A book I am thrilled to be bringing out in April is The Everyday Wife by Phillippa Yaa de Villiers. I met her while working at the Centre for the Book. We both participated in the British Council sponsored Crossing Borders programme in 2005/6. At the final workshop we got to read our writing, and Phillippa read a sonnet about her son that brought me to tears. Since that first meeting, we worked together on her first collection, Taller than Buildings, for which she received a Community Publishing grant, have seen each other at various Cape Town book fairs and here on Book SA, and now we have this new relationship. It’s an honour to publish her new collection. Phillippa has an extraordinary energy and facility with words and images.
Actually bringing the book out is a midwifing process, and we are (as I speak) still attempting to make the book a bit shorter (budget constraints) except that the poems Phillippa is willing to “kill” (her words) are the ones I love. But we have the cover, we have the wonderful Megadigital waiting in the wings to print, we have the London Book Fair, we have Book SA, we have all Phillippa’s fans. We have the first draft of the layout done by Jacqui Stecher who also did the cover design. We are in poetry book labour ward. Now we want to hold the baby in our arms.
Phillippa was lucky enough to have Margaret Busby write a foreword, for The Everyday Wife, so to tantalise you, here it is…
What treats are served up in this new book of poems by Phillippa Yaa de Villiers!
To read just the first line of the first poem is to be skeined into a tantalizing world where nothing is predictable. Like the best of poets, she makes language do her bidding, wresting new sense from familiar images and situations, surprising us and ambushing our expectation. In the title poem can be seen the range and subtlety that characterises her work – the clear-eyed honesty, the perceptiveness, the playfulness, the attention to nuance. The Everyday Wife sums up the boundaries and expanses of a relationship, the possibility of menace, even, in the midst of love.
In one way or another, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers illuminates relationships of many kinds and many intensities – between lovers, children and parents, the politics of emotion shared and remembered and confronted, sustained across the distance of place or memory. Sometimes, as in ‘The Organ of Love’ – which manages that crucial combination of passion and humour – she makes meaning hold on to the last word of the poem like the last drop of a delicious drink.
In poem after poem are revealed different facets of her shapeshifting talent. The raw and numbing truths told in ‘Hell in a Handbag’ contrast starkly with the theatricality of a supermarket encounter in ‘The Middle Promise’, which transforms into a reminder that ‘the cost of things is not the same as the value of things’.
The historical and everyday realities of South Africa permeate even her observations about the weather as in ‘Home drenched’ and in ‘Sixty-nine bullets’ (for the Sharpeville 69) the tragedy is given poignant new impact.
Her blending of the literal and the metaphysical makes it possible to take so much from a single image: one girl sits tidily beside a giant cactus, the giant sun just another father: distant and a little too warm.
The alarming familiar that she summons up so matter-of-factly, and so well, in ‘The guest’ epitomizes that edginess of imagination, and the sanity of the conclusion that one can never improve on freedom.
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers has claimed a freedom to speak the unspoken, however it emerges. ‘A safe house is a place of fear’ – a title thought-provoking in itself – captures the potency of silence, the dangerous power of wordlessless, where ‘silence is the skin of fear’.‘Words become me,’ she begins by saying, in ‘Lasso’… ‘withoutthem I am shorn’. Phillippa Yaa de Villiers is a poet for whom there is no danger of separation from expression. She definitely has a way with words, and words have their way with her.
Modjaji Books has several new titles coming out in April and May. If you would like to pre-order any of these titles at a special discount price, here’s your chance. It’s also a way of supporting an indie publisher.
The titles are:
Arja Salafranca’s collection of short stories The Thin Line. Recommended Retail Price in stores – R145. Modjaji Pre-Order price including postage where relevant: R125
Meg Vandemerwe’s collection of short stories This Place Called Home Recommended Retail Price in stores – R145. Modjaji Pre-Order price including postage where relevant: R125
Jane Katjavivi’s memoir, Undisciplined Heart Recommended Retail Price in stores – R170 Modjaji Pre-Order price including postage where relevant: R150
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers new collection of poems, The Everyday Wife Recommended Retail Price in stores – R130 Modjaji Pre-Order price including postage where relevant: R110
Modjaji’s Book of Bed Short Stories Recommended Retail Price in stores – R150 Modjaji Pre-Order price including postage where relevant: R130
Special Offer if you order all 6 of the titles you pay R690 (an extra R50 off, the already reduced price)
Check out all Modjaji Books titles here ….
