*all artistbooks should be available either through paypal.
If the button isn’t working, then mail me: sehymas@ gmail [dot] com
Accept Everything
A concertina that doubles as bunting to remind you that acceptance is not resignation. It is the recognition of the response I have to what I see – what I think I see and how I feel about that – before making a decision towards action.
fully extended 900: x50mm
folded 50x50x5mm
The font has been created from cut out letters collaged with a variety of images that may be considered ‘good’ or ‘bad’, things you’d welcome or not.
Made from 120gsm recycle white card. Cover colours vary
The phrase was inspired by a Zambian park ranger I met who called it the first law of the bush, and probably was first seeded by the Richard Powers’ line (I misquote from The Overstory) : ‘like and dislike are the rod and staff of consumer culture’.
£5 each (+p&p)
Advice from a Tree
A blank greetings card, designed from an original poem, which you can read here
15cm square, matt, recycled card, with brown envelope
The poem was originally written on a prompt from Caroline Gilfillan, who is no longer with us in material form. This card celebrates her spirit.
£2.50 (+p&p) per card
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.
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.
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
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
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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)
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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.
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
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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).
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.”
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
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
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Sea Creatures
Chart section end-papers, illustrated pastel paper, waxed linen hand-stitched binding. 2013 £6.00 + p&p
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
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Lune
£2 +p&p
