Gripscapes: Newly Selected Poems

Launched:   March   2021

R250 (incl. VAT)

To mail order Gripscapes email Echoing Green Press at ringer@echoinggreenpress.com.

• The title, Gripscapes, is chosen from an early poem with that name, in which the poet-speaker says: "I mostly know a truth / By a sense of something slipping me - / Fin-glint and cold-muscled / Gripscaped touch." This exemplifies the visionary immediacy and range of Morrissey's work.

• Gripscapes is arranged in three parts following the major periods of Morrissey's writing life, from 1979 to the time of his death in 2017.

• The multi-layered editorial work of John van Wyngaard in assessing and selecting from Morrissey's large body of manuscript material, and his editorial and critical contributions incorporated into this volume, distinguish this book.

• As editor van Wyngaard contributes a "Note on the Sources for this Book," in which he shows how the poet drew from and was often inspired by his personal and familial relationships; a "Foreword," in which he explains the place of this new selection in relation to the works published during the poet's lifetime; and as an Appendix, in a substantial essay "An Introduction to the Poetry of Norman Morrissey," he evaluates the poet's dedication to his art, the poets he drew on as creative mentors, the discipline devoted to his poetic practice, and Morrissey's significant place as a poet in South Africa and beyond.

• This new collection of 205 poems, unpublished before or obscurely published, from the life's work of Norman Morrissey, is a new landmark in South Africa's poetic landscape.

Critics have said about Morrissey's poetry:

• "He stands with the 'confessional' giants, like Anne Sexton and Robert Lowell." Bernard Levinson

• He is "one of our accepted poets-one of those writers whom it is clearly enjoyable and illuminating to read." Colin Gardner

• "What lies beyond personal and private therapy is the ability to communicate the shadows of one's life in a way that is readable and satisfying to whatever senses are that poetry appeals to." Nick Meihuizen

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Strandloop

Launched:  May 2016  

R290 (incl. VAT) at selected bookshops.
R240 (VAT not applicable) + postage and packaging for the softcover edition ordered directly from the publisher or author.
R500 (VAT not applicable) + postage and packaging for the collector’s limited edition ordered directly from the publisher or author.

To order Strandloop email Echoing Green Press at ringer@echoinggreenpress.com or the author at silkeheiss@gmail.com .

• This selection of 261 poems from the thousands of the life’s work of esteemed poet, Norman Morrissey, is a landmark in South Africa’s poetic history.

• Major new collections of fine South African poetry are rare—this book establishes Norman Morrissey as the pre-eminent living poet writing in English in South Africa today.

• The title Strandloop suggests an imagined walk by the poet along the shoreline of his poetic creation. As he beachcombs so he sees individual poems as if washed up out of the ocean of his experience. The poems that he sees as most “useful”, as he puts it, are the ones selected for this collection

• Strandloop contains a preface by the author, a complete bibliography of his previous publications, a brief biography, and an inspired portrait for the frontispiece by Silke Heiss, the poet’s wife.

• Famous South African artist, Norman Catherine, has generously made available an image of his work “Moonshine 1” 2010, so fitting for the cover of Strandloop .

• Nigel Bell, former editor of The English Academy Review, and editorial consultant for the preparation for publication of Strandloop, says: “Reading Norman Morrissey’s poems is at once a revelation and a delight. A revelation, in that as one reads the conviction grows ever stronger that one has in one’s hands the work of a major poet, with no equal among current South African writers, and few, if any, in the past. In fact, I’d go as far as to say, with little fear of contradiction, that Morrissey is a poet of international stature, who can take his place in the company of illustrious poets of any age.”

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Otherwise and Other Poems

Launched:  June 2014   R150 (incl. VAT)

• Important new collections of South African poetry are rare—this book will win wider recognition for Brian Walter’s unpretentious yet deep poetic vision.

• Though well known and highly regarded in his native Eastern Cape, Brian Walter has won national acclaim too, with the Thomas Pringle Award for poetry in 1999, the Ingrid Jonker Prize in 2000, and the Award for Outstanding Literature by the National Department of Arts and Culture in 2005.

• Otherwise and Other Poems brings together 37 new poems from Walter’s recent work, including the long, major poem “Nontlokoma,” which is an indigenous, visionary reinterpretation of the famous Greek myth of the love between Psyche and Eros

• Fellow Eastern Cape poet Norman Morrissey says of Otherwise and Other Poems “His humanist voice speaks into the everlasting muddling-through that weaves our heritage of contemporary, living verse. His unassuming craft helps us all make some sort of sense of lives that can have no final solution to their deepest challenges.”

• Otherwise and Other Poems makes readers aware of how our South African experience draws on its regional origins, reforming and invigorating our national identity.