Go on, you know you want them and you will be supporting independent publishing in a big way!
For more information about any of the titles click on the links above.
Meg Vandermerwe, a promising new voice on the South African literary scene is about to make her debut with a collection of short stories called “THIS PLACE I CALL HOME”. Vandermerwe teaches Creative Writing at UWC with Antjie Krog. She did her MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. The collection has already been praised by Ali Smith, which for a young writer is a big deal:
This slim collection of stories packs a punch well above its weight. Humane, compassionate and uncompromising, glinting with spirit and beauty, and written with a rare combination of discipline and vivacity, it marks the debut of a gifted writer.
Here is a short description of the stories:
Ten stories. Ten voices. Ten diverse perspectives of what home has meant to South Africans during our country’s challenging history. In this thought-provoking collection we are drawn into the lives of others. From an old widower who seems content on the outside but feels that his world is unravelling in the new South Africa, to an immigrant who has fled racial persecution in 1930s Europe and now finds himself on a barren sheep farm in the Karoo, to a Polokwane teacher confronted with the moral dilemma of xenophobic sentiments in her township, This Place I Call Home, leaves the reader deeply aware of local realities. Even though these powerful stories are often characterised by hardship and personal loss, one cannot help but emerge inspired by the tenacity of the human spirit and the resilience of South Africa’s people.
As soon as the cover is ready, I will post it here…
Marcia Raymond invited me to give a talk on “getting published” at the Cape Town City Library on Saturday afternoon, February 13th, as part of the monthly Poetry Circle, one of activities of the Friends of the CTC Library. About 60 people were there, full of different questions and expectations. The talk was partly based on the blog I wrote last year about publishing poetry. But from a raised hand exercise it was clear that most of the audience were interested in other publishing issues, and not just poetry. How can I improve my writing? Make it publishable? I think writers need honest, clear, helpful feedback as a key step in improving their writing and getting published. But how do you get honest, detailed feedback? Well unless you are extremely lucky you will have to pay for it. Or you can belong to a group of writers who give each other feedback. If you aren’t part of a writers’ group, you can start one. The Centre for the Book has a pamphlet written by Makhosazana Xaba about starting a writers’ group.
Maire Fisher is the person who set up Live Writing , a fabulous service for writers, from which you can source feedback, reader’s reports, mentoring, editing, proofreading, and ghostwriting. Here’s a brief description from the Live Writing website of what’s on offer:
When you send your written work to Live Writing we establish exactly what it is that you need and then ensure as close as possible a match between editor and writer. No matter what sort of writing – a novel, poetry, creative non-fiction, short stories, a children’s book – Live Writing will give you honest, constructive feedback in a comprehensive report. The Live Writing team is highly competent and skilled, with years of writing and editing experience. We number among our ranks published authors, prize-winning poets, playwrights, journalists, copy writers, graduates from creative writing programmes and creative writing tutors.
You could also contact the Professional Editors’ Group for editing services. You need to get your manuscript into as polished a state as possible before submitting it to a publisher. I say this advisedly, having seen many manuscripts that look suspiciously like an early draft, if not a first draft.
How do I find out who the publishers are that might accept my manuscript? You have to be prepared to do some research. You can either go to a bookstore and browse amongst the books that are similar to your manuscript or you can check out the PASA website and then proceed to the individual publishers’ websites. The useful aspect of this research is that you will find out what each publisher’s specific submission guidelines are. PASA also puts out a PASA Directory with the contact details and brief description of what each member publisher’s focus is. You can also find the Small Publishers’ Catalogue (Africa) 2010 which has contact details of small presses including literary magazines, by contacting Blue Weaver or from a bookstore. The Small Publishers’ Catalogue will be out in early April 2010. Basil Van Rooyen’s book, Get your book published in 30 (relatively) easy steps : a hands-on-guide for South African authors (Penguin, 2005) is a useful if slightly discouraging book for self-publishers and writers. It also focuses much more on non-fiction than on fiction, poetry, memoir, drama, short stories, essays, and so on. (Clue: Non-fiction is a much more lucrative side of publishing than the aforementioned.)
