In the Stars

Review of Gail Dendy's Closer Than That

It’s disconcerting to realise that although this SA poet has published seven collections over the past 20 years, only three have been published locally.

The others were all picked up by publishers in the UK and the US. I think we’re the poorer for it.

Here is a poet who seems to not take herself that seriously, but who takes her craft very seriously indeed.

The poems read with the ease of carefully honed work and a sly sense of fun in many of them ensures that my smile is never far away.

Gail Dendy is master of synaesthesia and mistress of poems that tip the reader deliciously off balance with their startling, almost tangible, plays with images.

– Moira Richards

(Published in Cape Times, May 18 2012)

Birdy, Birdy

Whatnot: a talk with Philip Whalen: interviewed by David Meltzer

Whatnot: a talk with Philip Whalen, interviewed by David Meltzer, published by  Beat Scene Press. Visit www.beatscene.net for order details.

Machine gun, by Jean-Christophe Belleveaux

Machine gun, by Jean-Christophe Belleveaux, published by Editions Potentille, 2009

Loop 1, from Tearoom Books

Loop is a new writing zine published by the micro press Tearoom Books. It will be published predominantly as free e-chapbooks. The first issue comprises a selection of poetry. The poets include: Cathy Bryant, Barend Buitekamer, Gary Cummiskey, William Huyzers, Eva Jackson, Simon Jackson, Grace Kim, Anton Krueger, Joan McNerney, Nick Monks, Nashen Moodley, Kobus Moolman, Dashen Naicker, Seth Trent, and V.W. Williams.

To view, click here

The Magician by Georges Simenon

This English translation was published in 1956 by Berkley Books, USA. 

So Who Owns Death TV? by William Burroughs, Claude Pelieu and Carl Weissner

So Who Own Death TV? by William Burroughs, Claude Pelieu and Carl Weissner. Collages by Jean-Jacques Lebel and Liam O'Gallagher. Published in 1967 by Beach Books, Texts and Documents 

New publication from Dye Hard Press: There Are Two Birds At My Window by Allan Kolski Horwitz

There Are Two Birds At My Window is the latest collection by South African poet Allan Kolski Horwitz.

The poems in this new collection use many elements, touching equally on the “fire and flare of invention” as well as on “the springs of joy and convulsion”. Post-apartheid, neo-liberal South Africa subjects us to enormous pressures; the new society is gasping for air, and the way these contradictions play out in individual lives is uneven and often unexpected. This book bears poetic testimony to the maelstrom – the philosophic mixing with the symbolic, the lyrical with the agitational – being the fruits of a “situated and sensitive” consciousness.

Allan Kolski Horwitz grew up in Cape Town. Between 1974 and 1985 he lived in the Middle East, Europe and North America, returning to South Africa in 1986. Since then he has been based in Johannesburg. He is a member of the Botsotso Jesters poetry performance group and Botsotso Publishing.

Previous titles include his poetry collections We Jive Like This and Dirty Washing (with the Botsotso Jesters) and Saving Water, as well his short fiction collections Un/Common Ground and Out of The Wreckage.

Totals 156 pages, with illustrations by James de Villiers.

ISBN: 978-0-9870178-5-7

Will soon be available in bookstores countrywide at an estimated retail price of R130. If ordered directly from the publisher, the price is R100, including postage and packaging.

Le Souffle de Cocteau: a collage by Bruno Sourdin

Mail art: envelope from Bruno Sourdin

Give me a coloured pumpkin

New title from BlekSem, in collaboration with Botsotso Publishing and Dye Hard Press: donga

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 is published by BlekSem, in collaboration with Botsotso Publishing and Dye Hard Press.

320 pages.

ISBN: 978-0-620-52779-8

For more information and direct orders, contact Alan Finlay at bleksembook@gmail.com. donga will soon retail at bookstores.

Comrade Babble: a play by Allan Kolski Horwitz

Allan Kolski Horwitz's play Comrade Babble looks at the life and times of Brett Kebble, the controversial mining magnate who perpetrated the biggest corporate fraud in South African history and then was killed in 2005 in an 'assisted suicide'.

Comrade Babble stars David James and Lebohang Motaung, and will be performed at The Market Laboratory in Newtown, Johannesburg, from May 4 to May 13. Tickets: R70, students and block bookings R40. Telephone 011 832 1641 or 082 512 8188 for more information.

Allan Kolski Horwitz's new collection of poems, There Are Two Birds At My Window, and  new collection of short fiction, Meditations of a Non-White White, are to be published by Dye Hard Press shortly.

Where the dreamers go to dream

Head on Fire: Rants/Notes/Poems 2001-2011 by Lesego Rampolokeng

 ISBN: 978-0-9870282-0-4. 

Published by Deep South, Grahamstown,2012.

For order details, email r.berold@gmail.com