamphlet The Chips are Down Here in Lockdown was published by OrangeApple Press in 2019. Her work can also be found in Gutter, 3:AM, -algia and Blue House Journal.

Alex Hegazy works within a range of mediums including digital media, soft(ish) sculpture and painting. Within the context of his work, he explores themes of desire, excess and the sublime.

Tania Hershman's poetry pamphlet, How High Did She Fly, was joint winner of Live Canon's 2019 Poetry Pamphlet Competition and was published in Nov 2019, and her hybrid particle-physics-inspired book 'and what if we were all allowed to disappear' was published by Guillemot Press in March 2020. Tania is also the author of a poetry collection, a poetry chapbook and three short story collections, and co-author of Writing Short Stories: A Writers' & Artists' Companion (Bloomsbury, 2014). She is co-creator of the @OnThisDayShe Twitter account, co-author of the On This Day She book (John Blake, 2021), and has a PhD in creative writing inspired by particle physics. www.taniahershman.com

Sarah Hymas lives by Morecambe Bay, England. Her writing appears in print, multimedia exhibits, as lyrics, installations and on stage. She also makes artistbooks and immersive walks. www.sarahhymas.net

Ben Jenner is a multi-disciplinary artist from Bristol, U.K. whose practice includes; visual poetry, printmaking, book arts and performance. His work is inspired by asemic writing, rooted in abstract expressionism, and asemic evocations of music and literature, depicting organic compositions that allude to a tension of conscious and subconscious mark-making.

Evalyn Lee is a former CBS News producer and poet currently living in London. She has produced television segments for 60 Minutes in New York and then for the BBC in London. Her broadcast work has received an Emmy and numerous Writers Guild Awards. Her poetry, short stories and essays have been published over in fifty literary magazines in the US and UK.

Victoria Kaye is an artist whose practice incorporates varying combinations of visual and textural work . She is influenced by ideas concerning consciousness and personal identity - how the mind works and the contrast that is created by an infinite, mental space inhabiting a finite, physical space (the brain) which itself occupies infinite space (the universe). She graduated from the University of the West of England with a Masters by Project in Fine Art in 2012. She currently lives and works in Bristol, U.K. www.victoriakaye.net

Chris Kerr’s first pamphlet, Citidyll, was published by Broken Sleep Books. His work has appeared in Adjacent Pineapple, Anthropocene, The Babel Tower Notice Board, Blackbox Manifold, Haverthorn, Tentacular and the Poem Atlas exhibition Escapisms.

Rie Marsden is an artist based in London. She has received a Bachelor of Arts, Fine Art, from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Most recently, she has studied at Spéos London and her work has been published in Mercurius Magazine, Mercurius No. 1. In her artwork, she has focused on the ideations of a refined image. In her writing, words are selected for their resonance and meaning, with their enunciation in mind. Her artwork has been exhibited in multiple galleries, including The Freud Museum, London. @riemarsden www.cargocollective.com/BlakeRie

Ella Skilbeck-Porter is a poet and PhD candidate in French Studies at the University of Melbourne. Her first collection of visual poems Concrete Pool is forthcoming with Ruin Press.

Jules Sprake is learning how to be a printmaker and poet. Her experimental practice involves exploring how a poetic approach to making impacts on our perception of banal manmade things. In her day job, Jules teaches design at Goldsmiths University where she is part of a new writing design collective https://porrolines.tumblr.com/

Stephen Sunderland studied English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and now lectures in Scriptwriting for TV and Film at the University of Salford. He is currently in his final year of a PhD by Practice funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council where he is writing an experimental surrealist novel, The Cinema Beneath the Lake. He’s the writer of three original dramas broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and was a Finalist in the BAFTA-Rocliffe New Writers programme for Children’s Media in 2016.

Pam Thompson is a writer and lecturer based in Leicester. Her publications include The Japan Quiz (Redbeck Press, 2009) and Show Date and Time (Smith | Doorstop, 2006) and Strange Fashion( Pindrop Press, 2017). She is a 2019 Hawthornden Fellow.

Simon Tyrrell is a writer and artist whose work celebrates the language, signs and symbols that help us make sense of our relationships with each other and the time and space we share. He’s a founder of The Museum of Futures in South West London and has participated in exhibitions and performances at the Poetry Society Café, Rich Mix, Westminster Reference Library and The Museum of Futures. His work has featured in Seethingography (Sampson Low), the Temporary Spaces anthology (Pamenar), ‘Islet Zone’ (Poem Atlas), ‘Home’ (Mellom Press) ‘The Origin’ Thames Boat Project (Stanley Picker Fellowship) and online journal Versopolis. www.tyrrellknot.com Twitter: @AssociateTyz

Martin Wakefield is a poet from London. Zugunruhe, a collection of his poetic texts, was published by Hesterglock Press in November 2019. HANDSFREE , Bob Modem’s deconstructions of Martin’s renderings of Paul Éluard’s illustrations of Man Ray’s drawings (from part I of Les Main Libres), is due from Parmenar Press in 2021. Some of his performance and video work can be seen on YouTube at https://bit.ly/yt_martinwakefield. His Instagram account is @martybabytram, and he tweets occasionally as @martinwakefield

Rushika Wick is a poet with an interest in how social conditions and structures affect the body. She is also a doctor with an interest in Women`s and Children's Rights. You can find her work in Datableed, Ambit and Tentacular amongst other magazines and in various anthologies including Smear (Andrews McMeel) and Fool-saint (Tangerine Press). Her first collection Afterlife As Trash is being published by Verve in Spring 2021.

Lori Wike is a musician and palindromist. She has been published in the Penteract Press anthology, Reflections, as well as in the journals Word Ways and InVisible Culture. She is principal bassoon of the Utah Symphony and serves on the faculty of the University of Utah.

Lynette Willoughby is an artist’s book maker, often working with found objects, maps and stone. For the Visual Poetry course she made an artist’s book for each theme of the course, excitedly finding objects from her collections and references to her travels and interests. She has a background in engineering (she is a past president of the Women’s engineering Society).