The PASA website also has a lot of useful information about copyright, plagiarism, vacancies in the industry and so on.
What are literary magazines all about? You need to read at least one or two before submitting poems or short stories. In order to get a collection published you need to have had at least 10 poems and at least 5 or more published. Even then it is very difficult to get either published. Literary magazines need to have subscribers to keep them going. Not just those who submit writing. Here’s the tough question – do you subscribe to any literary magazines? If not, why not? If you think they are too expensive, can you answer these questions. How much is a subscription? Could you share a subscription with friends or other writers? Does your library subscribe to any of them? If not, why not? Which ones are most likely to be suitable to your type of writing?
How do I find out about launches and other bookish events? Join the loyalty clubs that bookstores have, or join their Facebook pages or groups. They will send you invitations to events. Check out Book SA and LitNet regularly. Attend readings and book launches when you can. Go to cultural events like Woordfees, Wordfest at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, the Cape Town International Book Fair, the Jozi Book Fair, the Franschoek Literary Festival, the KKNK, the Time of the Writer, Poetry Africa, Badilisha.
Especially for Cape Town writers: You can go to Off the Wall events in Observatory, at Kalk Bay Books and at Espresso Dot Kom in Kommetjie. To get onto the mailing list you should subscribe to this group, run selflessly by Hugh Hodge. You must get onto the mailing lists of The Book Lounge, Kalk Bay Books, Wordsworths and Exclusive Books.
What about self-publishing? If you want to self publish you need to get hold of a copy of A rough guide to small-scale and self-publishing published by the Centre for the Book. I wrote it when I worked at the Centre for the Book when a big part of my job was to give advice to people wanting to self-publish. Even if you don’t want to self-publish, the book offers a useful insight into publishing and how it works.
It isn’t cheap or easy to self-publish, but it can be rewarding and frustrating in equal measure. There are lots of little and big pot-holes to fall into in publishing. Do you homework before you embark on the process. Here are some good contacts: Megadigital is a Cape Town based printer that is worth it’s weight in gold to the small-scale publisher or self-publisher. Mousehand/Readhill is a company that can help you do quality self-publishing for a reasonable price. Some other good companies to know about are New Voices and Publisher.co.za. Aernout Zevenbergen has an excellent blog post where he describes both the joys and pains of self-publishing.
What about e-books and e-publishing – as a writer, what do I need to know? The short most effective answer is, go to Electric Book Works website, sign up to everything they have going and you will get the answers you are looking for. Follow Electric Book Works EBW and Arthur Attwell (the genius behind EBW) on Twitter and you will learn more than you could ever expect to learn about e-books and e-publishing.
Right, if you have any other questions – there are lots, I will endeavour (as will my fellow bloggers) to answer the questions or at least point you in the right direction.
Arja Salafranca’s collection of stories, The Thin Line is due out in April, 2010, just in time for the London Book Fair. Arja’s has received many accolades and prizes for her poetry and short fiction since the mid 90’s. She is currently the editor of the Sunday Independent’s Lifestyle section.
This is what Hamilton Wende has to say about the collection:
These are wonderful stories. They chart a new direction in South African fiction, where each line, each page – each story unfolds subtly, reaching deeper and more intimately into the tender spaces that exist in all our lives between love and doubt. Reading them kept me up late at night, wanting to know more about the characters’ lives. I was enthralled by the clarity and compassion of her insights; and moved by her obvious love for our fragile country and the fierce power of our unrelinquished hopes.
Here is the blurb:
‘Words grow up and reverberate … they come back’
The short stories in The Thin Line show what happens when a writer casts a thin line into a pool of character and situation. Characters assume position, while readers see the lines they have drawn around the selves in the stories. As readers we are lucky – we can then step over these lines and watch from inside the story. We see characters draw battle lines and retreat behind them, mark out their territory with boundary lines and dare others to cross them. We notice as story lines escape from one story to resurface in others, sometimes the merest thread, sometimes a bolder and more definite intrusion. And sometimes we watch story lines loop back on themselves to form circles, or sharply curved ellipses. Some stories are cross-hatched with many lines – webbed and netted – and we watch the people inside these struggle to escape from situations, often of their own making – and often because they didn’t draw the line when they should have. Lines create boxes and keep people lonely and separate from each other. And sometimes, lines fade, are erased, or can be crossed, with happy and satisfying effect.
