Sam Wilson Fletcher is a British-Irish artist and writer. Born in Lewisham, London he studied chemistry and quantum mechanics at Oxford and geosciences at Harvard before switching to an artistic practice. 

In 2022 he joined expeditions to Antarctica and the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, and crossed the Atlantic from Amsterdam to Quebec City. Works arising from these residencies so far include a book about historical whaling and contemporary cruise tourism, But This Time the Spout Shot Up Red (forthcoming from Manchester-based press Death of Workers Press); The Ghost Below the Waterline (2024-25), a mixed-media installation that transformed an exhibition space into a dreamlike rendition of a crew cabin aboard a polar cruise ship, in collaboration with scenographer Anna Spiliotopoulou, with an accompanying short film shot partly aboard the ship and partly in the exhibition space, in collaboration with cinematographer Marco Dol; and Lines of Weakness, an experimental score written with composer Mari Alice Conrad, which premiered at the University of Alberta in Canada in 2022 and was performed again in June 2024 at Now Hear This Festival in Edmonton by ensemble XiME. 

Recent publications include Def's Chicken (w/ Shaun Doyle, Sally Press), Voice Notes from the Vortex (w/ Julia July, Sally Press), Curse Tablet (Slub Press), New Adjacent Possible Empty Niche (Veer2), Six Poems (Earthbound Poetry Series, Vol. 2), Dark Ecology (anthology: 100 Poems to Save the Earth, Seren Press) and Maybe This Is About Grief (Magma).

swilsonfletcher (at) gmail (dot) com / @samwilsonfletcher

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Praise for CURSE TABLET (Slub Press, April 2023):

CURSE TABLET is fucking great. A strangely lucid abstruse enfilade that seems to take sardonic delight in its own lack of self-assuredness, even impotence, counteracting this latter with a sort of forlorn hope charge into semantic oblivions. A calligraphic sunset reel, reeling with a cursed panegyric to the mourning of one’s own error. Ultimately, though, to put it in more banal terms perhaps, this is a weird interrogation of the process of writing poetically—once again, so like himself, Sam makes a strong case for something he professes (implicitly) at not infrequent intervals to detest.  Owen Brakspear, author of Water Year (Erotoplasty Editions) and Cabaret (Slub Press)

Your invitation to participate in the hyperbolic-cover-endorsement-industrial-complex has been received and will be considered by our team. If you do not receive a response within four weeks, assume you have been unsuccessful. This inbox is not monitored.  Jay Drinkall

In CURSE TABLET Sam Wilson Fletcher has pulled together a strange floating historiography of the curse as writing (and back again), run up through rabid-fire Bildungsroman. Figures of the Imperial Roman army, sacred canticles, Sam’s own spit (x4) and geological detritus bind in a weaved code that owes more to Hieronymous Bosch than British Poetry Revival. CURSE TABLET twists on the profundity of the terrifying, the evil and the questionable—as he says: ‘Curse tablets do cause people to die.’  Cole Denyer, author of CC DEATH CHARTERED INSTITUTE OF PERSONNEL DEVELOPMENT)

This lexical lava stream left a permanent mark in my psyche.  Jay Drinkall

This is a big and bold success, man, its ghastly iridescent l-enfilades seeping through the crack on the digital tablet (that horrible modern skeuomorph of an ancient surface for imprecations). ‘Curse Tablet’ indeed! It looks so good. Well done.  Colin Leemarshall, author of Total Spiritual Refection (Earthbound Press), Nidor (Crater Press)

Curse Tablet is rich. At quite a few points I had to look stuff up to see what it meant, something I’ve not done in a while. The mobility of the thing both bothered me and impressed me, always shifting, sliding off in a new direction. Held together though by a strong sense of Sam’s voice. More than once he seems to express a dislike for the medium of writing itself. I read it aloud and I read it walking but unlike other texts I found it easier to handle read silently. The ‘squeeze’ passage which I presume is a caving term I loved. Magic.  Shaun Doyle

Just got through Curse on the sofa. Wonderful, cuts the chaff of a lot of stuff I’ve read of late. Active self-address, self-question. Felt like a dog chasing Sam but the dog was saying, ‘I only have three legs you idiot.’ Will get through it again tomorrow but have been back to a few pages already—cream of the crop.  Tim Wolf, author of Participation Medal (Gong Farm)

Full onslaught hedgerow abyss; integral to early summer explodING corpuscles. The reading of the Tablet. It went well. It was enjoyed. It was experienced in one sitting. As intended. Without remorse. IT IS A GOOD THING.  Jim Clarke, author of Failed States

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Praise for New Adjacent Possible Empty Niche (Veer2, April 2022):

High-octane. Metaphysical-neurological data torrent, with intimations of disaster. Presentism, immense coexistent information, a rush. Love it.  Kim Charnley (author of Sociopolitical Aesthetics: Art and the Crisis of Neoliberalism)

If there is mentalistic congruence between nuclear magnetic lexicography, muddy shoes obvious at tangent perpended, in acoustic resiled to followed bended hints, then here outfolded quantum theodicy is pioneered as neurological plasticity of thought, human body-syntax at life span self installed minded mirror dazzled too.  J.H. Prynne

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Praise for Earthbound Poetry Series Volume 2, Number 8 (Earthbound, August 2021):

I like his wordstream lots. Sam Wilson Fletcher rewrites English like noone since William Burroughs. Dive into the vortex of the language!  Ben Watson (author of Frank Zappa: Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play and Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation)

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Selected Exhibitions          (Solo show: S  /  Group show: G)

S*: The Green Chapel, Hortus Botanicus Leiden, Days of Art & Science / Night of Discoveries, Sep 2024

