SJ Fowler Surreal-Absurd Sampler

Babs

I first met Babs when I first met Babs in London. I was spending a lot of time in Bethnal Green because of my events at Rich Mix and my workshop at St Johns. I went into a shop on the Bethnal Green Road, surrounded by people pretending to be poets, and met her basically. I thought I had seen it all, but here was this purple cat. And she had a heart of gold. She really did. She showed me the film Villain, with a young Ian McShane. And she was there for me, to loan me money, give me advice about how people really are. And she was proud of being a Londoner, and of being English. And that wasn’t something I was used to. I looked the other way at her constant casual violence towards dogs, whom I love. But it is what it is as they say. She knew Bob Hoskins back in the day. Before London changed. And she was a connection to the past for me, and she isn’t even old, you know what I mean? And it really helped me, to have her to rely on when I was asked to read poems and I thought wow, that is going to be so boring, for me and everyone else. And wow I know some of these people don’t like me because I’m not necessarily all nice and soft like them even if I am quite nice most of the time, and that’s just like Babs. And she told me, if people don’t really know how to react, then they probably stuck ain’t they? In your lucy locket, all sewn up sweet like. And that’s something I’ve tried to do, that Babs has helped me with, going around people who aren’t as sharp as they think they are. But who is at the end of the day? Babs.

SJ Fowler, April 2023

a series of encounters with London’s most loveable rogue, Babs the purple cat, whose improvised talk poems have become a staple of the UK’s avant garde poetry scene. Recorded at public performances, film shoots and specifically for this release, and featuring found sound recordings around the capital, Babs takes on what is possible for’ the improvised poem and for the poet as a character.

credits

released February 21, 2023

Released by 8ox publishing

Mixed by Milo Thesiger-Meacham

Supported by Resonance Extra radio 

Two new youtube transcribed talk poems by Babs

The Absence of Cassius

[Applause]
thing about this part of bethnal green i
was born here
and i was born purple
i'm a purple cat
i was born just burning the sand in the
bundle barrels you know what i'm saying
makes me a real cockney and that means
you're all lucy lucky which means you're
in my pocket now i'm saying and think
about it
so i was born in bedford green which
means of a proper landmark and i'll tell
you something about london which is
really special god exciting today
i'll tell you what i didn't know after
getting that one did i i was talking to
someone earlier said to me i can't use
the word geezer
if i can't use the word gizmo
as well
walk away from that i'm not qualified
for that kind of intelligence i give
them a social commentary my mum's
deadline but it's fair enough you were
asking cassius so my main thing is i
want to be hospitable
oh that's my alarm that's my five
minutes thanks very much

The Copyrightman's Flame

[Applause]
hello everybody
it's lovely to be here um i published a
new book last night called the great
apes and i was a monkey
but i'm not gonna be i'm just gonna set
an alarm for five minutes
so
we need bow
i was talking before with with ellie and
she's um
she's got a new agent
and maria she can make a lot of
pentameters in her mind when she walks
and then also
andrew's got a budgie now julia's got an
out
and that's my friend toby
if you go through that door there into
the nun larry gallery you'll see stephen
what's his exhibition oh
worth doing it we've got a woo hair
so we can build on that if you say sure
everybody say
i've got new job recently for aviva now
um
life insurance
it's not easy to bring out but
everybody's gonna die
are you covered
how many people answering for life
insurance
you think it's never gonna happen to you
but it will it can happen suddenly or
slow
if you lost your job you know because of
sickness would you be covered by
tomorrow
i can help you with that so this is a
special situation i don't have an orange
juice
yes thanks to
where you from
uh i'm from kent
anyone ever ordered these books
because i feel like they're really
tempting plastics
anyway so life insurance
and then you're walking down the street
by a bus it can be hit by a seagull in
the face i mean people really
underestimate brain injuries chronic
traumatic encephalopathy can happen to
you and what they found that in the last
few years when you get hit in the head
like a male concussion the ripple is
through the brain you think oh it gets
whacked once you've got like a visual
metaphor like i got whacked once and it
recovered it never recovers they found
out recently with multiple long clinical
studies there's a beeping that when
people get hit and hit when american
football actually changes their
personality permanently and then most of
them have insurance so that's one
example let's go through others people
die in so many different ways oh thanks
to have you got my recipes
what's your brother
oh nothing you
so okay other ways you could die yeah
life insurance would be useful i mean
most of it is dietary coronary diseases
you'd be surprised how many people die
of heart attacks but below the age of
50. i mean you think but it's creeping
everyone thinks they live forever when
they're young i did you spot with anyone
anyone look at them funny i love it now
you're so good i'm not having it no
physical contact no touching that's my
rule all right so this is a book over
here that i wrote in 1983
and it's called copyrightman's flame so
i'm just going to do a little bit of
that
is if you know about the barbells you
know you should be said you wouldn't let
be called cotton left you born would
understand bro bro no that you heard
that before yeah if you live in london
you church in your house bloody
dark car
lillian gish fish never heard that one
lillian skinner dinner or beginner
optional that one
linen draper paper or as in newspaper as
the linen come here lines learn chair
loaf bread head as you use your life
loop the loop soup
what
lordly is swear
lousy brown rose and crown what the
what do you say the goddess nick
pentameter maria
fancy lucy lock it rock it i'll use that
i've done you walk because i've improved
the whole set so it you're all in
my lucy lucky
you won
abbott
you