Whatever may happen inside these stories the reader is hooked from the first one, reeled in on that thin line. And they don’t leave you alone. You get up to make some toast, or check the mail and as you’re walking back to your desk, you’re thinking about the woman artist, or Corinna trapped in her huge teenage body, or Cleo in love with a married man after all these years, or poor skinny Mark, seeing his love teeter away from him.
“Only my love of the straight line keeps me going,” Carmen Herrera (Artist)
Jane Katjavivi suggested I should sign up with African Books Collective, who would then distribute Modjaji titles internationally. I signed the contract in December and posted it off. Got the signed copy back from Mary Jay, and asked Natascha (my book designer) to send off PDF files to Justin Cox in the USA. Which has lead to the books being posted on the ABC website and buyable by international customers. I believe that ABC use Lightning Source and sell books on a POD basis. I didn’t have to ship stock, just the PDFs, so in its own small way Modjaji has become part of the globalised world.
The problem in the past was if someone from abroad wanted to buy a Modjaji title, the bank charges were so huge that I would have deducted, I may as well have sent them the book for free and paid for the postage myself. Now to see how to market the books internationally. If anyone has ideas or suggestions do let me know.
By the way, the next book to come out of the Modjaji stables is a book, by Jane Katjavivi, it is a memoir called Undisciplined Heart. I asked Margie Orford to do me and Jane a huge favour, which she agreed to do. Over this past weekend amidst matric dances and full houses and all the other things Margie manages to do, she read Jane’s memoir and wrote this shout, which serves well as a blurb too:
Jane Katjavivi’s UNDISCIPLINED HEART weaves the story of Namibia’s liberation struggle, the political journey of a collective heart, with a love story – a journey of a loving heart. This is the story of a young Englishwoman who fell in love with a Namibian exile and who moved from a quiet American town to Namibia, a remote and beautiful country that few people have the privilege to know. At sea at first in the strange new place, Jane builds up a network of intimate friendships with a group of women. They meet weekly to talk about their work, their children, their lives until one of their group dies at 47 of heart failure. A terrible blow to all of them, but Jane’s moving story – of love, moral engagement and a desire to build both family and nation is woven around her own illness – an affliction of the heart that is diagnosed as an ‘ undisciplined heart.’ It is a disease that nearly kills her. It was Frederick Jameson who said once that ‘History is what hurts.’ But Jane Katjavivi’s frank and intimate memoir of love and politics, of survival and finding way to make a home, shows that history is also what heals when it is filtered through a loving heart and an open mind.
Here is Jane Katjavivi’s bio:
Jane Katjavivi has worked in publishing and book development since the early 1980’s. She is an English born, naturalised Namibian. She set up her own publishing company New Namibia Books and later opened a bookshop which specialised in books from and about Africa, and in particular Namibia. She was founding chairperson of the Association of Namibian Publishers and the Namibian Book Development Council, a founder member of the African Publishers’ Network (APNET) and a member of the Management Council of African Books Collective. She writes short stories and is working on a novel. Her memoir, Undisciplined Heart was written while she was in Europe with her husband who was Namibian ambassador to Brussels and Berlin.
March 2010 will see the Small Publishers’ Catalogue available to buy. Here’s a preview of the cover, done by Jesse Breytenbach (crocheted image) and lettering by Hannah Morris. I love the cover and have loved working on this project with the help of Bontle Senne, Natascha Mostert and Fouad Asfour of Khanya College. We decided to put together a catalogue at the Small Publishers’ meeting we had in Jozi last August.
The Catalogue has listings from about 40 African small publishers, there are articles by Gary Cummiskey, Arthur Attwell and Aernout Zevenbergen as well as some useful resources. The Catalogue will be useful to a number of different audiences including Africana librarians, booksellers, writers, book development agencies, the media and readers who are interested in the behind the scenes aspects of the world of books and publishing.
The Catalogue should be in bookstores by the end of March 2010 and copies will be available at this year’s London Book Fair. Publishers who may not be able to get to the LBF will still be on the international publishing map.