S*: The Transmission of Anthony (Work In Progress), Museum Night Leiden, BIKE SHED, June 2024

G*: Pale Face: Drawings, TROEF Leiden, Peel Slowly and See, Mar 2024

G*: Leaves Left, Hortus Botanicus Leiden, Days of Art & Science / Night of Discoveries, Sep 2023

G: VOOR DE VORM, Gemeente (City Hall) Leiden, July-Sep 2023

G*: Exhibition Formerly Known as Circle, De Nijverheid, Utrecht, July-Aug 2023

G*: Typisch Huis, Rapenburg 112a, Apr 2023

G: Visual Poetry, View Gallery Bristol, Apr-May 2023

G*: When a Sweet Liquid Gathers in a Hard-To-Reach Place, Stadsgehoorzaal Leiden, Apr-May 2023

* as (co-)curator

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Selected Residencies

Hortus Botanicus Leiden, 11-16 September 2023

> Residency, installation & performance series inside the glasshouse complex of Leiden's botanic garden

Young Explorers Program, Adventure Canada

> Ocean crossing: Amsterdam to Quebec City, 16-31 May 2022

> Shipboard expedition: High Canadian Arctic and Greenland, 12-24 Aug 2022

ClimateForce / 2041 Ambassadors Program

> Shipboard expedition: Antarctica, 16-30 March 2022

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Selected Performances

performance / installation: Chthonic Orchard (w/ Patrick Cosgrove)

> Podium Sleutelwoord, Leiden, 12 July 2024

reading: Atlantic (excerpt)

> Kunstroute Leiden, 23 September 2023

performance / installation: Resting in the Jungle, Having Retrieved the Cursèd Skull of a Dead Time-Travelling Fungus Man

> Hortus Botanicus Leiden, 11-16 September 2023

score: Lines of Weakness (co-created with Mari Alice Conrad)

> premiered: Convocation Hall, University of Alberta, 15 December 2022, performed by Conrad Sobieraj (cello), Don Ross (clarinet), James Cockell (violin), Shelley Younge (flute), Maria Protodykonova (piano), and Dr. Andriy Talpash (conductor)

> Now Hear This Festival in Edmonton, Canada, 8 June 2024, performed by experimental ensemble XiME

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Selected Articles by Others

The Ghost Below the Waterline, Lucia Dove, December 2024

Maarten Slof & Sam Wilson Fletcher’s 'Pillar Mister': Thinking Big With Cardboard, Edward M Gomez, article: Brut Journal, August 2023

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Selected Publications

PRINT

booklet: Def's Chicken (w/ Shaun Doyle), Sally Press, April 2024

pamphlet: Voice Notes From the Vortex (w/ Julia July), Sally Press, October 2023 (commissioned by Leiden International Film Festival)

article: The Ghost Below the Waterline, Chemistry World, June 2023

chapbook: CURSE TABLET, Slub Press, April 2023

pamphlet: New Adjacent Possible Empty Niche, Veer2, Spring 2022

poems: His Funerary Blush & Sevens, Tears in the Fence, Winter 2021/22 (Issue 75)

pamphlet: Six Poems, Earthbound Poetry Series, August 2021 (Volume 2, Number 8)

anthology: Dark Ecology, 100 Poems to Save the Earth, Seren, July 2021

poem: Maybe This Is About Grief, Magma, April 2021 (Issue 79)

poems: Flawed, The Dawntreader, Winter 2020/21 (Issue 53)

poems: Below Red Cliffs, The Dawntreader, Autumn 2020 (Issue 52)

poems: Bald Moon & Sea Stack, The Dawntreader, Winter 2018/19 (Issue 45)

PRINT & WEB

exhibition text: Helping People (w/ Cole Denyer), CLASSWAROOM, June 2024

poems: ///, Die Leere Mitte, September 2022 (Issue 15)

poems: (i)ndra, AIR-RAID & Die Flut, Word For/Word, July 2021 (Issue 37)

poems: AXIS LEXIS, Die Leere Mitte, February 2021 (Issue 9)

WEB

exhibition text: Pillar Mister (w/ Kim Charnley), Tenement Press, Autumn 2023

article: The Ghost Below the Waterline, Chemistry World, May 2023

poem: petrel petrel, NOON, March 2023 (Issue 23, p. 162)

poems: Hyaloclastics: an Excerpt, Guillotine Curse & Larsen, Blackbox Manifold, January 2023 (Issue 28)

prose & image: from Konstantin Simonov, Eternal Interstice, June 2022 (Issue 10, p. 2-3)

poems: Fried Genghis & The Pearly Queens of Unsolicited Advice, Anthropocene, January 2022

poems: Boltzmann & Blue Pill, Blackbox Manifold, August 2021 (Issue 26)

poem: Kingley Vale, Ink, Sweat and Tears, April 2021

poem: The Sweet Track, The Kindling, March 2021 (Issue 9)

poems: milk / ether & north and north and more north, NOON, December 2020 (Issue 17 & 18, p. 53-54)

poems: Toast to the Spring & waveformed, The Learned Pig, December 2020

poems: Five Postcard Poems, M58, October 2020

poem: Blue, Ink, Sweat and Tears, April 2020 (shortlisted for Pick of the Month)

image: How Many Artists?, M58, December 2019

poem: Night Out, Ink, Sweat and Tears, September 2019

poem: Daddy is a Mackerel Now, Ink, Sweat and Tears, February 2019

poem: Sunday, Ink, Sweat and Tears, August 2018 (shortlisted for Pick of the Month)

Sam Wilson Fletcher