Chatsworth Available At The Following Bookstores

DURBAN & PIETERMARITZBURG
*Exclusive Books, Pietermaritzburg.
*Exclusive Books at King Shaka International Airport
*Exclusive Books at Gateway Mall
* The Nelson Mandela Chatsworth Youth Centre

JO'BURG
*David Krut Bookstore
*Exclusive Books at OR Tambo International Airport

CAPE TOWN
*The Book Lounge

More bookstores will be added to this list in the coming weeks.

New Publication From Dye Hard Press: Chatsworth by Pravasan Pillay

Dye Hard Press is proud to announce the publication of Chatsworth by Pravasan Pillay.

Chatsworth is Pravasan Pillay's debut short fiction collection and consists of eleven stories set in the sprawling township of Chatsworth, Durban. The stories are populated mostly by working-class characters who all, in one way or the other, find themselves on the margins of their community. There is an elderly mother and her dependent obese daughter who must fend for themselves; an angst-filled twelve-year-old girl who secretly chain smokes late at night; a tearful man who is incapable of passing his driving test; an albino girl who attains a fragile popularity in high school; a young woman who – against her father's wishes – falls in love with an immigrant; a seemingly placid pensioner who hides a shockingly violent side; and a pair of girls who bond over a love letter and hair bleach, among others.

The stories present sensitive yet unsentimental portraits of these characters, in prose that is spare and unadorned. Pillay additionally displays a remarkable ear for dialogue, and faithfully captures much of the nuance of Durban-Indian English.

Chatsworth is a gentle and moving book about growing up, being different, but also about failing at adulthood.

140 pages.

ISBN: 978-0-9869982-5-6.

Pravasan Pillay is a South African writer. He has published two chapbooks of poetry, Glumlazi (2009) and 30 Poems (2015), as well as a collection of co-written comedic short stories, Shaggy (2013). He is also the editor of the micro-press Tearoom Books.

Chatsworth is available directly from the publisher for R160, including postage. For overseas orders, the cost is R220 including postage.

Email dyehardpress@iafrica.com to order.

Proof Copy Of Chatsworth

Pic courtesy of Dye Hard Press's Gary Cummiskey. 

Forthcoming From Dye Hard Press: Chatsworth by Pravasan Pillay

Adrian Manning: A Poetic Microcosm

"Adrian Manning is an English poet and micro-publisher. He has had a number of chapbooks published, including Wretched Songs For Out of Tune Musicians, Down At The Laundromat, Bring Down The Sun (with Henry Denander), These Days, Days Like This (with John Dorsey) and 13 Poems from the Edge of Extinction. His poems have been published around the world and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He is the founder of Concrete Meat Press, a micro-press that publishes poetry broadsides and chapbooks. He lives in Leicester, England."

Sinclair Beiles

Sinclair Beiles, le poète excentrique du Beat Hotel, by Bruno Sourdin.

Launch of Arja Salafranca's Beyond Touch

Photos from the launch of Arja Salafranca's Beyond Touch at Love Books, Melville.

Invite To The Launch Of Arja Salafranca's Beyond Touch

Sinclair Beiles: Poet Of Many Parts And Places

"Dyehard 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." Continue reading here.

How: A Dye Hard Interview With Joan Metelerkamp

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 the interview here.

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.

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.

Three Dye Hard Press Titles Nominated For SALA Literary Awards 2014

Gary Cummiskey's Off-ramp has been nominated for the Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award 2014, while Khulile Nxumalo's fhedzi and Kobus Moolman's Left Over have been nominated for the SALA Poetry Award 2014. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in Pretoria on November 7.

Forthcoming From Dye Hard Press

Focus on Dye Hard Press by the Centre for African Poetry

"This issue of African Poetry focuses on Gary Cummiskey’s Dye Hard Press, as part of a planned regular feature highlighting the work of book traders, agencies, educational institutions, publishers and bloggers with a notable commitment to African poetry."

Hand-made

Litmag editor on publishing poetry: an interview with Gary Cummiskey.