• You may purchase a signed copy of Otherwise and Other Poems directly from the author. For information regarding mail orders contact Brian Walter at +27 83 273 9479 or brian@seaberg.co.za

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Where the Wind Wills: New Poems

Launched:  October 2011  R140 (incl. VAT)

• Where the Wind Wills brings together forty new poems by Geoffrey Haresnape, one of South Africa’s long established poets still producing fresh work. Some have been published in journals, others presented at live poetry readings in Cape Town, but none have appeared in his previous books.

• This is Haresnape’s fifth collection of poetry. Since his first book appeared in 1976 he has published steadily in literary magazines and anthologies both nationally and overseas.

• Haresnape entered a poem (“my mentor is dressing me”) from Where the Wind Wills in the European Literary Awards competition administered in South Africa by the Jacana Literary Foundation, and was a prize winner. The poem will appear in the Poetry Africa anthology (published by Jacana) to be launched at the Poetry Africa Festival in Durban in October 2011.

• Opinions on his four previous collections include the following:

• “His insights and torments . . . are viewed through the finely ground lens of a crystal clear intellect”—Mark Swift on Drive of the Tide, Maskew Miller (1976).

• “His romanticism is never without a critical awareness”—Rustum Kozain on New-Born Images, Justified Press (Ashanti Publishing) (1991).

• “His language is characterized by honesty combined with wit”—Peter Horn on Mulberries in Autumn, Snailpress (1996).

• “I admire the warm humanity . . . and an amazing ability with various verse forms”—Don Maclennan on The Living and the Dead: Selected and New Poems, Snailpress & Quartz Press (2005).

• Of Haresnape’s work in general, A History of South African Literature (C. Heywood, Cambridge University Press [2004]), has this to say: “[he] emerged near the centre of the revolution in poetic sensibility that followed the Sharpeville massacre . . . [he] made a courageous stand by both illustrating and exposing the chains imprisoning the mind as well as real people.”

• Haresnape has been a pioneering teacher of South African literature and of creative writing at the University of Cape Town where he is today an Emeritus Professor.

• For ten years Haresnape edited the leading South African literary magazine, Contrast (which later evolved into New Contrast, currently South Africa’s foremost).

• In Drive of the Tide he wrote: “as a would-be truth teller in our myth-ridden society, a poet must treat harsh themes.” The current poems continue to emphasize the personal life in the context of a radically altered society with its own difficulties. Several speak in his own voice, others in a dramatized mode, and yet others satirically through the utterances of two personae, Erasmus Eyeball and Dr Severance Package.

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Luck’s Favours: Two South African Second World War Memoirs

Launched:  October 2010  R185 (incl. VAT)

• Cyril Crompton’s For the Adventure of It and Peter Johnson’s On the Run in Wartime Italy will for years to come stand out as enthralling stories in the great book where South Africa’s literature and history are written.

• Cyril survived the Battle of Sidi Rezegh, ranked one of the bravest and most costly in lives in South Africa’s history.  Sidi Rezegh has its 69th anniversary 21-23 November 2010.  Cyril’s story goes from his call up, to Sidi Rezegh, a torpedo attack after his capture, and a death march from eastern Germany (now Poland) away from the advancing Russian Army.  It is a gripping story that moves with pace.

• Peter was captured at the fall of Tobruk, and later escaped in Italy when it was under German occupation, was on the run, at one time with Yugoslavian partisans, and received protection from brave Italian women and men.  He came through many spectacular adventures.  His memoir is rich in detail and drama.

• Cyril (94) and Peter (89) are men of fine character, great courage and modest personality.  Their spellbinding stories as South African private soldiers and prisoners of war (POWs) in the Second World War will absorb readers of all ages.

• These memoirs capture two precious life stories from South Africa’s role in world history.  Vast events are made personal and human, stirring deep emotions and inspiring visions of the fight for freedom.

• Illustrations from the war era and helpful maps enhance the book.

• Younger readers will remember older generation’s stories of past battles, while older ones will recall their own, and relatives’ and friends’ tales of action.  Young and old, women and men, who have been caught up by books and films about war, escaping prisoners, miraculous survival, and valour will be captivated by these memoirs.

• The perils and pathos of men at war, the outrageous folly of it, its astounding heroism, the comradeship of those who fought together, and the selfless bravery of the civilians who helped them, come alive in the book’s pages.

• The intimacy of family hopes and griefs infuse these tales.

• There is a strong local and worldwide interest in well-told war memoirs, and those of the Second World War continue to be in demand.  Indeed, as the men from that war are fading away, their as yet unpublished memoirs become all the more prized and appealing.

• This is a great gift book.

