Reviews

griffin close up

Writing

[on Lune]: “It quietly pushes the reader to imagine the sea under the cover of night, which in turn brings the lines about the sun or light forward into a startling glow. It’s interesting to mention that the darkness of the poem doesn’t come from the night sky, but emerges into it from a jet black sea. This is one of the overarching motifs that help to drive home the ideas of the work. The narrator of the poem looks out to the sea for answers, but the sea exists as an unknown, and repeatedly what the sea casts back is a command to look inside oneself. This dichotomy between the mysterious expanse of the sea and the tiny intimacy of the self is something that Hymas has managed to capture perfectly without being saccharine. If anything, the closeness that she conjures is one of melancholy.” Nick Murray Annexe Magazine

[on Lune]: “Lune is a rich addition to this contemporary pastoral tradition: part narrative, part evocation of land- and sea-scape, part metaphysical meditation on what the world is and what it is to be in that world. The title in the first instance derives from the river, but the other definitions of lune that I referred to in the opening paragraph of this review all seemed to me to come to bear on the poem as I read it. The sea is a leash, limiting the walker’s range of movement, the pull of the moon is what creates that intertidal space, the bay’s crescent is formed by sea and land intersecting, and these are all things the poem brings to our mental vision.The poem is driven by a need to see, in every sense of the word. And it recognises, or Hymas recognises, the difficulty of this project.” Billy Mills, Sabotage

[on Bedrock] “The poetry is earthy and takes a no-nonsense approach to setting out their journey from community-based god-fearing and pious, through to the complexity, toughness and verging on faithlessness, of modernity. These vignettes suggest a narrative that could make a substantial novel or play” Anne Stewart in Artemis

[on Host]
” I recommend the collection, especially for readers looking for a fresh slant on the domestic lyric, or just a very enjoyable verse narrative. Host is well worth their while, and bodes well for Hymas’ future.” Mark Burnhope on Ink Sweat & Tears

“… excellent at capturing social and religious codes of behaviour, with the acuity of Austen or Alice Munro … Host is a tactile and muscular collection, rooted in the complexities and textures of the physical world. Hymas has created fresh and exuberant work that, at its best, captures the awe of being alive.” Sarah Westcott reviews Host on Eyewear, here

” … These poems do not just host or reside; they make a connection, a highway of energy between the physical, the limits of the body and the indefinable other. The thing I like most about this collection is the so-much-more-than landscape they offer: more, they are a being-in-ness, being-of-ness, that I very much enjoy.”Anna McKerrow

“I read Host four times through and, by the last reading, it felt like a pair of hands about my face shushing my over-caffeinated brain.” Peter Wild, Bookmunch

“Her language is bold, lively and richly textured and her characters’ voices are powerfully brought to life so that their passions, ambitions and disappointments are vividly heard and imagined.” Bernardine Evaristo

“These tersely written poems are rich in well-observed characters and phraseology, witty in the serious sense.They are a feast of defamiliarisation and significant foregrounding, a nourishing image of lives and landscapes.” Herbert Lomas

“Sarah Hymas’ confident language and vivid imagery gives an unusual vitality to this collection. In Bedrock four generations speak of their lives in a sequence that pays homage to the institution of the family. A clear eye for period detail and an ear for the inner voice bring the characters to life, their particular fears and pleasures, conflicts and tensions.
Elsewhere in the book, in poems of travel, people, sailing and self-reflection, she shows the same robust awareness of life’s underlying currents and quests together with a will to embrace its fun and poignancy. It’s good to be in such wholehearted company.” Mike Barlow

Performance

“Sarah’s short imagistic verse is harder to judge in reading than on the page, unlike much comic verse. Where she succeeds is with her lissom presence, literally dancing her poems. Sea imagery predominates but the sustained metaphor of The Midland Hotel as a glamorous, sexy movie starlet was effective.” The Lunecy Review

“I thought your performance of your exquisite and elevated poems was masterly, magnificent.”

“Listening to you and your poems is like listening to music.”

“I just wanted to thank you for a brilliant afternoon yesterday. It created a real buzz with those that attended, they were still talking about it when I saw them in the evening! I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.” Ansdell Library

Artistbooks

*all artistbooks should be available either through paypal.
If the button isn’t working, then mail me: sehymas@ gmail [dot] com

Zen Crones

A box rather than a book
100 matchbox editions. Handwritten, risograph printed sayings on 40x30mm recycled cards, with waxed linen thread lever.

