Ten Poets Spend the Night in a Vampire’s Castle

“

The invitation arrived folded in midnight. / No envelope, just a note pressed to my chest: /

You’ve been chosen. Glow accordingly…

Ten Poets Spend the Night in a Vampire's Castle

Ten Poets Spend the Night in a Vampire's Castle - Image 2

Ten Poets Spend the Night in a Vampire's Castle - Image 3

Ten Poets Spend the Night in a Vampire’s Castle

£8.00

edited by Kirsten Irving and Jon Stone

“Enter freely and of your own will!” After a hellish coach ride up a mountain pass, each of our ten poets crosses a threshold – perhaps a little dishevelled. But the master of the castle remains oddly reclusive; is this stop-off or destination, sanctuary or trap? Move through the book as you would a candlelit corridor: every poem here is an unlocked chamber door, behind which lies mirrors, dust, and the temptation of the flesh…

64pp, ISBN 978-1-909560-41-3

Please note: Due to customs issues, we can no longer ship directly to Europe. European friends, please order from our distributors at Inpress or through your local bookshop.

65 pre-orders available

SKU: 10PVAMPIRE Categories: 10 Poets, Books, Folklore & Myth, History & Satire, Uncategorized Tags: 10 Poets, erotica, horror, LGBTQIA+, mythology, paranormal, queer, romantasy, vampires

Description

Description

10 Poets is a series of books in which poets are invited to turn their skills to new and surprising ends.

Ten Poets Spend the Night in a Vampire’s Castle sees ten more poets venture, nightsticks, nerves and desires aloft, through the corridors and catacombs of a mysterious host’s lair.

Contributors

Sophie Blacklock, Lark Sabre, Heather Chapman, Emmy Clarke, Nikki Marrone, Kate Moore, Megan Pattie, Dorian Shire, Candy Smellie, Catherine Spooner

Ten Poets Prowl the Seas in Search of Plunder

“

Behind the thin glass, the wind chanted not warnings but invitations…

Ten Poets Prowl the Seas in Search of Plunder

Ten Poets Prowl the Seas in Search of Plunder - Image 2

Ten Poets Prowl the Seas in Search of Plunder

£8.00

edited by Jon Stone and Kirsten Irving

Release date: 10 September 2025

They’re done with the land, its reckless rulers and its unjust laws! Now ten poets set sail under the bold black flag, as pirate queens, gentleman corsairs and salty dogs, to sing shanties most boisterously and comb for treasure. But what kind of treasure? And what varieties of creature await them in the deep? And what happens when the rum runs dry? Is the journey really what it seems to be? Did they ever, in fact, escape the shore?

60pp, ISBN 978-1-909560-40-6

Please note: Due to customs issues, we can no longer ship directly to Europe. European friends, please order from our distributors at Inpress or through your local bookshop.

SKU: 10PPROWL Categories: 10 Poets, Books, Folklore & Myth, History & Satire, Uncategorized Tags: 10 Poets, pirates

Description

Description

10 Poets is a series of books in which poets are invited to turn their skills to new and surprising ends.

Ten Poets Prowl the Seas in Search of Plunder sees ten more poets set out with cutlasses and compasses, high spirits and troubled pasts to chart depths unknown.

Contributors

Emma Brown, Jacob Burgess Rollo, Luigi Coppola, Emma Du Toit, Matthias Mūnkey Ediger, Jem K. Hubbard, Alfie Nawaid, Rebecca Ostler, Abigail Ottley, James Womack

Ten Poets Travel to the Dark Side of the Moon

“

The instruments were waiting in the dome / flight cases cold as tombstones in the darkness…

Cover of Ten Poets Travel to the Dark Side of the Moon, featuring black-and-white illustrations of space.

Ten Poets Travel to the Dark Side of the Moon - Image 2

Ten Poets Travel to the Dark Side of the Moon

£8.00

edited by Jon Stone and Kirsten Irving

Release date: 30 April 2025

Long before mankind went to the Moon, we dreamt of it – dreamt of what it’s like to be there, or thereabouts, on the surface or just beyond the exosphere, in every medium from cinema to comic strip.

This book sees ten new cosmonauts resurrect that most rickety, most celestial of technologies – the lyric poem – as a means of reaching out again, further and more fervently than ever before, in a space race from which some may never return. Are they prepared for what they’ll find out there, amid cold craters, micrometeorite showers and radioactive crust?

60pp, ISBN 978-1-909560-39-0

Please note: Due to customs issues, we can no longer ship directly to Europe. European friends, please order from our distributors at Inpress or through your local bookshop.

92 pre-orders available

SKU: 10PMOON Categories: 10 Poets, Books, Cinema & Other Media, Cross-Genre, Folklore & Myth, Science and Technology, Science Fiction Tags: 10 Poets, folklore, mythology, poetry, space, space science

Description

Description

10 Poets is a series of books, each of which sets a decet of poets on a new course, turning their skills to new and surprising ends. Each title in the series takes an existing genre of storytelling and blends in poetic elements. Whether they’re slaying kaiju monsters, spooking us out, solving murders or seducing icons from history, our game bards shapeshift, time-travel and stoke the campfire in their own poetic ways.

Ten Poets Travel to the Dark Side of the Moon sees ten intrepid poets set off for the stars, testing their bodies, their resolve and their navigation skills. From musical legends to mythology to Mare Frigoris and back, they’re on a mission to bring back the finest lunar verse.

Contributors

Al Crow, Abbie Day, Kat Dixon, Andy Jackson, Elizabeth Gibson, Giles Goodland, Richard Price, Emma Reay, Freya Sacksen, Jerrold Yam

Submissions Call! Ten Poets Travel to the Dark Side of the Moon

Hot on the heels of our first four Ten Poets titles, we’ve gotten all fired up for another one! Launch your best words our way for

Ten Poets Travel to the Dark Side of the Moon!

