Fossil closes and plans begin

That's it! Fuselit Fossil is closed. And with it, fittingly, the end of an era.

The eagle-eyed among you might have noticed that Fuselit is perennially behind schedule. This is due in no small part a) to Jon and Kirsty's other commitments, such as Sidekick Books, paying the exorbitant London rent etc. and b) the increasingly elaborate format of Fuselit, which many of you have kindly complimented over the years.

We would like to change this. To do this, drastic measures must be taken. We're planning and plotting what these will entail, but almost certainly, Fossil will be the last hand-made issue. In some ways it's very sad for us, as it's part of what made Fuselit unique. In other ways, it's a relief.

As soon as we've hatched our diabolical plans, we will let you know. In the meantime, Kirsty is working through the hundreds of excellent Fossil submissions (some beauties in there) and we'll be sewing Amazons by the light of Netflix.

Thanks, as ever, for your patience, your artwork and your support. It means so much to us.

J & K x

Fossil is closing soon for submissions!

Hello one and all!

As Amazon is finally on its way to contributors, Fuselit Fossil will be closing for submissions on 12th October 2014. This will be the last issue of Fuselit in this format. We'll say more in due course, but the huge delay in production might give some clues as to why we're changing tack. It will be exciting, rest assured...

If you've submitted work for Fossil and are waiting to hear back, K is on it, and slowly working through the avalanche of creative responses. Some truly excellent stuff - it's going to be magnificent.


Thanks, as ever!

DIY Cultures Fair

If your thing is the production or consumption of unique, beautifully shaped zines, comics or crafts, and you're within trotting distance of Bethnal Green this Sunday, then Mr Owl and I suggest you jog on to the DIY Cultures Fair at Rich Mix, Bethnal Green Road. Flit like an unseasonable moth between "zines, artist books, comics, artists-run spaces, talks, films, animation, video art, exhibition, workshops - the spirit of independence, autonomy & alternatives."

Workshops and events include "Sew your own collar", "The spinny whoa-a-trope", and Ceri May's needle felting, which will show you how to make something similar to the wide-eyed little charmer you see here.

Camarade Poetry Reading: K v Ryan Van Winkle!

On Saturday 9th February, SJ Fowler presents the fourth edition of his collaboration project Camarade. 26 poets have been paired up and challenged to create something unholy incredible together. Kirsty will be joining forces with Ryan Van Winkle (investigate his book, Tomorrow We Will Live Here) on a very strange love letter.

The full line-up promises an impressive mixture of sonic, experimental, formal and free-flowing poetry. If you fancy something a little different to your average reading, get thee to Shoreditch.

Click on the flyer for more information.

Nearest tubes: Shoreditch High Street, Liverpool Street, Old Street.

Fire Hazard wants your Underground poems!

Fantastic Hull-based magazine Turbulence sent us the following call. Get subterranean!

Submissions are now open for the first Fire Hazard anthology, "Underground".

To mark the 150th anniversary of the opening of the world's first underground railway in London in 1863, Fire Hazard is compiling a print anthology of poetry dealing with experiences of underground railways and their impact (for better and worse) on the communities they serve around the world.

Themes could include (but are by no means limited to):

• Construction of underground railways
• History of the lines and the stations
• The above-ground communities the underground serves
• The experience of commuting / travelling underground
• The art of the underground
• People experienced on the underground
• Subterranean geographies / cities
• Mapping the underground

If you would like your work to be considered for this anthology, please send up to four poems and a brief biographical note to us at firehazardpoetry@gmail.com with the word "underground" in the subject title. The deadline for submissions in March 31st, 2013. All included poets will receive an electronic copy of the anthology, hardcopies of which will be available for purchase in early summer.

http://turbulencepoetry.blogspot.com/

Where is the Amazon?

Just a quick update to apologise for the delay of the elusive next issue, Amazon. In between starting a freelance copywriting/editing business (oh yes, Copy That!) I've been collating and checking and the little design hamster in Jon's head has been huffing and puffing in his wheel.

