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“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!

School of Forgery reviewed in Poetry London


The Autumn issue of Poetry London carries a very generous review of School of Forgery by Alison Brackenbury. Choice extracts:

“Should young poets learn to shorten their books? I hope that Jon Stone will not. School of Forgery, though replete with contemporary reference, remains old-fashioned in its rich sprawl.” 

“Bold coinages and leaps of thought leave Stone’s poems echoing, beyond novelties of physical description, into new spaces in the mind.”

“These intricate collages flash with moving lines … They retain all of Stone’s ingenious energy …”

“… I have never seen well-written poetry in such a brilliant visual joke as Stone’s Avengers silhouettes.”

(For anyone wondering, I have no plans to shorten my books. In fact, I think they might get longer. Ideally, long enough for the page corners to be used to carry a flickbook animation.)

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