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.

Check out the submissions call for more information and FAQs, and feel free to email us with questions.

Deadline: 15 December

Ten Poets Series out now! Be haunted, challenged, intrigued and seduced!

Sidekick Books is proud to present the Ten Poets Series!

These four cross-genre books send poets cantering into unknown terrain: erotica, folklore and urban legends, murder mysteries and even kaiju monster movies!

Titles include:

Cover to 'Ten Poets Defend Their Cities from Giant, Strange Beasts'. Etching of man holding up an arm as a mythical monster approaches.

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

View the trailers for each book here:

Intrigued? Click the image below to buy the whole set

Ten Poets Defend their Cities from Giant, Strange Beasts

“

I don’t know how the trees got there. / The sky claps / and they all take / one step forward

Front cover to 'Ten Poets Defend Their Cities from Giant, Strange Beasts'.A volcanic scene in which a man is holding up an arm against an oncoming monster.

Ten Poets Defend Their Cities from Giant, Strange Beasts

£8.00

edited by Jon Stone and Kirsten Irving

In scenarios which recall the mid-20th-century craze for atomic monsters and stop-motion titans – and more importantly, the existential fears such creatures embody – these ten sprawling poems and lyrical tales tell of terrible confrontations in Brighton, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Ipswich, Liverpool, London, Newcastle, Reykjavík and Truro. Our poets are positioned as sentries, their lines and stanzas arrayed in sorcerous patterns of resistance. And while the beasts described may be somewhat figurative, somewhat fantastical, the dangers they represent are very real…

72pp, ISBN: 978-1-909560-33-8

Please note: Due to customs issues, we can no longer ship directly to Europe. European friends, please order from our distributors at Inpress or through your local bookshop.

47 in stock

Categories: 10 Poets, Cinema & Other Media, Cross-Genre, History & Satire Tags: 10 Poets, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, ecopoetry, Edinburgh, environmental, Glasgow, Ipswich, Liverpool, London, monsters, mythology, poetry, Reykjavik, storytelling, Truro

Description

Description

10 Poets is a series of books, each of which sets a decet of poets on a new course, turning their skills to new and surprising ends. Each title in the series takes an existing genre of storytelling and blends in poetic elements. Whether they’re slaying kaiju monsters, spooking us out, solving murders or seducing icons from history, our game bards shapeshift, time-travel and stoke the campfire in their own poetic ways.

Ten Poets Defend Their Cities from Giant, Strange Beasts takes its cue from the nuclear anxieties of the Godzilla franchise. 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.

Contributors

Kat Addis, Nick Asbury, James Coghill, Adam Crothers, Kym Deyn, Aaron Kent, Amy Jo Philip, Kevin Reinhardt, Sean Wai Keung, Alice Willitts

Ten Poets Charm the Pants off Ten Historical Figures

“

If not, let me approach you / differently, measure our symmetry: the square / of you against the square of me.

Cover to 'Ten Poets Charm the Pants off Ten Historical Figures'. Etching of a couple dancing.

Ten Poets Charm the Pants off Ten Historical Figures - Image 2

Ten Poets Charm the Pants off Ten Historical Figures

£8.00

edited by Jon Stone and Kirsten Irving

Poets are famous rakes, seductresses and time travellers, are they not? Cast all doubt from your mind by taking in these ten tantalising accounts of extremely inter-generational flirtation, whereby prominent persons from history are left weak-kneed and willing. But is that all there is to it? Or are our poets, as poets tend to be, engaged in more than mere dalliance? Will they change the past forever, or vanish ecstatically into it?

62pp, ISBN: 978-1-909560-36-9

Please note: Due to customs issues, we can no longer ship directly to Europe. European friends, please order from our distributors at Inpress or through your local bookshop.

47 in stock

Categories: 10 Poets, Books, Cross-Genre, History & Satire, Love & Romance Tags: 10 Poets, adult, erotic, history, LBGTQIA+, love, poetry, queer, storytelling

Description

Description

10 Poets is a series of books, each of which sets a decet of poets on a new course, turning their skills to new and surprising ends. Each title in the series takes an existing genre of storytelling and blends in poetic elements. Whether they’re slaying kaiju monsters, spooking us out, solving murders or seducing icons from history, our game bards shapeshift, time-travel and stoke the campfire in their own poetic ways.

Ten Poets Charm the Pants off Ten Historical Figures sees our bards become time-travelling Nell Gwynnes, seeking and seducing historical crushes. Will they meet with ecstasy or agony? Slip inside to find out.

Contributors

Vasiliki Albedo, Tom Bland, Helen Bowell, Penny Boxall, Matthew Caley, Swithun Cooper, Rachel Jeffcoat, Patrick Davidson Roberts, Imogen Robertson, Becky Varley-Winter

Submissions

SUBMISSIONS OPEN UNTIL 28 FEBRUARY 2026 FOR

Ten Poets Do Their Bit for the Secret Service

Ten Poets Lose Themselves in the Land of the Fae

Read the full call here!

Not your thing? Please check back here, follow us on social media or join our newsletter for future calls.

General Submissions FAQs

Do you publish solo poetry collections?

No, we don’t. Sidekick specialises in collaborative and mixed-media work, with strong themes and blurred genre boundaries. Have a look at our other books to get an idea of what we do.

How about if I just send it anyway?

Please don’t! As a team of two people (working jobs alongside running the press), we don’t have time to reply to unsolicited collections sent to us. There are many incredible presses who publish single-author collections. You can find a good starter list on the National Poetry Library’s website.

When is your next submissions call?

We release new calls via our newsletter (see bottom of this page) and through our social media accounts on Instagram, Threads and Bluesky. We look forward to seeing your work!

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