I can tell you three things:

1. The cover looks great.

2. Looking back at the poems, prose and artwork selected for the issue, it looks set to be one of our strongest Fuselit issues yet.

3. It shall be upon us like a squirrel monkey in the not-too-distant future.

Meanwhile, we are still considering submissions for Fossil. If you're waiting for a reply, I'm working my way through, trying to give all pieces a good read and ponder. If you're considering submitting to us:

a) Check our guidelines please. This will cause the rapport between us to grow rosier by a factor of 10.

b) Consider calling your piece something other than 'Fossil'. I get rather a lot of these, and many are fantastic Fuse-fodder, but a little titular variety would be good.

c) The Fuselit inbox is an ongoing project for me, and works a little like a deli counter. As you arrive, you join the back of the queue and I work from oldest to newest, trying to stay within the time limit for replies. With that in mind, any time-sensitive questions (not submissions) would be best emailed to contact@drfulminare.com.

I think that brings us up to date. Once again, thanks to everyone for their support, enthusiasm and patience. Don't know about you but I'm pretty excited about our upcoming jungle adventure.

By the way, if you're on Twitter and haven't already followed us, we're @SidekickBooks.

I'm Walking Backwards (but looking forward) for Christmas

Just a quick post to say thank you to everyone for a great year. Sidekick Books has had a tiring but good 2012, putting out the second part of our four-volume tribute to Britain's birds, Birdbook II: Freshwater Habitats, and the long-awaited print version of Simon Barraclough's Hitchcock tribute Psycho Poetica.


Fuselit Amazon will be out next year too, and I look forward to choosing the work for its successor, Fossil. If you've sent us work, I'll be in touch.

Whether you've written for us, illustrated for us, bought books, come to readings, evangelised about our strange schemes online or simply investigated the dark world of Dr Fulminare in passing, we appreciate it and will continue to provide characteristically Sidekick weirdness in 2013.

K x

Birdbook Launch, 17 December!

It's on! Sidekick Books' Birdbook II: Freshwater Habitats will officially take flight at 7.30pm on Monday 17 December at Paper Dress Boutique and Bar, Shoreditch!

We'll be having short readings from a flock of the poets involved in the project, along with projections of the beautiful artwork representing each of these incredible freshwater birds. We're looking forward to meeting the talented writers and artists who have made this book such a treat to produce.

Nearest tubes are Shoreditch High St (Overground), Liverpool Street and Old Street, and stacks of buses go to the area.

Ah yes, and the Facebook event is here!

We'd love to say hello, so if you're in London at that time, come on down and have a flutter!

Fuselit in 2013

This is just a note to say that our mission to make Fuselit a twice-yearly event has thus far stumbled, as we've been thoroughly caught up with our work over at Sidekick Books, events surrounding our own poetry collections (both published by Salt this year), our day jobs and, oh, all sorts really!

But fear not; the Fuselit tradition will continue, and Amazon might be our most ambitious issue yet. If it does have to settle into more of an annual rhythm, so be it!

Binders Full of Women!

Sophie Mayer and Sarah Crewe, the all-editing, all-curating creators of the Pussy Riot anthology Catechism, have only gone and made sexy great binders full of poetry by women! If you need an excuse for a hearty dose of feminism and all-round love, the proceeds go to Rape Crisis UK and the Michael Causer Foundation. Pick up your binder today!

In case the title of this project rings no bells, here's a little something about Presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Kirsty's book is loose - catch it quick!

Never Never Never Come Back is out now from Salt Publishing! Available initially in a limited hardback run, with gorgeous hotfoiling under a dust jacket featuring artwork by the very talented Matt Latchford.

Here's the spiel!

Don’t go over the hill, or look too long into the well, or go carousing with strangers, or you’ll never never never come back. With the haunting quality of nursery rhymes but the complexity of a dark and smoky wine, these poems brood on absence and abandonment, outcasts and anomalies, monstrosity and mistakes.

