Invite to the launch of Arja Salafranca's Beyond Touch

Forthcoming from Modjaji Books and Dye Hard Press: Beyond Touch by Arja Salafranca

Arja Salafranca's third poetry collection, Beyond Touch, will be published by end of May 2015.

How: a Dye Hard Interview with Joan Metelerkamp

Joan Metelerkamp reading in Grahamstown, July 2014

Joan Metelerkamp is the author of several books of poems, including Stone No More, Requiem, carrying the fire and Burnt Offering. Her poems have been widely published in local and international anthologies, and she has taken part in readings and literary festivals in South Africa, Europe and America. She edited the South African poetry journal New Coin for some years and has also written poetry reviews and essays. She lives on a farm near Knysna. 

Joan’s eighth collection of poetry, Now the World Takes These Breaths, was  published by Modjaji Books in 2014. She was interviewed by Alan Finlay...Read more

Sinclair Beiles: Poet of Many Parts and Places

Dye Hard Press has re-issued Who Was Sinclair Beiles? in a revised and expanded edition. I posted an item about the first edition when it was published five years ago. It’s hard to believe so much time has passed. As I wrote then, Beiles was best known for his association with the Beats. He collaborated on Minutes to Go with William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Gregory Corso, and helped to shepherd Burroughs’ manuscript of Naked Lunch into print at the Paris-based Olympia Press, where he worked as an editor. “Best known” is a questionable term, though. If he was known at all, it was only among a certain segment of avant-garde expatriate writers and artists living in Tangier, Paris, London, Rotterdam, Athens, and other far-flung places, where he spent many years scraping by in various capacities....Read more

Forthcoming title from Modjaji Books and Dye Hard Press: Beyond Touch, poems by Arja Salafranca

Beyond Touch is Arja Salafranca's third poetry collection and is scheduled to be published by Modjaji Books and Dye Hard Press in April 2015.

C'est la vie

Cummiskey Avenue

New Coin December 2014, edited by Gary Cummiskey

Published by the ISEA, Rhodes University, Grahamstown. With over 200 pages, this bumper edition contains poems by Alan Finlay, Moira Lovell, Arja Salafranca, Mxolisi Nyezwa, Abigail George, Rethabile Masilo, Khulile Nxumalo, Bernard Levinson, Kobus Moolman, Angifi Dladla, Genna Gardini, Medzani Musandiwa, Nedine Moonsamy, Kyle Allan, Kelwyn Sole, David wa Maahlamela, Natalia Molebatsi, Dashen Naicker, Nazlee Arbee, Joop Bersee, Diana Bloem, Dawn Garisch, Sindiswa Busuku-Mathese, Raphael d' Abdon, Gerard Rudolf, Mick Raubenheimer, Saaleha Indrees Bamjee, Unathi Slasha, Vonani Bila, Lesego Rampolokeng, Gail Dendy, Jim Pascual Agustin, Jeannie Wallace McKeown, Brett Beiles, Hans Pienaar, Colleen Higgs, Mphutlane wa Bofelo, Erica Glynn Schofield, Robert Berold, Lionel Murcott, Marike Beyers, Denis Hirson, Lee-Mari Gower, Elme Vivier, John Simon, Justin Joseph, Leslie Howard, Damain Garside, Haidee Kruger, Julian de Wette, Linda Ndlovu, Tim van Niekerk, Tony Ullyat, Mbongeni Khumalo and Allan Kokski Horwitz.

The issue also contains a symposium on the state of SA poetry, with contributions from Mxolisi Nyezwa, Kobus Moolman, Kelwyn Sole, Dashen Naicker, Raphael d'Abdon, Colleen Higgs, Denis Hirson, Haidee Kruger, Lesego Rampolokeng and Allan Kolski Horwitz.

There are book reviews by Kelwyn Sole and Tlhalo Sam Raditlhalo, and a tribute to Mafika Gwala by Robert Berold.

New from Dye Hard Press: Who was Sinclair Beiles?, revised and expanded edition

Available from Dye Hard Press at R150 per copy, including postage (South Africa only). Email dyehardpress@iafrica.com.  For overseas orders, price will vary according to increased postal rates - please enquire with publisher.

Lonely boys

Two poems and a collage by Gary Cummiskey, on Hash n Pumpkins

Read two poems from Sky Dreaming published on Hash n Pumpkins.

A review of Gary Cummiskey's Sky Dreaming, by Aleathia Drehmer

It isn’t often that I am taken by surprise with a chap in the small press…especially one that I didn’t seek out myself. Subhankar Das, editor of Graffiti Kolkata, recently sent me Gary Cummiskey’s Sky Dreaming. I had never heard of Gary prior to this and I set to reading it [in] short bursts rather than put it on the pile to read which is ever growing...Read more here.

Due out January 2015: Revised and expanded edition of Who was Sinclair Beiles?

All in a day's dreaming

Within, without

Which way to Paradise?