100 matchbox editions. £10 each, plus p&p Each contains a unique mix of 18 Zen Crones, plus a blank card to add your own wisdom to the collective, an explanatory insert sheet and linen thread lever.

If you want these sent overseas, please email me directly on sehymas [at] gmail.com so I can double check postage costs. Thank you 🙂

More info about their backstory here

Breath Book

Linen hard covers. Concertina insert, with inkjet and handpainted lettering.
A prayer. A meditation.
the swing of my breath in and out carves a bowl to hold me
105x105x8mm closed. Extends to 1000mm
£30 (inc p+p)*. Edition of 7 

*UK only, for other destinations please contact me on sehymas@gmail [dot]com

Press Play

Two non-lingual narratives spring and spill out in small interlinked square panels, of indigo brush and ink markings on deliciously tactile, white Parquemarque paper. Made for sharing joy in difficult times, these artistbooks come in pairs: one for you and one for a friend / colleague / relative / neighbour / someone who’d welcome a little joy in their life. When you order, just add the address of your designated playmate and any message you’d like (if you’d like) written in pencil on the reverse.
£10 (inc p+p) for two. Edition of 30.

postage options (please include the additional address)

Swallow

Simple A3 zine, cut and folded into an A6 sized-illustrated booklet,  unfolding into a spiraling repetition of swimmer image.
£5 +p&p Edition of 20.

This cautious response to the first three weeks of lockdown during the Covid19 pandemic attempts to balance fear with hope.

END OF PRINT RUN

Sea of whiteness, as glacier

130mm square (folded) cartridge paper, waxed linen thread and blue triangular text elements.
£7.50 (+p&p) Edition of 40

A non-linear, three dimensional artistbook containing a poem inspired by Sara Ahmed’s ‘Phenomenology of Whiteness’, climate change, glacial retreat and the attempt to gauge an unfamiliar landscape. Where does the poem begin? How might a glacier be read? This artistbook explores the folds between human and ice, language and space, reader and world.

“‘Sea of whiteness as glacier’ is an intriguing concept. I like it as an artefact … and I like the fact that that there’s no obvious sequence – that you can read the snippets in any order that you want “

You can get more of a sense of the book here 

ONE LEFT

Recovery

Lorenzo 120/95 gsm, hardbacked cloth covered. Edition of 5.
Please contact me directly with enquiries

An expanding artistbook based on the Ivan Juritz Prize (2017) shortlisted poem.  A co-worlding of human and ocean, Recovery operates across multiple timescales. A single tickertape line of oceanic time, following the breakdown of plastics across long pages of the book, is punctuated by foldout intervals of tidal time, documenting the collection of plastic debris from the shoreline. 

watch a short demo of Recovery here

How to be more than human
7x7cm square book with fold out pages, spine and waxed thread stitching/wrap
£7.50 (+p&p) Edition of 50

A how-to guide, a pocket survival manual for the curious and creatively adventurous among us. Playing between physical, image and text, this octobook celebrates that most extraordinary of creatures by attempting to emulate it. With eight fold-out pages, your book could be one of two colours, depending on its environment or mood. Illustrations made from paper cut.

And if you want to really immerse yourself, read it alongside This fascinating In Our Time (R4) on cephalopods

END OF PRINT RUN

Wild Swan

A3 illustrated concertina with belly band.
£5 (+p&p) Unlimited edition

The unofficial sequel to Hans Anderson’s fairy tale. Stories do not end. Humans have wings. This is a world that is both unfamiliar and deeply expansive, hopeful for how we might choose to live.

Wave Motion
An extended concertina of card and paper, with expanding spine.
£10 (&p+p). Edition of 40

Two companion sonnets on the function and beauty of waves, making distinct yet comparable the ocean and the plastic within it.

“… belongs in the outer reaches of the [pamphlet] format. Passport-sized and delicate, Hymas’s pamphlet opens out like a concertina when you grip its cover. The two sonnets on the pages that unfold describe standing in open water, waves sucking at the speaker’s legs … This is not the wholesome fish-bright water of travel supplements but a modern skew flaky with plastic…” Leaf Arbuthnot. TLS (2017)

END OF PRINT RUN

A Dock is not a Solid Thing
A Jacob’s ladder format of blue / white two tone card, ribbon and a steel fastener.
£10 (&p+p). Edition of thirty.

IMAG2262

Seven poems on docks, boatbuilding, maritime trade and lighthouses. The binding, a delicate and ingenious design, conveys the movement of water and precarious nature of maritime industries.

“I do especially appreciate it when a pamphlet comes along where the form reflects the content, where the theme is tightly bound, when everything from top to bottom has been considered when being crafted.” Read more of Claire Trévien’s review here

END OF PRINT RUN

There is no Night
(illustrated card, tracing paper sleeve cover with silver birch bark detail. Handstitched binding.) Reindeer image by Justus Raatikainen.
£5 each ( p&p).

there is no night

Set in a Finnish summer ‘There is no Night’ is a modern day fable on love and the troll within us all, while tracing the shifting borders of relationships and water. How do we love another and simultaneously ourselves?

This tender, lightly melancholic long poem plays with union and independence, absence and presence, turning ultimately hopeful.
Read more here
If you want one sending as a gift, please add  any personal message to your paypal instructions and the giftee’s (is that a word?) address.

Reader feedback: “Thank you for this. I’ve read it twice now but it feels like the kind of poem that will grow with every reading. I love the ‘vessel’ you have made for it – so clever. As you said on your blog – in the end it asks for simplicity – but that’s quite hard to achieve.

“As for the poem, I’m finding it hard to start spilling words about it, but I love the way it makes me feel – quiet and still, in the presence of mystery, sad and hopeful. It’s beautiful.” 

END OF PRINT RUN

In Good Weather the Sign Outside reads Danger Quicksand

Letterpress cover, transparent photographic end-papers, card, recycled rubber band binding, 2014) .  
£8 + p&p Edition of 48
Also available from the Bookartbookshop N1 6HB

In Good Weather 1

A sequence of four prose poems expose a relationship between storm surges and domesticity. Multiple time frames hide and appear within the folded card sections, playing with how past, present and imagination co-exist.

Semi-opaque end-papers add to the layering of the pieces. This is a playful puzzle and beautiful handmade design.

“The writing impresses too. Whether lyric tetralogy, or four ‘flash chapters’, this account of a relationship weathering threat adroitly meshes natural, medical, and meta-fictional imagery, and anchors its wealth of detail with a taut yet understated line to the heart. The narrative arc is clear, yet travels far, the prose glistens with precise, musical phrase…”  Naomi Foyle. Read the rest of the review here.

“Wonderful. Quite wonderful. In every way. Thank you.” TL, a reader

“The writing is, for the most part, tight, limpid and almost matter-of-fact. There are moments of acute visual perception, as when the sea water beating against the window means the ‘glass isn’t to look through any more, but to look at’…A pleasure to read in every sense.” Billy Mills on Elliptical Movements

END OF PRINT RUN

Sea Creatures

Chart section end-papers, illustrated pastel paper, waxed linen hand-stitched binding. 2013 £6.00 + p&p

sea creatures

A collection of encounters with sea-creatures of the air, water and a sailor’s imagination. These poems are fresh, simple and joyful descriptions of the sea’s ecology and the reactions provoked by it. Charts illustrate the richly textured paper, adding to the experience of the reader as seafarer.
“This small hand-stitched rectangular pamphlet is a delightful blending of design and poetry, which work together perfectly…” Angela Topping

“Sarah makes these beautiful creations in which the form of publication and poems intertwine to make a whole. Sea-creatures features maps and torn pages that echo the tide, Lune streams like the river it’s named for across the page. Both publications are full of salt and water; there are mussels, brittle stars, selkies, seabirds, and a multitude of ‘fragments of one world…washed up by another’. ” Claire Dean

END OF PRINT RUN

Lune

£2 +p&p

 

Runner Up for Best Pamphlet in the Saboteur Awards 2013

A long poem set at the mouth of the Lune estuary, rich in imagery and allusion, place and atmosphere. It examines the relationship between land and sea and sea and man, in layers that connect and distance. Subtle, delicate, confident. You can read an excerpt here

“Lune: a leash for a hawk; fits of lunacy; a crescent formed by the overlapping of two circles; a crescent moon; a river whose tidal estuary is at Plover Scar, Lancashire; a poem in five sections printed as a neat concertina pamphlet; subject of these reviews:

 “Lune appears as a whisper. Beautifully and carefully intimate. And once you have fallen into it, it starts to tell you secrets. It is the kind of poem you could fall in love with…” is only the beginning, in Annexe Magazine

Lune is a rich addition to this contemporary pastoral tradition: part narrative, part evocation of land- and sea-scape, part metaphysical meditation on what the world is and what it is to be in that world. The title in the first instance derives from the river, but the other definitions of lune that I referred to in the opening paragraph of this review all seemed to me to come to bear on the poem as I read it.” Billy Mills in Sabotage

Lune is featured in The Guardian Books Blog as an excellent example of its form.