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A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 17

Our third and final Christmas monster appears! The most dangerous yet? Quite possibly!

Move over, Krampus!

*pant* Can’t believe I ran up that big hill for *pant* this!
While Krampus himself is easy to spot, with his frightening visage (that badass German children are totally unafraid of), this final demon is all the more terrifying because they could be anywhere. Worse: they could be anyone.

We’re talking about The Artist. Waiting under cover of darkness to create dissident, corrupting images and weld together unnatural words, this fiend is a master of disguise.

Thankfully, Sidekick Books has published Confronting The Danger of Art, by noted scholars Ian McLachlan and Phil Cooper.* A useful guide to spotting the Artist in your town and reporting them to the appropriate authorities, this pamphlet may well become your best friend.


Here is an excerpt on the threat posed by Art to our communities, our children, our very lives.


* who are DEFINITELY NOT POETS OR ARTISTS.

A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 16

On the 16th day of Christmas, the Sidekick Advent Calendar gives to you the jolliest boss in fiction!

In 2011, we commissioned six splendid poems to print as Christmas cards, starring characters from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Now we’re giving each one away as a download, so you can print them yourself, and have a very moral Christmas (sort of)! Each card will fit a size DL envelope.

Today’s presence is Mr Fezziwig, Scrooge’s magnanimous employer, in a poem written by Wayne Holloway-Smith, host of the salons immortalised in our anthology Follow The Trail of Moths. Click here for the printable PDF and get customising your card!


A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 14

It’s time for the second of our Sunday quizzes, this time returning to the well-traversed territory of British birds. But from a new angle! These colder months are, after all, a time for filling up bird feeders to the brim, even if the only place to hang them is outside the front window in front of someone else’s parking space, as in the old Sidekick HQ. The species that feature in this quiz aren’t necessarily winter birds, but you may encounter a few of them on your brisk December walks.

A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 13

Our Sidekick Advent Calendar strikes 13, and a small waif knocks at the door!

In 2011, we commissioned six splendid poems to print as Christmas cards, starring characters from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Now we’re giving each one away as a download, so you can print them yourself, and have a very moral Christmas (sort of)! Each card will fit a size DL envelope.

Today’s presence is Tiny Tim, in a poem written by Chrissy Williams, author of Twin-Peaks-meets-Cabot-Cove sinispectacular, Angela. Click here for the printable PDF and get customising your card!


A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 12

Time for another taste of what’s to come! Ghost of Christmas Future and all that. From next year onwards, we’re hoping to spend more time monkeying with digital media. As well as more of the Judge’s excellent video reviews (and he’ll be joined in these efforts by other critics) we’ll be attempting semi-regular reportage of free events from London’s never-ending literary festival.

This week, armed with a second-hand video camera and my own slightly trepidatious brand of impertinence, I set out to roughly document two unique December gatherings. Here goes nothing!

A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 11

Christmas being a time for magic, we thought we’d share an extract from one of our first micro-anthologies, way back in 2009. Pocket Spellbook was Dr Fulminare’s attempt to travel light, while retaining all of his important charms, curses and rants.

Here, we present a fireside extract to warm your cockles. Enjoy John Clegg‘s ‘Spell For A Furnace’ and the stunning illustrations of Saroj Patel.

A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 10

Day 10 of our Sidekick Advent Calendar, and it’s time for another ghostly visitation!

In 2011, we commissioned six splendid poems to print as Christmas cards, starring characters from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Now we’re giving each one away as a download, so you can print them yourself, and have a very moral Christmas (sort of)! Each card will fit a size DL envelope.

Today’s presence is The Ghost of Christmas Present, in a poem written by Holly Hopkins, whose work has appeared in our Birdbook series and in our games poetry anthology Coin Opera II. Click here for the printable PDF and get customising your card!


A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 9

Run for the hills! We have a second visitation from a would-be Christmas monster!

Move over, Krampus!

Seriously, look how sad he is. His little face!
Today’s terror from another realm comes in a deceptively sweet guise. Do not be fooled by the twinset and half-moon specs, not the soothing keep fit videos. This soft-voiced slaughterer has left a horrifying body count in her wake.

Forget Gilles de Rais, Countess Bathory, Vlad the Impaler. Turn your gaze instead to sleepy Cabot Cove, lair of the one they call…

The truth is out. Poet Chrissy Williams and artist Howard Hardiman have written and illustrated Angela, a daring expose of the Artist Formerly Known As Jessica Fletcher. Make no mistake. They are one and the same, and wherever they go, there will be blood… *



*…and sausage dogs. Don’t ask.

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!