Pravasan Pillay's Chatsworth to be translated into Swedish

Pravasan Pillay's short story collection Chatsworth, which was published by Dye Hard Press last year, is going to be translated into Swedish! It will be published by Lil'Lit Förlag in Stockholm and be out by the end of this year!

Coming soon from Dye Hard Press and altoviolet: With the Safety Off by Graeme Feltham

It’s the mid-1990s. Yeoville, along with the rest of South Africa, is in the midst of change. Enter Fig, a copywriter with a penchant for living on the edge – staying up all night, having casual sex and snorting cocaine. Drifting from seedy clubs to grotty flats, Fig continues his aimless odyssey …  until the day he falls asleep in a client presentation and is fired.

Nine months later Fig is hooked on heroin and turns to drug-dealing for survival. If his previous lifestyle skirted close to the danger zone, it’s now gloves off as he drops all pretence of respectability and descends into a world of syndicates and violence. There is no going back, but Fig doesn’t care.

From now on, he’s living with the safety off – no matter where it leads him.

At once harrowing and humourous, despairing and cynical, Graeme Feltham’s stark novel With the Safety Off plumbs the depths of mid-1990s South Africa, capturing both the exhilaration of freedom and the insecurity that comes with change.

216 pp 

ISBN 978-0-9869982-6-3

Jointly published by Dye Hard Press and altoviolet.

Pricing to be confirmed.

Cover art (provisional): James de Villiers

Graeme Feltham was born in 1965 and grew up in Uitenhage. He completed a degree in journalism at Rhodes University and moved to Johannesburg in the late 1980s. In addition to being a writer, he was an experimental composer and performance artist. His novella One Hundred Naked Beers was published by Brevitas in 2002. His work also appeared in literary journals such as New Coin and donga. Graeme took his own life in December 2017.

Mail art received from Henry Denander

Mail art received from Swedish artist, poet and publisher Henry Denander, including a stampsheet of portraits of Dr Hunter S Thompson. Am wondering whether Henry has done any portraits of Dr John, who died last week?

The stories my grandfather told me

Original collage by Bruno Sourdin

This is the original collage by French poet and collagist Bruno Sourdin that graced the cover of my latest poetry chapbook, In Naked Field, published by Concrete Meat Press in Leicester, England. In Naked Field is limited to 50 copies.

A History of Visual Text Art

The most recent issue of Kolkata-based The Odd Magazine has a special feature devoted to a newly published book by Karl Kempton titled A History of Visual Text Art. Together with a introduction by Kempton, a gallery of sample images, as well as link to download the book itself, there is an interview with Kempton and publisher Philip Davenport about the book, conducted by Gary Cummiskey. Well done to Odd Magazine editor Sreemanti Sengupta for putting this rewarding and indispensable project together!

You can be my anything

Fish Tales

US poet Catfish McDaris has put together a small collection of poems and stories about fishing called Fish Tales. The collection includes a short (surreal) prose poem by me titled 'Angling today'.


You can read Fish Tales here.

In Naked Field by Gary Cummiskey: Order details

In Naked Field is a chapbook of 20 poems by Gary Cummiskey, published by Concrete Meat Press in

Leicester, England. It is limited to 50 copies. To order click here.

Gary Cummiskey reading from In Naked Field

Gary Cummiskey reading from his latest poetry chapbook, In Naked Field, published by Concrete Meat Press, Leicester, England. Photo: Arja Salafranca

In Naked Field: a chapbook of poems by Gary Cummiskey

The eagle has landed ... my copies of my latest chapbook, In Naked Field, published by Concrete Meat Press in Leicester, England. Thanks to publisher Adrian Manning and to French poet and collagist Bruno Sourdin, who supplied the cover art.

To order contact Adrian Manning at adrianmanning@yahoo.co.uk.

The presences, again

Dye Hard Interview ‒ Rethabile Masilo: From innocence to exile

Rethabile Masilo was born in Lesotho in 1961. He is the author of four poetry collections: Things that are Silent (Pindrop Press, 2012), Waslap (The Onslaught Press, 2015),  Letter to Country (Canopic, 2016) and Qoaling (The Onslaught Press, 2018). His work has appeared in various literary journals online and in print. His collection Waslap won the 2016 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. He now lives in Paris with his wife and children.

You were born in Lesotho but now live in Paris, after stays in South Africa, Kenya and the US. How did you end up in Paris?

Our family was targeted, in 1981, in an organised night attack by agents of the then Lesotho government, the aim being to eliminate our father, Ben Masilo, who had been an outspoken opponent of the government. Following that attack, which failed to kill our father but instead took the life of my 3-year-old nephew, Motlatsi, we left the country in a hurry by crossing the frontier into South Africa under the pretext of ’going shopping’. Read more.

Strange brew in December

A Dye Hard Interview: Lee Beckworth: Poetry should be a way of avoiding commodification and superficiality

Lee Beckworth aka Lee Kwo was born in Geelong, Australia, in 1952/He started writing at 17 and completed a Degree at Deakin University in creative writing and Journalism in 1974/After travels in Europe he moved to Melbourne and completed a Bachelor of Letters in literature and psychology at Melbourne University/ He has published five works of fiction and two books of poetry/ His interests in music and photography have been expressed through the band Kicks and an exhibition of collages and photography in 2016/

You are an artist, a writer and musician, but which medium do you consider the most important, or do they each carry the same weight?

Well for me they all contribute to each other and each has a period of time where my lifestyle is dominated by one or other of them respectively/I have made performance videos using original music and photo images and I have used art works as covers  for published books and collages/I wrote lyrics for bands I was playing with and usually remained active in all creative areas including sculpture and photography ...Read more

Bruno Sourdin holding a copy of In Naked Field

French poet and collagist Bruno Sourdin holding a copy of my latest collection, In Naked Field, published by Concrete Meat Press in Leicester, England. Bruno provided the collage on the front cover.