sidekickBOOKS
This time we’re dispatching our adventurers to spy and be spirited away with Ten Poets Do Their Bit for the Secret Service and Ten Poets Lose Themselves in the Land of the Fae.
The full call is here, so firm up your alias, gather your goblin fruit and join us in strange new realms…
A tall figure descends the stairs at the centre of the great hall. He is the very picture of calculated languor and boredom, though passion burns in the depths of his bright, dissimilar eyes. He wears a frock coat like a second skin. His open shirt collar erupts from it like the spathe of an arum lily. He is himself peculiarly pale – not the pallor of death, but that of a beautiful alabaster vase. There are fine blue veins upon his features. He is possessed of a boldly prominent brow and delicately cut nose. The hairline recedes around the temples, but the hair itself is dark and thickly curled. The smile strikes at you like a knife – it is contemptuous, almost vindictive. Vampire? Or poet?And from the ‘Cast Off’ of Ten Poets Prowl the Seas in Search of Plunder:
The last poem o’ this here book, Jim-Lad Womack’s ‘Admire Devaluates Scavenger (6, 2, 9, 8)’, finds sixteenth-century Spanish writer Cervantes poised o’er ‘is most famous novel, Don Quixote, wonderin’ ‘ow it be that such a blood-soaked thief an’ murderer as the pirate Blackbeard e’er came to be considered as loveable rogue. Indeed, mateys, piracy be a topic that raises somethin’ of a double quandary fer poets. On the one ‘and, it be the stuff o’ children’s parties an’ cheap fancy dress. Insufficient gravitas, ye might say. Pantomime patois twice as gratin’ as this one here. Parrots, posturin’, plastic-an’-elastic eyepatches (I once worn two o’ these, one on each o’ me good eyes, while steerin’ a canal boat, but that be a tale for another time). On the other ‘ook, if ye lean toward ‘istorical accuracy, all be grimness an’ squalor.These are the latest two titles in our ‘10 Poets’ series, starring 20 poets we’ve never published before, many of them fresh to the scene. For those unfamiliar with the series, the premise is all there in the title of each book: contributing poets adopt a persona — lusty corsair, say, or hapless prey of some blood-sucking creature — in order to explore all manner of themes through a somewhat otherworldly lens. That’s it — plus a foreword/introduction and a surprise appendix. We’re seven books into the run, and we do think they look rather good together:
The invitation arrived folded in midnight. No envelope, just a note pressed to my chest: You’ve been chosen. Glow accordingly. I must have said yes. There’s no other way to explain how I got here. The hours between then and now were soft and slippery, like the ones gone missing when you look up and realise the light has changed. Now I’m seated between a duchess and a woman who used to be an actress (though no one mentions that anymore). The candlelight makes everything soft: the velvet walls, the blush on their cheeks, even the wine, which tastes like memory. “She arrived last week,” someone says, slicing a fig with the edge of her fork.Delicious! You thought the poets would, in every case, find themselves alone with the vampire in question? The contents ae wilder than that. As noted in the foreword, “oddly enough […] this might be, as much as anything, a book of love poems.” And what about Prowl the Seas? Well, the idea of ‘plunder’ has been interpreted very cleverly, and while we do have a fair number of doubloon-addled ruffians aboard, there’s also room for poetry that plunges into the ‘broken, bent and battered’. Abigail Ottley’s ‘The Sea Always Wins, or, The Ageing Wreck Diver Speaks of the Ocean’ begins as follows:
The sea is an indifferent lover. She may be your delight, your mistress, your beloved, but she’s not the great prize you imagine. You, in your passion, your tender obsession, are smitten, held fast in her thrall. You see nothing but her beauty, her unplumbed depths, her colours endlessly shifting. But she is nothing if not sly, and her heart is full of perfidy and guile …You can read the rest of the poem for free, on our website. Look out for more samples from our books on this Substack in the future, as well as further insights into the pieces and the processes behind their creation. In the meantime, choose your poison: grog from the belly of a hijacked sloop, or claret from the cobwebbed bottle cellar? Order it into your local
We’ve been (quietly) celebrating our 15th anniversary this year, via some £15 deals combining recent titles with items from our backlist. Meanwhile, a sudden spate of organisational enthusiasm uncovered some items from right back at the start of the Sidekick journey. Here, for instance, is the first invoice we ever received from a printer, for our micro-anthology Coin Opera, at £517 for 200 copies – a little steeper than we’d hoped, but typical of a short print run with thick gloss paper:
Note ‘Side Kick’ books – we’re not sure if this is their mistake, or an indication that we hadn’t quite settled on the name yet. (Also: we’ve long moved on from the Whitechapel address, but by all means raise the topic of a blue plaque with the council.)
Good News Press sadly went out of business not long after printing Coin Opera and Obakarama, as have other printers we’ve used since. With so many international printers offering lower prices, it can be hard for UK businesses to compete, but so far we’ve stuck with them out of principle. Buy local where you can!
And talking of which, here’s the first (so far, one of only two) adverts we took out in a paper, this one in the London Review of Books in late 2010:
It was very successful as ads go; Birdbook: Towns, Parks, Gardens & Woodland remains our bestselling title, quickly selling out of its initial 500-copy run. But even though we felt we’d caught the attention of the wider reading pubic, and even though, by the time the fourth Birdbook title rolled around, people were telling us we’d exhausted the concept, there are still readers discovering the series anew at every book fair we attend. Lois Cordelia’s striking papercut cover artwork still draws the eye, and we even get the odd repeat customer coming back to complete the series after starting it years ago.
