Tearoom Books is pleased to announce a new series, Spaza, which will start next week. The spaza shop forms a crucial part of township life. Small and relatively easy to setup, they dot the township landscape and provide an essential service to the community.
Wikipedia defines a spaza shop as "an informal convenience shop business in South Africa, usually run from home. They also serve the purpose of supplementing household incomes of the owners, selling everyday small household items. These shops grew as a result of sprawling townships that made travel to formal shopping places more difficult or expensive."
The Free Dictionary entry:
spaza shop [ˈspɑːzə]
n
(Business / Commerce) South African slang a small informal shop in a township, often run from a private house
[from slang, dummy, camouflaged]
Spaza shops also function as neighbourhood meeting points and often help disseminate information.
In this new series we will use GoogleEarth to feature spaza shops from the township of Chatsworth.
New Tearoom Books Titles
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.
New Tearoom Books Titles
30 Poems by Pravasan Pillay collects a selection of poems written mostly between 2003-2006 and published in South African journals. The themes of the poems are old, new and broken love; sex; marriage; failure; vanity; and quitting smoking.
Tearoom Books Titles
Loop is Tearoom Books' writing zine. It will be published primarily as free e-chapbooks. Issue 2 comprises a selection of poetry. Click on the cover for more information.
Tearoom Books Titles
Glumlazi by Pravasan Pillay, was released in January 2009. Glumlazi, Pillay's debut, is a collection of short poems, concerning revenge, sex and the blues. The majority of poems run no-more than two lines. Available at R40 including postage. For order information, contact tearoombooks@gmail.com
OTHER
(Book) Shaggy: 14 Rather Amusing Rambles by Anton Krueger and Pravasan Pillay. Second Print Run. Prepare yourself for a cast of some of the most manipulative, ingratiating, disillusioned, egotistical, inauthentic, spiteful narcissists operating in contemporary South Africa. Within these pages you will encounter fourteen first-hand shaggy stories told by a rogues gallery of scheming misanthropes whose speeches are full of sound and fury, signifying very little. These hilarious blowhards will make you snigger, cringe and wish your cousin had rather given you Spud 5 for your birthday. Published by BK Publishing. Price: R135. To order a copy write to: andrea [at] bkpublishing [dot] co [dot] za