Running East by Theo Green

Running East, a memoir by Theo Green, published by Inkblot Publications, Providence, 2016. 

Out there

It came as some surprise

In this weekday haze

Beyond Touch is co-winner of the 2016 SALA Poetry Award

Arja Salafranca's Beyond Touch is co-winner of this year's SALA Poetry Award. Beyond Touch was published by Dye Hard Press and Modjaji Books.

Dashen Naicker appointed New Coin editor

South African writer, publisher and critic, Dashen Naicker, has been appointed editor of poetry magazine New Coin from 2017.

Naicker, founder and editor of the South African poetry e-journal The Park Bench, is a poet who has read and performed at festivals in South Africa, Sweden, and France. His own work has been published in international and local magazines, including New Coin, where he was one of the Dalro prizewinners in 2012. He is also a performance poet and three-time winner of the Poetry Africa SlamJam.

Dashen Naicker writes: “Since 2014, New Coin has achieved considerable reach and range under the committed stewardship of Gary Cummiskey. With his guidance the journal has made varied voices visible, even in the shifting sands of South Africa in the 21st century. My aim is to continue, and construct from, this investment in South African poetry.

“Beyond this, I would like to bring into the journal extended interview pieces that engage with the craft and concerns of South African poets. This will take the form of a series of conversations in which young South African poets interview established writers who have influenced or inspired them in some way, highlighting the sense of community and history that is a part of South African poetry.

“I hope to achieve these aims by drawing on my skills and experiences as a poet, academic, and editor, in consultation and conversation with poets and poetry lovers of South Africa. I want to ensure that New Coin journeys into and through spaces aware and appreciative of the multiple modes and varying voices that characterise life and poetry in this country.”

New Coin was founded in 1965 by Guy Butler and Ruth Harnett and is published twice a year by the Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA) at Rhodes University. Naicker will work with an editorial board of poets and former editors.

Subscribe now to get both the June and December 2016 issues of New Coin for R200.

For subscriptions and information, email isea@ru.ac.za or call 046 603 8565.

Beyond Touch nominated as finalist in the SALA Poetry Awards 2016

Arja Salafranca's third poetry collection, Beyond Touch, is a finalist in the 2016 SALA Poetry Awards. Beyond Touch was published by Modjaji Books and Dye Hard Press in 2015.

While I lay sleeping

Sensation Desired

Gail Dendy's Closer Than That still in stock

Dye Hard Press still has copies of Gail Dendy's poetry collection Closer than That in stock.

Gail Dendy is one of South Africa’s most unmistakable and unique literary voices. The singing quality of her poetry soars and swoops, transporting the reader into a world of glittering magical realism. In this book a moon ripens in the window ‘whole and lemony once more’, mothers express longing and love, the sun and moon argue, there are gypsy women, and a fantasy piece with Shakespearean characters. This book is truly alive, presented in language that ‘rings like a gong from here to the far end of the world’.

Cost is R60 per copy, including postage - South Africa only. Email me on dyehardpress@iafrica.com to order!

FIVE copies of donga left in stock

Dye Hard Press has FIVE copies of donga left in stock. donga is a selection of poetry, short fiction, interviews and essays from what was one of South Africa's first literary online journals (2000-2003).

With 32 contributors, donga contains work by writers such as Lionel Abrahams, Robert Berold, Lauren Beukes, Nadine Botha, Toast Coetzer, Gary Cummiskey, Graeme Feltham, Richard Fox, Stacy Hardy, Stephen Hofstatter, Aryan Kaganof, Bernat Kruger, Joan Meterlerkamp, Ike Mboneni Muila, Pravasan Pillay, Lesego Rampolokeng, Arja Salafranca, Kelwyn Sole, Ivan Vladislavic and Paul Wessels.

donga is edited by Alan Finlay and Paul Wessels, and was published by BlekSem, in collaboration with Botsotso Publishing and Dye Hard Press.

320 pages.

The cost is R100 per copy, including postage - South Africa only. Email me at dyehardpress@iafrica.com to order!

Chiures de mouches au plafond by Bruno Sourdin

A loose-leaf collection of haiku by Bruno Sourdin, published by Atelier de Groutel, Champfleur, 2016 Afterwards by Guy Allix.