At the heart of the collection are a suite of tightly focused, often impressionistic character studies ranging from cannibals to schoolgirls, but Irving also finds space in the shadows for desperate love songs to pilots and robots, satiric odes to tyrants and deft engagements with popular and literary culture. Whether turning the features of a pinball table into an emotional debris field or recounting unnerving sexual encounters, these are rich and rangy poems of a defiantly unusual character that linger in the mind as much for their controlled dissonances as their uncompromising subject matter.

Huge thanks to Salt Publishing's Chris Hamilton-Emery and my editor Roddy Lumsden. I could not be more stoked.

Stay tuned for launch details!

For review copies, contact me at kirsten.irving@gmail.com.

Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot

In protest at the disproportionate and injust incarceration of three members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot, and as a gesture of solidarity with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, the magnificent English PEN have released Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot. Commissioned, curated and edited by UK poets Mark Burnhope, Sarah Crewe and Sophie Mayer, this collection has drawn together a huge range of writers, asked them to pen responses to the situation and then encouraged said poets to pose in balaclavas in support of perhaps the three most famous devotchkas out there right now. The resulting anthology has been flagged up by the US Poetry Foundation and The Guardian, and continues to grow in stature and support. With contributions from as far afield as Kenya and Austria, Catechism has become a borderless project, uniting poets from across the globe. Indeed, many translators have stepped up to provide Russian versions of the poems. A group of the poets involved conducted a protest outside the Russian Embassy in London on 1 October, on what was originally scheduled as the girls' appeal date (since moved to 10 October). You can see videos of that protest here, as captured by contributor S. J. Fowler:

 

New Pussy Riot poems are being posted on the English PEN website every day. Catechism is available in e-book format for a donation and in sexy hard copy for a mere £7.95 plus p&p. You can also follow English PEN on Twitter (@englishpen) and search by the hashtag #freepussyriot for further updates on the case.

Fuselit announces new issue word!

That's right! We'd like your poetry, prose, artwork, music, spoken word, collage, and any form of art that can fit into an A6 format without significant loss of life or limb, on the subject of...FOSSIL!

As ever, PLEASE READ OUR GUIDELINES CAREFULLY! They are there to help! Look forward to seeing what you unearth!

Birdbook II/Coin Opera II update!

So a brief update is very much in order on our next two books, Birdbook II: Freshwater habitats and Coin Opera II. To accompany this, I've tried to find an image that captures both projects.

Birdbook II is very nearly ready to go printerwards. We've received a foreword from the fantastic Tim Birkhead, proofing has been done and it's just minor tweaks to go. For the uninitiated, this is the second book in a series of four, in which we aim to gather one poem and one illustration for every species of British bird. Each book covers a group of habitats. Volume II is looking great, helped in no small part by the return of Lois Cordelia, who has once again provided her beautiful artwork for the cover.

Coin Opera II, our second anthology of poetic tributes to computer games, is looking good too. With cover art by the very talented Mike Stone and a whole bundle of computer game-themed formal Easter eggs (including what may be the world's first set of 'boss' poems), this is going to be a mighty power-up from our initial micro-anthology, back in 2009. A foreword from Uncanny X Men writer and video games journalist Kieron Gillen, a spot more collaging and rearranging, a good old proof and it'll be off to press before you can say Hadouken.

More updates to come. Stay tuned!

Don't forget you can follow us on Twitter.

YPN August Challenge draws to a close

The final of my 15 simple/weird formal exercises is up on Young Poets' Network today and the deadline for mini-collection submissions is tomorrow!

Here, then, to recap are the 15 challenges, with examples by yours truly:

1. Bookshelf Poem
2. Squid Poem
3. Censorship Poem
4. Helicopter Poem
5. Skeleton Poem
6. Jungle Trail Poem
7. Hollywood Remake Poem
8. U-Boat Poem
9. DVD Extra Poem
10. Manga Poem
11. Scoop! Poem
12. Google Search Poem
13. Vampire Aubade
14. Earthquake Poem
15: Chinese Whisper Poem