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Pimp My Poetry

Launched July 2010     R110.00 (incl. VAT)

Ewok—a.k.a. Iain Gregory Robinson, Creamy Ewok Baggends, Hused Whut?, and more—is a star in the South African Hip Hop scene.  He has been seen and heard at numerous, sold-out shows in his hometown, Durban, and in Cape Town and Johannesburg.  He has appeared in numbers of countries overseas.  He has been widely praised by the public and the press for his spellbinding verbal control, gripping imagery, forceful vision, sharp insights, and critical voice.

Pimp My Poetry is the second collection of Ewok’s performances on stage brought to the page—it follows his very successful Word: Customized Hype, published in 2007 by Echoing Green Press.

Pimp My Poetry had an electrifying launch at the Schools Festival, after the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, where he had again performed to much acclaim.

Quotes from the news media on Ewok’s live performances:

“Ewok . . . has the ability to suddenly abandon irony and hit you with
sincere revelation, drawing attention to the gap between word and world,
while at the same time embracing the functionality
of language as his tool for art.”
Mail & Guardian

 “. . . excited whistles and shouts from the audience were proof
Ewok’s message was hitting home . . .”
Cape Times

 “Ewok is a dangerous talent . . .”
Daily News

 “To watch Robinson perform is to watch a man in command, a man possessed.”
Sunday Tribune

 “He talks and thinks in the same nano-second.  He has trained his
brain to say what it thinks before it really thought it.”
Rootz Arts Music and Culture Magazine

“. . . meticulous, focused and passionate . . .”
Hype Magazine

Videos of Ewok and his work:

http://www.lifecheckydi.com/?page_id=142>http://www.lifecheckydi.com/?page_id=14 is an interview with Ewok about his non-profit Life Check Youth Development Initiative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-byClqWvPA>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-byClqWvPA is a music video detailing Ewok’s latest work in the recording studio, debuted at the Rocking the Daisies festival, in Cape Town, 10 October 2009.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JO2DbGBpwo is a promotional video for Ewok’s one-man show Spitfire.

More Information and Interviews:

For details of Ewok’s Spitfire show, see
http://www.spitfireshow.wordpress.com

and for Ewok’s views on the relationship between his work and graffiti, see
http://www.kush.co.za/workarea/show.asp?articleno=604>http://www.kush.co.za/workarea/show.asp?articleno=604

For a 2009 interview, see
http://www.artsreview.co.za/stage/2009/07/02/ewok-from-childhood-disney-world-fantasies-to-becoming-a-prolific-writer-and-a-hip-hop-activist/

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Home from Home: New and Selected Poems

Launched 17 June 2010  R150.00 (incl. VAT)

Chris Mann is one of South Africa’s longstanding and distinguished living poets.  This collection of 126 poems, selected from Chris’s newest work and across the years of his creative life, will come to be recognised as a landmark in South African poetry.

Chris’s accessible, finely developed poetic style appeals to a wide cross-section of South African and international poetry readers.  His writing is down-to-earth yet uplifting and inspiring.

This book is the product of a lifelong dedication to the art of poetry.  Chris has previously published 12 poetry books, numbers of his poems have been anthologised and become favourites, and others have appeared in poetry journals in South Africa and abroad.  He has been awarded numbers of major poetry prizes and awards over the years—for example, the Newdigate prize at Oxford University, when he was a Rhodes Scholar there, and subsequently the Olive Schreiner prize, and the Thomas Pringle award.

Chris is a deeply committed South African, and he reaches out to every corner of our society.  His poems embrace the uniqueness and diversity of South Africa’s peoples, and build bridges between its many cultures.  Yet his poetry reaches across the world with its universal themes.

His work is profoundly tuned into the human and environmental sensitivities and threats of our time.

Home from Home is richly enhanced by the illustrations of Julia Skeen—her fine artwork is carefully harmonised with Chris’s poems.  Chris and Julia, husband and wife, have teamed up before in other superbly illustrated collections of Chris’s poems, Lifelines (2006) and The Horn of Plenty (1997).

Chris was recently included as one of the nominees for the highly prestigious position of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University—in the election, which took place in June 2010, he came fourth out of ten nominees and obtained 183 votes to the winner’s 1156—a most commendable showing.  Just being nominated to such a prominent position is a major accolade.  Chris is presently Professor of Poetry at Rhodes University.

More information on Chris Mann can be found at  http://www.literarytourism.co.za/index.php/Authors/Chris-Mann.html

“Technically sophisticated, here is a poetic voice that opens our perceptions to a
fresh and vivid world beyond the deadening reflexes of habit and custom.”
Prof. Laurence Wright, Director of the
Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA), Rhodes University

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Huckleberry Days: A Trouting, Shooting and Reading Life

by Garrett Evans
ISBN:  978-0-9802501-6-9
Paperback
Page size A5
Total pages xii + 152

Launched March 2010 R147 (incl. VAT)

Garrett’s writing covers experiences in the United States (where he was born), the United Kingdom, Europe and New Zealand, as well as South Africa, in all of which countries he has spent many Huckleberry days.