Copies of The Edge of Things still in stock

Dye Hard Press has just THREE copies left of The Edge of Things, the short fiction anthology edited by Arja Salafranca, which was published a few years back and received much critical acclaim. The Edge of Things contains 24 short stories by Jayne Bauling, Arja Salafranca, Liesl Jobson, Gillian Schutte, Karina Magdalena Szczurek, Jenna Mervis, Jennifer Lean, Fred de Vries, Margie Orford, Aryan Kaganof, Bernard Levinson, Hamilton Wende, Pravasan Pillay, Beatrice Lakwana, Hans Pienaar, Rosemund Handler, Tiah Beautement, Angelina N Sithebe, Jeanne Hromnik, David wa Maahlamela, Perd Booysen, Gail Dendy, Silke Heiss and Dan Wylie. 

The cost is R150 per copy, including postage - South Africa only. 

Email dyehardpress@iafrica.com to order.

They are coming! They are coming!

Red pearl

Blue night

All tomorrow's parties

Taken by Night

Illustrated book covers: The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Published by Pan Books, London, 1976.

You cannot see

Oh father, tell me, are you weeping?

All the things that you are

Fade away and radiate

Hand-drawn poster by Daniel Abdal-hayy Moore, circa 1968

Poster by Daniel Abdal-Moore for The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company

A hand-drawn poster by Daniel Abdal-hayy Moore for an event at The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company in San Francisco, circa 1968.

Daniel Abdal-hayy Moore and Allen Ginsberg, circa 1995

Daniel Abdal-hayy Moore and Allen Ginsberg, with Whitman in the background, circa 1995.

Daniel Abdal-hayy Moore 1940-2016

I was shocked on Thursday to read of the passing of US poet Daniel Abdal-hayy Moore just a few days previously. Sometime around 2003-2006 we enjoyed a regular correspondence. I had read his second book, Burnt Heart, while in England in 2001 - on the outward and return journey from London to Worcester - and then when back in South Africa I bought his (then recent) collection, The Blind Beekeeper. I found his email address on the internet and contacted him. He sent me a photocopy of his first book, Dawn Visions, published back in 1964, and photocopies of posters and photos relating to his ritual theatre project from the mid-60s, The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company. He wrote about friends such as Philip Lamantia, Ira Cohen and Angus MacLise. He sent me some poems, which I published in my literary journal Green Dragon. I also published a poem of his in an issue of Carapace that I guest-edited. I was amazed at how prolific he was. He told me he often got up in the middle of the night to write. He didn't write individual poems, but rather whole books of interrelated poems. In the last 10 years of his life he published about 30 books of poetry through his imprint The Ecstatic Exchange.

Why we lost contact with each other, I don't know. Even though we were friends on Facebook we did not really connect. Probably he was so busy with his life and projects and I was so busy with mine. I must admit that I also much preferred his earlier, pre-Sufi poetry, though perhaps if I reread his more recent work now I might change my mind.

The sad fact is that another great voice of tremendous poetic energy has gone.

The  photograph shows Daniel Abdal-hayy Moore performing his poetry at the Berkeley Folk Festival in 1965. Photographer unknown. 

Rising to the bait

Gary Cummiskey, Paris 2016

Collage by Bruno Sourdin

A collage by Bruno Sourdin, presented to me as a gift at Café de l'Arbalète, Paris.

Bruno Sourdin, Paris 2016

At Café de l'Arbalète, Paris. Photo: Hugo Sourdin.

Gary Cummiskey and Bruno Sourdin, Paris, 2016

At Café de l'Arbalète, Paris, 2016. Photo: Hugo Sourdin

At 42 Rue Fontaine, Paris

Who are you?

Dance, sister, dance

Now published: Don't Stop Until Incinerated by Gary Cummiskey

Gary Cummiskey's Don't Stop Until Incinerated is a short collection of poems that inhabit a desolate, disquieting place, a place in which the fabric of reality is threadbare. Cummiskey has mastered the art of minimalist unease, yet there are also moments of dark humour in these 26 starkly elegant poems, characterised by his iconoclastic surrealism. Published by Tearoom Books, you can read it online here or download it as a PDF here.

Coming soon from Tearoom Books: Don't Stop Until Incinerated by Gary Cummiskey

Don't Stop Until Incinerated, a new e-chapbook of poems by Gary Cummiskey, due out from Tearoom Books, Stockholm. 

From the other side

I put a spell on you

Fearful diety