chrissy williams Archives - Sidekick Books

Over The Line featured in World Literature Today!

We’re very excited to announce that World Literature Today magazine have featured our poetry comics anthology Over The Line in their Nota Benes section, calling it “an ambitious anthology”!

You can read more from World Literature Today at www.worldliteraturetoday.org/.

“Contagious creativity” – Poetry London and New Welsh Review on Over The Line

This just in! New Welsh Review and Poetry London love Sidekick’s poetry comics anthology Over The Line!

Poetry London‘s Julia Bird describes the anthology as “a book bursting with contagious creativity, a book offering a truly stimulating combination of art and analysis.”

She also praises the work of editors Chrissy Williams and Tom Humberstone, saying:

“The tone is instructive and inspiring; it makes you want to take scissors and glue to your own Marvell words and Marvel art to see how image, text, space and silence can be recombined to create and uncover meaning.”

Read the full review in Issue 83 (which also features poetry by the marvellous Mark Waldron).

The praise keeps coming, as Nicky Arscott, writing for New Welsh Review, finds Over The Line “visually exquisite, intellectually stimulating” and says it “offers a wide-reaching introduction to the poetry comics genre.”

She adds that

“this book

succeeds in making poetry playful, and it elevates the status of the comic through encouraging us to appraise it on the same level as we would the poetry.”

The full text of the review is open to subscribers only, which is an excellent excuse to explore new Welsh writing.

Thank you to Julia and Nicky for the fantastic in-depth, insightful reviews. Comics poetry fever is upon us!

Over The Line: Launched, Available and Gearing Up for Gosh

Over The Line: An Introduction to Poetry Comics, edited by Chrissy Williams and Tom Humberstone, is out now and available via our site. Bookshops should be able to order it in from Thursday.

One of our two launch events has been and gone – wine, short readings and talks were laid on at the Poetry Cafe last Thursday, accompanying an exhibition of pages from the book that will run in the cafe until 31st October.

Work by Ivy Alvarez and Cristian Ortiz on the wall of the Poetry Cafe

The view from the book table

John Aggs discussing his poem-comic collaboration with W. N. Herbert

The second launch event will take place on 17th September at Gosh Comics in London, from 7pm, and a whole swathe of the contributing writers and artists will be in attendance.

If you’re planning on coming and want to buy any of our other books directly from us, just let us know via email and we’ll bring some along!

Comics and Cosplay: Sidekick hits the Free Verse Poetry Book Fair!

It’s that time again! On Saturday 26th September, the Free Verse Poetry Book Fair rolls into town! (Conway Hall, to be precise.)

Organised by poets Chrissy Williams and Joey Connolly, the event is not so much a book fair as a raucous celebration of poetry in all its guises. In Williams and Connolly’s words:

Free Verse is an all-day bazaar, market, library, meeting place, performance venue, information resource and more. Celebrating the vitality of contemporary poetry in the UK, publishers both large and small, both experimental and traditional, display and sell their work direct to the public.

We’ll be there with a whole raft of new goodies and we’ll also be judging a world first:

A Poetry Cosplay Parade!

Gah. There’s always, like, fifty Geoffrey Hills.

Yes! Come as a poet or a poem, or something tangentially related that requires a detailed explanation but that makes you feel ALIVE. The winner will receive eternal glory and £100 in poetry books!

Most importantly, come and say hi. We’ll be hopped up on coffee and very friendly, and sharing a table with the magnificent Happenstance.

Comics Poetry Launch/Exhibition/Workshops, as approved by Alan Moore!

Sidekick is ridiculously excited to be publishing Over The Line, an introduction to comics poetry edited by poet and comics editor Chrissy Williams and comics artist Tom Humberstone.

And it’s not just us, apparently. A certain comics legend says the following about the project:

“This is that spine-tingling moment when two attractive and sophisticated forms, both admired for their rhythm and sense of timing, eye each other across the cultural dance floor. In Over The Line, at once an insightful introduction and a comprehensive showcase for the emerging phenomenon of Poetry Comics, Chrissy Williams and Tom Humberstone provide the best possible venue for what looks like being a breathtaking tango. I really can’t recommend this venture highly enough, and I’d advise you mark your card immediately.”

ALAN MOORE

We’re so excited, in fact, that we’re having not one but TWO launches.

Launch #1 is on Thursday 3rd September from 6.30pm, to mark the opening of the accompanying exhibition at the Poetry Cafe. Here is the event!

Readers include: Sophie Herxheimer, Anna Saunders, Amy Key, Chris McCabe, John Aggs, Chrissy Williams and others.

Launch #2 will embrace the comics side of its dual nature, taking place at the splendid Gosh Comics on Thursday 17th September. Here is the Facebook event!

Readers and artists include: John Canfield; Lorraine Mariner; Shauna Robertson; Ioan Morris; RH Parry; Sean Azzopardi; Cristian Ortiz; Douglas Noble; Hayley Fiddler; Emix Regulus.

Come and meet the editors, drool over the merch and get stuck into poetry comics!

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL…

If you’d like to learn how to make your own poetry comics, editor and long-time comics-poetry-workshop organiser, Chrissy Williams is running a Poetry School workshop on Saturday 5th August, where you can do just that! Investigate here!

***

And in case you’re bamboozled, more information on poetry comics lives here:
www.poetryandcomics.tumblr.com

Animals, Amazons and ACE news!

Hallo one and all!

Hope your year is going mighty well. We’ve had our heads buried trying to make sense of what has already been a packed year of Stuff.

Brace yourself. We have a lot of exciting things to pack in here.

Firstly, those of a certain age might remember back, way back in the mists of time, talk of a lost edition of the fabled Fuselit magazine. Thought by many to be a myth, Amazon has now been unearthed! Featuring exquisite poetry, artwork and prose, this hand-sewn magazine comes with its own talismanic owl amulet and a set of six postcards detailing exchanges between the director Werner Herzog, fond of his Amazon-based films, and his best friend, the erratic, arrogant actor, Klaus Kinski.

Here is Werner Herzog drinking cough syrup out of his own slipper.

Fuselit: Amazon costs £10 and comes in its own card-and-plastic display case. Also, there is a gold monkey hiding inside for you to make friends with. She is called Rolo.

The best bit? This lovingly crafted relic is not available through Amazon! Muhaha!

OK, so onto the ACE news. That’s both ACE, as in 90s-excellent and ACE, as in Arts Council England. For many years, Jon and I resisted applying for funding, preferring to fund Sidekick ourselves from our day job. That was all well and good until we realised that me going freelance and Jon going part-time, while splendid for productivity, chafed the funds somewhat. So we took a deep breath and a jot of advice from very kind indie publishers and applied to part-fund our next five books.

And, um, they said YES.

This is the moment a rep from ACE came to Sidekick HQ to tell us the news:

We’re thrilled, mainly because it means we can pay contributors to these five books, many of whom have been collaborating with Sidekick for some time now. The five books we’re producing with the funding are:

Lives Beyond Us, an anthology co-curated by film scholar Seb Manley and yours truly, featuring essays and poems on animals in cinema.

Birdbook III & IV. So exciting to know we can complete this beautiful series without compromising on production. The final two titles will feature the birds of the mountains, moorlands & heaths and saltwater species. III is so very near to completion I might just pop.

Surveyors’ Riddles, our latest Team-Up, this time between poets Giles Goodland and Alistair Noon. In Alistair’s own words, the pamphlet is “A sequence in classical enigmenga form, consisting of exactly 87 triquatrainal poems of varying types, the 39th poem being by a member of the Kim family, the 59th poem by a Russian symbolist, and the final poem being not allowed to reference the moon, the formal requirements followed faithfully and perfectly.”

You hear that? NO MOON! The perfect collection for selenophobes everywhere.

And on the Team-Up train, we’re extremely excited about the forthcoming We Go Wandering at Night and Are Consumed by Fire, a collaboration between illustrator Hetti McArthur and poet Rowyda Amin. We’re promised dark fairytales and plenty of getting lost in the woods of the imagination. More on that one later in the year.

Buuuut we got a little drunk on power.

On top of our ACE books, we are also very excited to be publishing the following titles:

Laboratorio, edited by Simon Barraclough. Following on from his residency at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, and to complement his collection Sunspots, to be released through Penned in the Margins, Simon Barraclough presents an anthology of work written by scientists and poets on the trials and technology of space exploration, from satellites to silverfish. Contains dark matter.

Finders Keepers, a Team-Up exploring vanishing species, devised and created by artist Sophie “Moomintastic” Gainsley and poet Harry “Big in Macedonia” Man. You can see their work so far at this frankly BEAUTIFUL site.

Over the Line, a comics-poetry anthology co-edited by comics editor and comics-poetry aficionado Chrissy Williams and comics artist Tom Humberstone, for which WE WANT YOUR SUBMISSIONS! [Note to self: do not shorten ‘comics poetry’ to an acronym.]

And we have a whoooole bundle more plans lined up for 2016.

(Is that fox still jumping up and down? Righto.)

Thanks, as ever, for your love and support. We are always grateful for it, and keen to hear what you think. Can’t wait to show you the new books!

Sabotage Awards, Angela Lansbury and new Sidekick Cat!

Finest acolytes! Much news from Sidekick HQ!

Firstly, Sidekick Books has been nominated for THREE Sabotage awards! We’re up for (drumroll):

Most Innovative Publisher

Best Collaboration (for our hand-sewn tropical zoo sonnet sequence Riotous)

and Best Anthology (Follow the Trail of Moths: the best of Wayne Holloway-Smith’s salons)

So if you like what we do, please remember we need your vote to win! No registration gubbins needed. It’ll take less than a minute (or more if you’d like to elaborate on why you dig our strange creations). The Sabotage Awards are a big deal for small presses, so thank you in advance for casting your ballots!

Vote here!

Secondly, if you’re in London this week, get thee to Waterstones Hampstead this Tuesday 13th May at 7pm for some Angela Lansbury lovin’, featuring Twin Peaks, murder and shunds. If you missed the launch, or simply need your Jessica hit, join Chrissy Williams as she takes us deep into the world of ‘Angela’…

The King’s Cross launch event last year was packed, so this is a great opportunity to see one of London’s wittiest, warmest and most innovative poets share her darker Cabot Cove obsessions.

Tickets: £5

Facebook event here.

Buy the book here, with free Angela pin badge!

Thirdly, please wish a warm welcome to Mitchell the Cat, who has moved from a prominent position with lots of responsibility at Battersea Cats and Dogs Home to our Silvester Road HQ, and is currently on photocopying duties.

Have a fantastic Eurovision, everyone! Let’s wish Conchita Wurst all the best!

Category: chrissy williams