Category: hipflasks

The call for submissions for our latest books, the Hipflask Series, is open until 25th October 2021. These are unusual titles, even by Sidekick standards, so we’ve put together a series of short posts, one for each of the four books, breaking down the ideas and influences behind the book and what we’re looking for from you. This time we’re squinting and spying to find the covert comms in the texts all around us, with…

What’s the big idea?

“I carry my unwritten poems in cipher on my face!”
– George Eliot

Who and what gave us the idea for this book?

There’s a rich tradition of text-bothering in literature, and we’ve been keen to revisit this theme since our micro-anthology Korsakoff’s Paper Chain, which saw a hapless Meccano manual burned, eaten and dissolved, then painstakingly restored by poets making their best guess at its contents.

What are we looking for in submissions?

We’re after two different kinds of text for this title: firstly, pieces which conceal, typographically, a hidden message which an average reader stands a good chance of being able to figure out. Each piece should be no longer than 250 words, 25 lines of verse, or one page (see template for page size).

Secondly, we want your discoveries of hidden messages inside existing texts. You can send us high-res scans of texts you have annotated, blocked out or doctored to reveal the message, or you can send us an image accompanied by an explanatory text. The explanation should be no longer than 250 words, 25 lines of verse, or one page (see template for page size). The image should fit on one page. Bear in mind that the book will be printed in black and white.

There may be copyright issues with reproducing some texts, and we will have to examine these on an as-they-come basis. We recommend using texts that are in the public domain.

Please send us no more than three pieces per individual submission.

What are we not looking for?

Brand names, fleeting trends and adult content. We want the Hipflasks to be as enjoyable 20 years from now as they are today, and we want to take them to as large an audience as possible.

Where to look for inspiration?

• The New York Public Library has an excellent selection of text and image erasure art: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/04/20/erasure-literature

• Spycraft of all kinds, e.g. singer Josephine Baker’s secret messages to the French resistance, written in invisible ink on her sheet music.

• Vladimir Nabokov’s genre-dodging Pale Fire chooses not to deface or erase its core text (a poem by the fictional writer John Shade), but instead drowns it out with the pompous footnotes of his narrator, Shade scholar Charles Kinbote.

• Writing Through The Cantos by John Cage takes a typically disruptive approach to Ezra Pound’s opus, as Cage seeks and caps up the author’s name hiding in various lines:

Any further questions?

Check the call for submissions in case your answer lies there. If not, email contact[at]sidekickbooks.com or find us on Twitter @SidekickBooks.

The call for submissions for our latest books, the Hipflask Series, is open until 25th October 2021. These are unusual titles, even by Sidekick standards, so we’ve put together a series of short posts, one for each of the four books, breaking down the ideas and influences behind the book and what we’re looking for from you. Today we’re encountering the mixed feelings, tense tangos and dark duels of…

What’s the big idea?

Smeagol: [weeping] “I hate you. I hate you.”
Gollum: “Where would you be without me, uh? Gollum, gollum… I saved us! It was me! We survived because of me!”
Smeagol: [stops crying] “Not anymore.”
– Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

You Again is a book bursting with romance and rows, magnetism and antagonism, sweet-sorrow partings and good-riddances. Contributors will each write about a person, place, idea, object etc. that both attracts and repulses them, raising both their heart-rate and their blood pressure simultaneously.

Who and what gave us the idea for this book?

Love-hate relationships have been written about since time immemorial. Roman poet Catullus’ in Carmina 85 (Odi Et Amo), wrote:

“I hate and I love. Wherefore I do this, perhaps you ask.
I do not know, but I feel it being done and I am tormented.”

More recently in history, we’ve seen non-romantic examples. Take the fraught dynamic between James Joyce and Dublin, the hometown he fled but could not forget. Or Michael Bluth’s bungee-cord attachment to his dysfunctional family in Arrested Development. Something about these relationships keeps us coming back time and again.

What are we looking for in submissions?

We want your lyrical narrative or critical writing on something you both love and hate. This could be a person, an institution, an abstract concept, or anything else. We want to see the conflict and complexity that characterises these relationships laid out on the page.

