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The Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 7

Christmas is a time for following stars, and on the Sidekick Play-Poem Archive today, we’re following Simon Barraclough out into the reaches of space, with an excerpt from science-poetry collaboratorio, Laboratorio.

Meanwhile, over in my commentary, I wax on about the loneliness of the vast great yonder, with bonus Kubrick.

Blast off!


Laboratorio Interrogatorio: an interview with Simon Barraclough

On 12th November, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich is hosting ‘Laboratorio’, a live reading from our book of the same name, featuring editor/poet Simon Barraclough and a number of the real life astrophysicists who contributed work. Tickets are £8 and can be bought from the Royal Museums Greenwich website here.

Ahead of this exciting trip into other realms, we thought we’d explore the inside of the editor’s head, interviewing Simon about spare spaceships, kamikaze deer and smashing the science/art binary.



Where did your interest in space sciences come from and what led you to combine it with poetry?

I think I was into space before I knew anything about the science behind and around it. When I was a little boy I used to lie on my back on the huge unlit playing field in front of my house in Huddersfield and marvel at the night sky, the Milky Way (which was very visible on the darkest, clearest nights), the bright planets and the satellites (which I hoped were alien spaceships). I also spent hours in the library pawing over books on cosmology and astronomy. I just loved the beauty of it all and the unidentifiable yearning it provoked: a yearning to explore, to disappear, to change my life, to be abducted into the infinite.

As I grew older I learned more about physics, astronomy and space exploration but by then I was so immersed in art and literature that I neglected the more scientific path I might have taken. I must admit though, that while my physics was strong, my maths began to fail me around the age of 15 or so and that nudged me towards literature and history and creative writing.

How did you become involved with the Mullard Space Science Laboratory?

As with many good things, it happened almost by chance. I took part in an event with Marek Kukula (our wonderful Public Astronomer) called ‘Notes from the Universe’ at the South Bank in early 2013. I was talking about a sequence of ‘micro-poems’  I had written for Arc Magazine called ‘From Big Bang to Heat Death’, and also presenting work from my then-current book project ‘Sunspots’. Marek is very keen on bringing art and literature and science together and while we were chatting I asked him if he knew any solar physicists I could speak to about ‘Sunspots’. He suggested Dr. (now Professor) Lucie Green, who presented ‘The Sky at Night’ for several years. Lucie studies the Sun and our shared obsession meant led to some enthusiastic emails and phone call and we eventually met at her place of work, UCL’s Mullard Space Science Lab out in the green Surrey Hills.

My initial aim in all this was to augment my Sun research with the help of the Solar Group at the lab but I found the whole place so quirky, rich, diverse, and fascinating that I started thinking about doing something more inclusive and outgoing than simply working on my own book. So I began chatting to Lucie about some kind of ‘writer in residence’ role for myself, in which I would write about the laboratory and its inhabitants but, more importantly, I would try to generate new work and new forms of communication between the staff and students of the lab and its many different departments. We were lucky enough to receive a small grant from the Science and Technology Facilities Council, and I took up the role in January 2014.

What was the most surprising part of the residency for you?

Deer jumping into the path of the car that drove me through the narrow winding lanes to the lab. Less viscerally, I was surprised by how many people took time out from their incredibly busy and fascinating jobs to read, write, discuss and enjoy poetry with me every couple of weeks. I was also pleasantly surprised that they were willing to do the strange things I asked them to: like automatic writing, reading Beckett plays in the blazing Sun and recording a site-specific poem in a cramped, resonant observatory. I wasn’t surprised that our discussions were so thoughtful and entertaining or that the work people produced was of such high quality.

Give us your favourite space fact from your time at the laboratory.

Something I hadn’t thought about was how, when a spacecraft is designed, tested and prepared for flight, two of them are made but only one sent on its mission. The remaining craft is used for further testing and comparison should the space-bound version encounter problems. Matt Hill, a PhD student working on cryogenic physics, wrote a gently poignant poem called ‘Flight Spare’ about this less favoured also-ran.

What was the idea behind mixing the work of poets with space science interests and researchers comparatively new to poetry?

The ‘official’ idea was to explore new ways for the members of the lab to communicate, work together, step out of possible ‘silos’, and play with new ways of thinking and writing. I also wanted the lab to become a little more ‘conscious’ of itself and also to find a new way for the facility to engage the public. At our ‘Sun and Moon’ event with Liane Strauss, many local fans of astronomy and literature came up to the common room for poetry, films, wine and nibbles. It was the first time that some of the scientists had read their creative writing in public. The ‘unofficial’ idea was to do something a little different and enjoy ourselves.