It’s also our most ambitious project in terms of the number of poets and artists involved, but we’re aiming to top that over the next couple of years with a continuation of the 10 Poets series. Stay tuned for more on that soon!
Carnyx Press is a brand-new micropublisher, based in Tyne & Wear in the North-East, founded by writer, designer and publishing all-rounder, Nathaniel Spain.
Carnyx publish speculative fiction in the form of anthologies, short fiction collections and novellas. We first got to know Nathaniel through his work with Inpress. More recently, we’ve been able to work with him as a Sidekick author in Ten Poets Get to the Bottom of Some Grisly Crimes. We caught up with him to ask a few questions about Carnyx’s mission.
“A good work of speculative fiction is well-placed to talk back to our world and what it’s like to live in it; to create fantastical worlds that are actually extended metaphors.”
“[Indie publishers] are natural friends to writers who put the art first, or who want to get weird.”
If you’re not familiar with the Ten Poets series, each title dips into a beloved pop-culture theme, from murder mysteries to ghost stories to erotica to monster movies. We want you to think creatively and show us your own take on the subject each time. Do you discover something strange? Do you think about your life on Earth? Do you make it to the moon at all?
Submissions should have the general character of a poem or poem-adjacent text, but they do not have to be straightforward lyric pieces. You could create a prose poem, vignette, short lyric essay – in fact, we encourage you to think in terms of longer, looser forms (up to 500 words). This follows the trend established over our last eight anthologies, which mixed and combined poetry with elements of essay, guidebook, puzzle, flash fiction and so on.
For more visual pieces, please note that all pages will be printed in black and white, and will be in portrait format.
We’re joining the wonderful Dr Briony Hughes to take part in Royal Holloway’s Small Press Takeover series. There’ll be readings, a Q&A and many, many Moons!
Look forward to seeing you, on earth or in outer space! 
If you’re not familiar with the Ten Poets series, each title dips into a beloved pop-culture theme, from murder mysteries to ghost stories to erotica to monster movies. We want you to think creatively and show us your own take on the subject each time. Do you discover something strange? Do you think about your life on Earth? Do you make it to the moon at all?
Submissions should have the general character of a poem or poem-adjacent text, but they do not have to be straightforward lyric pieces. You could create a prose poem, vignette, short lyric essay – in fact, we encourage you to think in terms of longer, looser forms (up to 500 words). This follows the trend established over our last eight anthologies, which mixed and combined poetry with elements of essay, guidebook, puzzle, flash fiction and so on.
For more visual pieces, please note that all pages will be printed in black and white, and will be in portrait format.
In which our fearless poets battle monsters in many forms, from raging waters to gentrification to music icons gone very bad indeed. Grab whatever weapon you have to hand and join their party for the showdown.
In which our poets dance from classic fable to urban legend, taking in a little techno-horror along the way. Eerie tales are made all the more uncanny by poetic cadence, urging you on, down that path, nudging you further through that cursed book, tempting you to repeat that name once more in the mirror…
In which our poets, fond of patterns, games and intrigue, and drawn to mysteries, open the case files within and witness bodies in the forest, brutalised landscapes and nuns covering up more than usual. Less Randall & Hopkirk, more Rimbaud & Hopkins, if you ask us…
In which our bards become time-travelling Nell Gwynnes, seeking and seducing historical crushes. Will they meet with ecstasy or agony? Slip inside to find out.
Featuring:
Kat Addis / Vasiliki Albedo / Nick Asbury / Tom Bland / Helen Bowell / Penny Boxall / Matthew Caley / Tim Tim Cheng / G.B. Clarkson / James Coghill / Swithun Cooper / Anne-Laure Coxam / Adam Crothers / Kym Deyn / Jen Feroze / Livia Franchini / Matthew Haigh / Rachel Jeffcoat / Aaron Kent / Sean Wai Keung / Mathew Lyons / Rowan Lyster / Nora Nadjarian / Helena Nelson / Luke Palmer / Caleb Parkin / Ilse Pedler / Amy Jo Philip / Clare Pollard / Kevin Reinhardt / Patrick Davidson Roberts / Imogen Robertson / Tom Sastry / Danny Snelson / Nathaniel Spain / Chloe Stopa-Hunt / Róisín Tierney / Becky Varley-Winter / Alice Willitts / Erica Wright
The next event we’re co-organising (with the Cambridge Writing Centre) is the 6th Future Karaoke event, this time with the theme of ‘Polar Expedition’. It’s a hybrid (in-person or online) event taking place at the Scott Polar Museum in Cambridge, on Wednesday 3rd April, from 6.30-8pm. 18 writers will be reading 18 new pieces based on objects from the museum.
It’s free! Tickets can be booked (for in-person or online attendance) via Eventbrite. 
You Again: A Book of Love-Hate Stories is on half-price sale for three days, from now until Friday, and we’ve added a poem from this bitter-honey anthology to our new online collection. Read Camille Ralphs’ ‘She Learns to Count’ here, or enjoy the poem in image form below:
