Psalm to Saint Sabina by Radosław Wiśniewski is the first publication released by a Ramsgate-based indie publisher, Sideways Press, set up in 2025 by a poet and translator, Anna Blasiak, and a photographer and artist, Lisa Kalloo. Sideways Press’s ambition is to introduce English-language readers to some more translated writing – and especially poetry. After all there are so many literary voices in other languages which don’t easily find their way into English. Sideways Press aspires to change that, even just a little bit.

More at: sidewayspress.com

The first Sideways Press book is a long poem in 88 stanzas called Psalm to Saint Sabina which came out in Poland in several editions. It tells a story of Sabina Szopf, the protagonist’s (and the poet’s) great-grandmother and her turbulent life. Sabina was born in the Tsarist Russia in the year 1900, lived under the Soviet and German occupations and ended up settling after WW2 in the town of Brzeg in Silesia in Poland, previously a German town of Brieg. This book-length poem is a kind of personal and private process of sanctification of the protagonist’s great-grandmother, written in the language on one hand referencing Bible, psalms and litanies, and on the other hand simple and at times very colloquial, tinged with Sabina’s Eastern Borderlands linguistic quirks. Psalm to Saint Sabina by Radosław Wiśniewski was translated into English by Anna Blasiak. The poem is accompanied by photography by Lisa Kalloo.

‘Psalm to Saint Sabina’ is a poetic meditation on memory, survival, and the quiet courage of everyday life. Radosław Wiśniewski chronicles the twentieth century through the eyes of his great-grandmother, her suffering, humour, stubbornness, and love, blending personal memory with collective history. Unsentimental and uncompromising, these poems bear witness to humanity in its most intimate and unforgettable form. Anna Blasiak, herself a poet, masterfully conveys the linguistic register of the poem, capturing both its elevated, psalmic tone and its colloquial, everyday phrases. A book to read slowly, to feel, and to return to again and again.’

– Wioletta Greg, author of Swallowing Mercury

‘Readers meander through the 20th century as Wiśniewski scrupulously weaves the threads of Sabina’s life into a tapestry full of humanity, history, humor, and memory. Blasiak masterfully balances religious and colloquial language alongside comedy in her translation, as if Sabina were anglophone all along. A poem with everything, Kalloo’s photography adds further layers of nostalgia and reflection to a poem that truly speaks beyond its verses. Sabina is not only a saint, but someone we all know and love’

– Clayton McKee, editor of Trafika Europe

Radosław Wiśniewski is a Polish poet, prose writer and literary critic, co-founder and president of the indie publisher KIT Stowarzyszenie Żywych Poetów. He won several literary prizes in Poland. He published ten volumes of poetry: Nikt z przydomkiem (Nobody with a Nickname, 2003); Albedo (2006); NeoNoe (2009); Abdykacja – wiersze zaangażowane i nie (Abdication. Poems Engaged and Not, 2013); Inne bluesy (Other Blueses, 2015); Psalm do św. Sabiny (Psalm to Saint Sabina, 2016, 2022, 2022); Dzienniki Zenona Kałuży (Zenon Kałuża’s Diaries, 2017); Kwestionariusz putinowski i inne medytacje w czasach postprawdy (The Putin Questionnaire and Other Meditations inthe Times of Post-Truth, 2018); Korniki gniewu (Borers of Anger, 2021) and Siedem książek porzuconych (Seven Abandoned Books, 2022). He is also the author of several prose books: Palimpsest Powstanie (Uprising Palimpsest, 2019); Transmigracja (Transmigration, 2019) and 1939 Apokalipsa. Początek (1939 Apocalypse. The Beginning, 2020). His poems have been translated into English, German, Spanish, Czech and Hungarian. This is his first book in English.