SIDEKICK SUBMISSIONS CALLS 2026
UPCOMING: &Friends Series
SUBMISSIONS OPEN: 1 APRIL 2026
(please don’t send submissions before this date!)
For the first time ever, Sidekick plan to work with full manuscripts supplied to us by single authors – something close to, but not exactly, traditional single-author poetry collections. What we’re looking for more precisely is books of amalgamatic poetry, to be published in the following format: • Pocket-sized and perfect bound (11 x 16cm, the same size as our Hipflask Series, or Everyman’s Pocket Library books). • 60-120 pages. • A clear theme or thread of subject matter. That is, each book should explore a particular tangible theme.
Hold on. What is ‘amalgamatic poetry’ exactly?
Amalgamatic writing, or just ‘amalgamism’, is a literary style which is conspicuously hybrid or patchwork in appearance, not just in terms of mixing genres and tones but also in terms of drawing on the work of multiple authors and/or editors, including comment and criticism alongside creative writing, utilising elements of non-literary media, and blurring the line between writer and reader.
A work of amalgamatic poetry, therefore, is a combination of original composition, editorship, adaptation, commentary and curation. At the heart of the book or manuscript is the author/s own poetry. This is supplemented by some combination of: 1) work they have solicited or borrowed from other writers; 2) previously published work (preferably in the public domain) that they have remixed and recontextualised or otherwise reworked; 3) passages of editorial reflection and other kinds of writing that are adjacent to but distinct from lyric poetry.
This submissions call will be updated with examples before it goes live, so remember to check back!
If the proposal contains collaborations, or curates/reuses other people’s work, is it really a single-author collection?
The core of the work and the arrangement of the book should be your own, and you will therefore be recognised as the main author, but we will attribute the book to ‘[Your Name] & Friends’ (hence the name of the series!) and list the names of additional contributors/artists on or after the title pages.
When you open for submissions, what should we send you?
• A working title and description of your proposed book. • An explanation of the amalgamatic elements (particularly if this isn’t apparent from your accompanying writing sample). • A sample of 5-10 pages. • A short bio (100-200 words).
Why aren’t you just doing normal poetry collections?
When we first set up Sidekick 15 years ago, we decided that we would focus solely on collaborative or polyphonic texts. This is in part because we wanted to challenge the image of the poet as lone, elevated speaker – an archetype that has never sat quite right with us. So most of the books we’ve published so far are anthologies of some kind. We now want to further explore the possibility of a hybrid of the anthology and the single-author book.
Poetry is inherently combinatorial; it seeks to ‘join up’. Stylistic traditions in poetry involve finding equivalences between the specific and the general, or patterns across and between multiple distinct contexts. Collaboration and amalgamation is an obvious extension of this, and much, if not most, published poetry already owes a clear debt to other writers. Amalgamism follows from the principle that we should allow more crossover and interweaving to occur – not just between writers, but between different kinds of text and book.
What next?
We’ll add more details to this submissions call in the coming months. For now, we wanted to give everyone a heads up. Stay tuned!