So what’s with the silverfish on the cover?

A few weeks into my residency we discovered an infestation of silverfish in the library, assiduously devouring a century’s worth of astronomical research right under our noses. This led to many discussions about knowledge, data, ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ intelligences and how, if we had to, we might recoup vital scientific knowledge from the innards of silverfish. Also, silverfish are such intricate, beautiful creatures that took billions of years to get here: through a certain lens they looked to us like alien beings or exquisite spacecraft. The anthology is dedicated for spaceships and silverfish, which I find quite moving and very apt.

Why do you think there is such a tendency to segregate artistic and scientific practice, culturally, and to categorise people as left-brained or right-brained?

I think we have a great need, perhaps an ancient need, to make quick decisions, sweep away nuance, and act. For this reason, binaries are very attractive: go one way or the other; get out of trouble quickly; choose ‘yes’ or ‘no’; don’t look back, don’t regret (if you can avoid it). We love to put things in neat boxes, to categorise each other, and to lay arguments to rest. You see it all the time in current obsessions with personality charts; right-brain/left-brain surveys; which Star Wars character are you?; are you on the left or right of the party? and so on. Digital technologies and the very means by which we communicate today are grounded on ones and zeros. Only this morning I read an interesting piece by Jonathon Coe about humour in which he writes, “The internet seems to be making our brains more binary, reducing everything to the polarised options of “Like” or “Dislike”, thereby thwarting the human impulse to entertain two contradictory responses at the same time, which seems to be one of the cornerstones of humour”

Such binaries tend to fall apart when you get to interact with people up-close, of course, although their traces have an impact. Modern education has a way of dividing and channeling people down the two classic cultural pathways of Science and Humanities, and with those paths come all kinds of assumptions, anxieties, and unfortunate blockages to certain types of knowledge. My masters degree was in Critical Theory, which in many ways was grounded in an attempt to bring the humanities and science together (think Levi-Strauss, structuralism, poststructuralism, Lacan’s unconvincing flirtation with maths and scientific formulae). Although a certain amount of this was, at least to my mind, tortuous sophistry, I suppose I was always open to bringing these different approaches to culture together.

Part of the whole point of ‘Laboratorio’ was to merge and blend the worlds of space science, engineering, scientific writing, creative writing, performance and interpretation. While there was a certain amount of fear on both ‘sides’ during my year at the lab, the results are a resounding testament to how all these fields and dichotomies can intermingle. Although I now feel even worse about my limited maths than ever. A good question that needs much more space than this to discuss.

Describe the appeal of Laboratorio to someone new to poetry and someone new to planetary science.

I would say to both parties: dive into this beautifully produced book for fun and challenging tales about ‘the multiverse’; read beautiful meditations upon what an ‘observatory’ is for; explore the poignant connections between the space lab and its Iron Age foremothers; get to know Aimee Norton, a brilliant guest-poet and astronomer from Stanford University; feast on a couple of Liane Strauss’s juicy Moon poems; read a tribute to Rik Mayall; and have fun with the plucky Rosetta probe. There’s a lot more going on in this generous anthology, and it has beautiful photos of the lab too! To quote the blurb: “Laboratorio revels in the poetry of science and the science of poetry.”

What advice would you have for other artists interested in doing a residency with scientists?

Be open, inclusive, enthusiastic, supportive and open to new ideas. And always have a trick or two, or a tricky exercise, in your back pocket. Also, make sure you accommodate those who may prefer quiet or solitary work to the more extrovert, group-based approach. But don’t worry about reaching everybody: some will appreciate your work silently and some won’t even realise you’re there! And do check out the STFC for possible funding. Without them, we couldn’t have made ‘Laboratorio’ happen.

Finally, tell us about the event at the Greenwich Royal Observatory!

On Thursday November 12 we are officially launching the anthology at the fantastic Peter Harrison Planetarium at Greenwich. Marek Kukula will chair a discussion between myself, Lucie Greene, Julia Gaudelli and Matt Hills and there will be short readings and visuals to boot. I launched Sunspots at the Planetarium and it’s a wonderful venue for mixing art and science in a dramatic setting.

