Thinking of submitting to our Hipflasks call but need a creative jump-start?
K’s put together four short videos full of ideas, one for each of the books.
sidekickBOOKS
Thinking of submitting to our Hipflasks call but need a creative jump-start?
K’s put together four short videos full of ideas, one for each of the books.
We’ve had some enquiries from writers saying that our original deadline for the Hipflask series call was rather too tight in terms of their being able to come up with original work. In response, we’re extending the deadline for submissions by one month to Sunday 28th November.
Hopefully that will give more of you a chance to be included in the project! We’ve had a healthy response so far, and will begin reading though these over the next month – but we won’t make any final decisions until after the new deadline has passed.
‘Barotrauma’ describes tissue damage resulting from changes in air and water pressure, typically rupturing the lungs or ears. It is a notable cause of death among bat populations due to them flying close to wind turbines, and Chris Kerr and Daniel Holden reach deep into the physicality of such a violent end for this short interactive sequence. It begins with a stuttering, choppy poem that documents the death in close-up, then digs into a three-way visual metaphor – corrupted data as broken body, but also as haywire psychogenetic programming. What happens when technology outpaces the evolutionary development of organic species? We misfire. We struggle to evade suffering.
The code poem at the heart of the sequence begins with a pun: ‘.bat’ is the file extension of a Windows batch file, and the poem is written in this style of scripting. Like all code poems, it plays on the tension between language as information and language as visual architecture, but here that tension has an additional significance – the code executes the animal it embodies. In living, it dies. The fleshy pinks and purples of the text against a black background are a subtle echo of the bat’s physical form, and the asemic cascade of punctuation produced by running the file resembles the fading pulses of a brain.
The final part of the sequence tasks the reader with defining the functionality of various command prompts to help the bat avoid this fate – in other words, a kind of beginner neurosurgery. How would you edit the mind of an animal – or a person – to enable it to better survive?
This sequence is part of Battalion, a compendium of meditations on bats and human—bat relations. Contributors will be reading from the book and inviting audience participation at a special event on 12th December at the Walthamstow Wetlands Centre, as part of their Wetlands Lates series. Tickets can be booked here.
Chris Kerr and Daniel Holden have previously collaborated on a collection of 12 code poems, published online and in print. These can be seen here.
Here’s what they said:
Stone and Irving, the two poets responsible for Sidekick Books – a tiny publisher specialising in irresistible anthologies that double as compendia of jokes, puzzles, teases, weird lists and doodle pages – outdid themselves last year with this anthology of new and old poems inspired by ancient Rome’s filthiest wordsmith, Catullus. Certain concrete poems are X-rated, but if acrobatic acrostics and saucy experiments with form tickle your fancy, this is just the book for a weekend of Latin love.
To celebrate, we’ve extended our National Poetry Day sale until the end of the day on 5th October 2018. Get in quick and get four Headbooks for the price of three! Just £30 for four fizzing, bubbling interactive treasures!
Lastly, Sidekick’s own Kirsten Irving was chosen to represent her home county of Lincolnshire in the BBC’s Local Poets celebration. The project, organised by the Forward Arts Foundation in collaboration with the BBC, saw 12 poets from across England writing on the theme of Poetry for a Change.
Here’s the video for K’s poem, ‘The Lincoln Imp’s Birthday’.
AND FINALLY! The fun doesn’t end just because NPD is over. Stay tuned to our Twitter @SidekickBooks and our Instagram @sidekickbooks over the next few days for a robotastic competition. We can say no more for now…
National Poetry Day is on 4th October 2018. Follow them on Twitter @PoetryDayUK and on Instagram @nationalpoetryday.
You can find an interactive map of events across the country here: https://nationalpoetryday.co.uk/join-in/