For structure, think prose poems and micro lyrical essays. Maximum length if submitting in prose form: 600 words per piece. Maximum length if submitting in verse form: 50 lines per piece, and a maximum of three pieces.

What are we not looking for?

Images, brand names, fleeting trends and adult content. We want the Hipflasks to be as enjoyable 20 years from now as they are today, and we want to take them to as large an audience as possible.

Give us an example.

• William Wilson – Edgar Allan Poe’s short, sharp tale of paranoia and guilty conscience sees the eponymous speaker encounter an identically named man who follows the narrator throughout his life, seemingly to highlight his inadequacies and faults. The speaker begins by being dazzled by the other Wilson, and being mistaken for his brother, but this enchantment gradually turns to loathing and resentment, culminating in tragedy.

• Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) – one of the best-known literary love-hate tales. The pendulum of affection between Catherine and Heathcliff swings in the winds of the rough moors, from romance to rage to ruin.

• Here You Come Again (Dolly Parton) – a classic Dolly song about getting back on your feet after heartbreak, only for the heartbreaker to stroll back into town and undo all that hard work by smiling that smile.

• No Children (Mountain Goats) – this lilting, caustic ballad tells of a marriage of mutual, unbreakable loathing. A surprisingly popular song choice for weddings.

Any further questions?

Check the call for submissions in case your answer lies there. If not, email contact[at]sidekickbooks.com or find us on Twitter @SidekickBooks.

The call for submissions for our latest books, the Hipflask Series, is open until 25th October 2021. These are unusual titles, even by Sidekick standards, so we’ve put together a series of short posts, one for each of the four books, breaking down the ideas and influences behind the book and what we’re looking for from you. First up, we’re twisting words and queering quotations with …

What’s the big idea?

“All generalizations are false, including this one.” – Mark Twain

Say It Again is Sidekick’s take on the grand tradition of collating the pronouncements, sayings, maxims, pearls, barbs, aphorisms and witticisms of notable and influential people. We want to pack the book with quotes, sage or otherwise – but edited, rearranged, translated and monkeyed with, so as to create new wisdoms and venture alternative meanings.

Who and what gave us the idea for this book?

One influence was The Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd – a collection of odd English place names, to which the authors attach amusing and useful definitions:

Sample: “Amersham (noun): The sneeze which tickles but never comes. (Thought to derive from the Metropolitan Line tube station of the same name where the rails always rattle but the train never arrives.)”

We also had in mind various books of sayings and guidance, including Poor Richard’s Almanack by Benjamin Franklin, Mrs Beeton’s Guide To Household Management by Isabella Beeton and The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.

We did think at one point of trying to compile a book of gravestone humour and other, similar material, but we wanted to come up with something that left room for contributors to be creative and adventurous.

What are we looking for in submissions?

We want you to rejig and reimagine existing quotations. These might come from Cicero or Lizzo, statutes or songs, The Art of War or the Haynes Manual. Any text is fair game, so choose your sources thoughtfully and deliberately. Subvert, skew and swap elements until something very interesting emerges.

Alternatively, you can take a genuine quote and gift it to an entirely incorrect speaker. Or simply transplant the correct person saying the correct quote in time, space or context to change its meaning entirely.

Each misquotation/piece can be very short (the normal length of a quotation) and should be no longer than 200 words, 25 lines, or one page (see the submissions call for a page template). Send us up to 10 individual misquotations/pieces.

What are we not looking for?

Images, brand names, fleeting trends and adult content. We want the Hipflasks to be as enjoyable 20 years from now as they are today, and we want to take them to as large an audience as possible.

Where to look for inspiration?

• Nick Asbury’s Corpoetics would fall foul of our embargo on brand names, but the idea of completely remixing a corporate statement anagrammatically is one worth extending.

• Graham Rawle’s Lost Consonants wreak havoc through the removal of a single letter.

• The Archive of Misheard Lyrics could serve as a good starting point if you’re interested in working with pop songs.

• Or you might like to kick off by automating the process with The Incorrect Quote Generator.

Any further questions?

Check the call for submissions in case your answer lies there. If not, email contact[at]sidekickbooks.com or find us on Twitter @SidekickBooks.