Control Room / Laboratorio at the Royal Observatory


Sidekick are collaborating in two exciting, one-off forthcoming events. On Monday, 26th October, we’re joining Abigail Parry, writer-in-residence at the National Video Games Arcade in Nottingham, for CONTROL ROOM, an experimental interactive literature evening, mixing games and poetry. The audience can come and go as they please, ‘playing’ at one of four simultaneous poetry installations from 7pm onwards. The poets Harry Man and Abi Palmer will also be performing, and there’s board games next door. The event is part of GameCity, the NVA’s annual festival of games.

Then, on 12th November, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich is hosting ‘Laboratorio’, a live reading from our book of the same name, featuring editor/poet Simon Barraclough and a number of the real life astrophysicists who contributed work. Tickets are £8 and can be bought from the Royal Museums Greenwich website here.





This Happened: The Lives Beyond Us Launch

Cliff Hammett with chronophotographic image of a falling cat.
A huge thanks to everyone who came last Tuesday to help up launch Lives Beyond Us: Essays and Poems on the Film Reality of Animals!

For the uninitiated, Lives Beyond Us is a cross-genre anthology with gorgeous colour illustrations throughout. Covering topics as diverse as voyeurism, comic pratfalls and bear interventions, it’s a fresh look at a beloved topic, curated by Kirsten Irving (poems) and Seb Manley (essays).

The anthology is a super-thick bundle of Sidekick-style guile and intrigue, and costs £12 plus postage. Click here to see more and buy.

Cat watches humans watching bird.
We launched the book upstairs at the Genesis Cinema in Whitechapel. Since Sidekick started life in Whitechapel and was based there for five years – less than ten minutes’ walk from the Genesis, in fact – it seemed an oh-so appropriate place to unveil a book that dives face first into film history.

Here’s how the book in question fared under UV light as Jon was setting out the table:

Before the hoard descended.
We had readings and a slideshow, and there was an animal film quiz with a tricksy rebus round by long-time Sidekick ally Siân Moore. Alongside the editors, contributing writers Mike West, Rebecca Wigmore, Sophie Mayer, Simon Barraclough, Angela Cleland, Abigail Parry, Cliff Hammett and James Coghill were all present and correct.

We piece this account together now from whirling fragments, as we spent much of the evening rushing between the projection room (well, the cupboard with the technical things in it), the book stall and various old friends – a little chaotically, since this was our first book launch in over a year and we’d forgotten just how much needs doing to keep things running semi-smoothly.

Lessons learned: always give five-minute warnings in a quiz show host voice; PCs can project to a second screen in one of four different ways; electric fans give poets a neat ‘windswept’ appearance when placed correctly.

Finally, evidence that a selection of readers, hosts, editors and audience members felt the animal magic and posed it out onstage. What a grrrrrand night.

Post-launch cast and crew superhero pose

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!

A Sidekick Advent Calendar Day 8

“Nothing and nowhere is more wintry than the far reaches of space.”
Jacques Derrida

I admit the above quote is an outright fabrication but it’s also totally true! Next year Sidekick will be publishing Laboratorio, an anthology of creative writing by astrophysicists at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, helmed (and edited) by their poet-in-residence Simon Barraclough. Along with fellow Sidekick collaborator Harry Man, Simon is one of poetry’s biggest space enthusiasts, and his second Salt collection, Neptune Blue, includes a planets sequence. We have asked for – and been granted! – permission to reproduce his ode to the ice giant Uranus as part of our advent calendar.

Now, of course, it’s well known that Father Christmas only got as far as Mars during his forays beyond our own planet’s atmosphere, but we reckon Uranus would make a suitable base of Christmas operations after Earth’s ice caps melt. It’s a little further out, but then, gentrification is forcing all of us to make longer commutes these days.

Keep an eye out for a Jacques Tati cameo towards the end of the second stanza!


Psycho Poetica gets a Telegraph mention!


Psycho Poetica, editor Simon Barraclough’s multi-poet love letter to Hitchcock’s classic, was mentioned in the Telegraph today, in a round-up entitled ‘The best recent poetry’. That sexy, skinny volume snuggled between Poems on the Underground and Josephine Hart’s Life Saving? That’s us! Nice quote from Isobel Dixon’s ‘Trappings’,




Image copyright The Telegraph, 2012.

Something for Halloween: Psycho Poetica!


Arriving ahead of schedule! Simon Barraclough‘s multi-poet extravaganza Psycho Poetica is now available to buy from the Sidekick website, and will be orderable from bookshops soon! Illustrated with stills from the film, and presented in full colour, with all 12 originally commissioned poems, plus bonus ‘alternative takes’. Go here for more details.

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