Words on Babs by other poets

Chris Kerr

Here are 145 words. I hope this is ok. I love Babs

pspspsps there is Babs stuck in the tape spooled between cassette and Smurfette. Babs runs away with the tape stuck to her fur, not in on the joke sometimes. Get your horror camcorder out for the Babs who do the funniest things round and round the foley artist leg. A lucy locket does look like a cats face and other nice things. Babs was once a little cat, a catette, not a big cat scary roar in hollow red plastic house on Fenchurch st. Babs is not your fur baby, tickling the belly of language. watch suddenly it’s the previous decades. having nostalgia for marketing language. Cat sit on the looper pedal and like things. Oohh sweet. When tape fast forward it’s high pitched observational. What if jim Davidson was Virgo? What if a purple snooker ball potted history? then Sound poetry that make u laugh scream

Susie Campbell

7 things I’ve learnt about Babs from trying to film a performance.

1. Babs is unpredictable and can’t stand still.

2. Babs loves a gossip.

3. Babs can’t leave stuff alone. Nothing is safe from Babs. Anything might be nicked, rattled, broken open, or transformed into a tractor.

4. Don’t lend Babs your watch.

5. I think Babs might be dangerous.

6. Babs just wants to be your friend.

7. Babs might be Godot as a purple cat.

David Spittle

B a b s

Babs is the cheery volatility of what shouldn’t be said but is all the better for being said. The improvised chronicles from an amiably rabid eccentric where ‘eccentricity’ is not a cultivated affectation or pompous curiosity but a rough-shod and noble condition that derives from a wheeler-dealing lineage of truly unhinged troubadours. Between vaudeville Dadaism and seaside surrealism, Babs is an affectionately torn postcard from a purple cat; signed with the blurting sincerity of a local grievance, mixed up and tumbled into the giggling debris of a traveller’s discovery; it is the friendly nattering of prophecy and pratfalls. The strange joy of Babs articulates a liberating claustrophobia, to be dizzyingly free whilst also plagued by the scuffed heel of daily existence.

Entirely serious and very silly, Babs is not to be trusted. For this slapstick seer, wide-eyed vulnerability is grafted messily onto the reckless frustrations of contemporary cat-life. The creation of Babs, though it seems more akin to a kind of spiritual ventriloquism, is as much a parody of banal English fury as it is a crazed plea: a nonsensical rallying cry for living and live-ness in all its absurd wonder.

Paul Hawkins

A triumphant talkpoe that royally succeeds in freeing SJ Fowler’s mind, so you, the listener’s ass can follow. Incantations and all manner of vocalisory improvisations, in a nox-tanked voicing, Babs' off the cuff observations and rants on whatever subject are revelatory, anarchic, capricious and brilliant. Found city sounds jostleing with crowd detritus give a full-on soundscape over which Babs performs. Marking out a truly original feline territory, the improvised, experimental Babsosphere is a joy to have in your earspaces.

Julia Rose Lewis

Be careful!

Bab’s tractor is absolutely a shark attractor.

Babs is an ambiguous figure, forever confusing the foreground and background for the love of the audience.

A cat is not interested in a line of people looking at him.

Babs is a cat’s cat.

Cat is only an abbreviation for a cassette tape.

Babs will unroll that yarn they told you about evolution in his human and yet impossible to hear correctly voice.

Babs is the fifth life-form to follow the Animal Drums film.

Fowler is alive “to often explore an uncomfortable ambiguity” in the words of David Spittle.

Babs is a cat caught on cassette tape, like a cats eye, look and grudge can fly flinging into time and distant libraries.

It is the feline function to go toward the most timid and bring them into the fold.

Babs is always looking into the beyond chrysoberyl eye to rice crispy to very brilliant to tough enough for polished concrete.

No cat ought to tolerate a closed door or being ignored by human beings on the other side of reading death.

SJ Fowler is a writer and poet. He lives in London. He was appointed official biographer to Babs in 2019.