Die wonder van brood is dat dit met eenvoudige bestandele soos meel, water en sout gemaak word en tog kan die wonderlikste, geurigste gebak uit hierdie eenvoud na vore kom.
Dít is beslis deel van Hester van der Walt se fassinasie met brood. Hierdie fassinasie het gelei tot die publikasie van ‘n boek, getiteld Hester se brood, wat broodresepte en vertellinge van Van der Walt se bakkery op McGregor bevat.
Van der Walt het gisteraand by die bekendstelling van die boek by die Book Lounge in Kaapstad gesê sy gebruik baie min suurdeeg vir haar brode. Dit is ook nie die tradisionele soetsuurdeeg nie, maar haar eie skepping. “’n Mens gebruik die minimum,” het sy gesê. “Dit is byna ‘n leuse vir my.” Sy was verbaas oor die resultate wat sy uit hierdie minimum kon kry.
Broodbak is ook ‘n metafoor vir die lewe, het Pieter Veldsman, bekroonde sjef en skrywer, by die bekendstelling gesê. “Dit gaan nie om den brode nie, maar om die brood van die lewe.” As ‘n mens tussen die lyne van Van der Walt se boek lees, gaan dit volgens hom oor “vriendskap, vennootskap en omgee”. Hy het die boek met potlood en liniaal gelees en het in ‘n “beswyming van bewondering” gegaan oor bekoorlike beskrywings soos: “druk kuiltjies in die deeg met jou vingerpunte”.
Van der Walt is nie ‘n opgeleide kok nie, maar het op besonderse brood verlief geraak nadat sy oorsee getoer het. Daarna het haar soeke na die perfekte ciabatta begin. “Ek het baie Italiaanse kookboeke gehad, maar daar was min broodresepte in, want in Italië is daar in elk geval ‘n bakkery om elke hoek en draai. Toe het ek self begin eksperimenteer.”
Aan die einde van haar beroep by die Mediese Navorsingsraad het sy en Lies Hoogendoorn, die illustreerder van Hester se brood, na McGregor verhuis. Aanvanklik het hulle ‘n koffiewinkel bedryf en dit is hier waar hulle vir Niel Jonker ontmoet het. Hy was besig om elders ‘n broodoond te bou en het aangebied om vir Van der Walt ook een te bou. Só is Van der Walt se broodoond, Hestia, gebore.
En Van der Walt het uiteindelik die volmaakte brood gebak. Daarvan kan die gaste, wat by die bekendstelling aan haar brood gesmul het, heelhartig getuig.
I’m really pleased to see reviews of the poetry collections, as there aren’t many publications that carry reviews of Poetry. So thanks for that Litnet. I look forward to seeing reviews of Oleander and Burnt Offering in due course.
Talking of which Joan Metelerkamp read from Burnt Offering at Wordsworths in Knysna last evening. Joan let me know today that the event was well attended, and Gillian Carter introduced Joan. I will see if I can get a copy of her talk and post it. I’m longing to hear Joan read from Burnt Offering. She did read at the Cape Town Book Fair last year, but only one poem.
Dit is vir Die Book Lounge en Modjadji Books ‘n groot plesier om jou uit te nooi na die Kaapstadse bekendstelling van Hester se Brood deur Hester van der Walt.
Hester van der Walt sal ‘n gesprek voer met Peter Veldsman, restauranteur van die befaamde Emily’s by die Kloktoring in die Kaapse Waterfront, bekende skrywer, en internasionaal bekroonde chef.
Kom geniet saam met ons ʼn stukkie van Hester se heerlike brood en ʼn glasie Leopard’s Leap wyn, geborg deur Leopard’s Leap.
Hester van der Walt sal gesels oor die boek en daaruit voorlees.
A book I am thrilled to be bringing out in April is The Everyday Wife by Phillippa Yaa de Villiers. I met her while working at the Centre for the Book. We both participated in the British Council sponsored Crossing Borders programme in 2005/6. At the final workshop we got to read our writing, and Phillippa read a sonnet about her son that brought me to tears. Since that first meeting, we worked together on her first collection, Taller than Buildings, for which she received a Community Publishing grant, have seen each other at various Cape Town book fairs and here on Book SA, and now we have this new relationship. It’s an honour to publish her new collection. Phillippa has an extraordinary energy and facility with words and images.