Gary Cummiskey and Arja Salafranca At The Launch of Off-ramp

Photo: Rene Bohnen

Gary Cummiskey Appointed New Coin Editor

Grahamstown, 13th November 2013: Well-known South African poet and publisher, Gary Cummiskey, is to become the editor of poetry magazine New Coin from 2014, taking over from this year’s guest editor, Vonani Bila. A widely published writer, Cummiskey is based in Johannesburg where he runs Dye Hard Press and a number of other poetry projects.

Cummiskey’s poetry and short stories have been featured extensively in literary journals both locally and overseas for the past 20 years.  He founded Dye Hard Press in 1994 specifically to give a platform to new voices, and has since published over thirty titles from local poets. He sees his New Coin editorship as a fresh opportunity to promote the kind of challenging, original work that keeps South African poetry alive and awake:

“A poetry that is restricted and does not offer the reader anything new adds to the view of poetry as something stuffy and dead that has no resonance with contemporary readers and makes publishers even less likely to take a chance on it.  A journal such as New Coin, which has always focused on writing that is willing to break out of the mould and take risks, is an essential vehicle to continue to promote and offer poetry as a form worthy of attention and admiration.”

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.  Cummiskey will work with an editorial board made up of the four poets who teach on the Rhodes MA in Creative Writing course: Mxolisi Nyezwa, Brian Walter, Joan Metelerkamp and Robert Berold – the last two of whom have edited New Coin in the past.

Berold comments: “Gary Cummiskey has a good grasp of the range of voices and sub-cultures that make up South African poetry in English.  His approach to publishing is the only way to keep poetry vital.  His appointment is good news for South African poetry.”

Subscribe now to get both the June and December 2013 issues of New Coin for R170. Email isea@ru.ac.za or call 046 603 8565.

New title from Dye Hard Press: fhedzi by Khulile Nxumalo

fhedzi is Khulile Nxumalo's second poetry collection.
94 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9869982-1-8

Khulile Nxumalo was born in Diepkloof, Soweto, in 1971. He finished school at Waterford Kamhlaba, Swaziland, and went to the University of Cape Town, University of Natal and Wits University. His first poetry collection, ten flapping elbows, mama, was published by Deep South in 2004. His work has appeared in several literary journals in South Africa, Canada, the UK and the US. Nxumalo has twice won the DALRO award for poetry.  He has two children.

Khulile Nxumalo is one of the few poets in South Africa using longer experimental forms. He has found a creative way of breaking up the English language and fusing it with other languages. He is also capable of intense lyrical expression. – Robert Berold

magma-burn. emotion-lava spilling out. of wounds. 
and thoughts of them expressed in ghostly words
of the divining spirit. and coming thru the smog.
and dust,blood-rained on strange children's games.
and ever The Voice, lonesome, wearied, spiralling inward...
with this one, sikhulile! – Lesego Rampolokeng

fhedzi will soon be available at bookstores countrywide, at an estimated retail price of R145. If ordered directly from the publisher, the price is R120, including postage. Contact dyehardpress@iafrica.com to order.

New from Dye Hard Press: Left Over by Kobus Moolman

ISBN: 978-0-9869982-2-5

The poems in Moolman’s latest collection tease the boundaries between fact and fiction, between memory and invention. The poems push into territories as yet unexplored in Moolman’s work: the obsessions and hallucinations of the body ‒ all permeated with a wry humour, the kind that laughs at its own terrible seriousness.

Kobus Moolman was born in 1964 in Pietermaritzburg. He has been awarded the Ingrid Jonker Prize, the PANSA award for best drama, the DALRO poetry prize and the South African Literary award for poetry. He teaches creative writing at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban.

His previous poetry collections include Light and After, Separating the Seas, Feet of the Sky and Time like Stone. His play Full Circle has also been published, as has Blind Voices, a collection of radio plays. He edited the anthology Tilling the Hard Soil: Poetry, Prose and Art by South African Writers with Disabilities.