Garrett is more than an angler and shooter, he is a poet and philosopher aware not only of the beauty of the scenes he describes but of their passing. He is not only sensitively alert to the beautiful landscapes he fishes and shoots in, and the splendours of their dusks and dawns, but to the transience of all he sees.

Readers will recognise his craftsman’s skill with rod and gun, yet will find great pleasure in his depictions of his encounters with animals and the varied characters of the countryside he has met round the world. The short pieces, easy to read in a quiet moment, each hold attention with a concentrated, story-telling vividness.

The book presents insights into various fine writers, both literary, and as exemplars of outdoor writing like Denys Watkins-Pitchford (“BB”) and Henry Williamson.

This is an ideal bedside book, and will make a fine gift for anyone with a taste both for the outdoors and good writing.

All in all, Huckleberry Days: A Trouting, Shooting and Reading Life deserves to become a classic, both of nature writing and the art of the vignette.

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Search: Dogs to the Rescue in Wild Zimbabwe

by Jill Wylie
ISBN: 978-0-620-41937-6
Paperback
Page size  A5
Total pages  ix + 185

Launched 24 October 2008  R160 (incl. VAT)

Jill Wylie has during her long life taught a series of dogs to search for and find lost or snared animals—mainly other dogs, but also domestic and wild animals—and the way she does this is a model of wise animal rearing and teaching. Search: Dogs to the Rescue in Wild Zimbabwe centres on one of these dogs, Javelin—the Dobermann heroine of the book.

She describes Javelin’s youthful training, which begins early, at six weeks, showing how she guides the puppy’s natural curiosity and enthusiasm with praise and reward, and discipline without suffering, to develop her into a devoted and intelligent partner.

Most importantly, she explains why she allowed Javelin to be her natural self—she specially arranged that Javelin would keep her tail, that masterpiece of subtle dog communication, which was to play a vital role in the search and rescue work they would perform together. Javelin can thus be seen as an ambassador for Jill’s campaign (though this is not made explicit in the book) against docking and the mutilation of dogs for fashion and showing purposes.

Javelin’s story is not only about hair-raising rescues and touching relationships, but a training guide for dog owners everywhere.

This is Javelin’s story, an all-but-unknown thread in Zimbabwe’s turbulent history. It is a tale of extraordinary commitment and compassion, of a unique bond between woman and dog—a veritable cascade of rescues and escapades, sometimes dangerous, often funny, as frequently heartbreaking.

The book is presented as a series of short, related, and sequential episodes which dramatise first the early months and training of Javelin, and then detail actual search and rescue missions Jill and Javelin undertook. Numbers of these missions are magnificent victories against the odds, though some are sad failures when the odds are just too great.

The book is divided in two parts, “Imbeza” and “Vumba,” being the names of the two areas in Zimbabwe where the Wylie family live, and where the actions take place.

Jill Wylie has always reached out with compassion, especially to animals, domestic and wild. To fulfil her yearning she has created a small wildlife sanctuary in Zimbabwe’s Vumba Mountains that is a forest haven for a host of rehabilitated animals, from bushbuck to genets, baboons and mongooses, which is where the second part of Search: Dogs to the Rescue in Wild Zimbabwe takes place.

Search: Dogs to the Rescue in Wild Zimbabwe includes three fine black and white illustrations, by Susan Abraham of Grahamstown, of Javelin and her world.

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Stimela: Railway Poems of South Africa

Selected and introduced by Laurence Wright
ISBN:  978-0-620-41938-3
Paperback
Page size  A5
Total pages  xxx + 78

Launched 22 October 2008  R140 (incl. VAT)

Laurence Wright’s Stimela: Railway Poems of South Africa presents a wealth of poems written by many famous poets, including Rudyard Kipling, Guy Butler, Oswald Mtshali, Chris Mann and Don Maclennan, from the 19th to the 20th centuries.

Many of South Africa’s best poets have been inspired to write poems capturing railway scenes in all their variety, yet this diverse and fascinating array of poetry has never before been collected into a book for enjoyment and discussion.

The poems have been selected for their popular appeal and accessibility.

Laurence Wright’s Introduction is an informative and easy-to-read entry into the collection with helpful clues to interpretation.

Readers will find Stimela: Railway Poems of South Africa a captivating collection of social memory, industrial history, nostalgia and poetic skill that unleashes visions shared by railway travellers the world over.

Stimela: Railway Poems of South Africa includes four superb black and white photographs of South African steam trains and a station.

The growing success of railway tourism in South Africa—it caters to a strong local and international contingent of railway travellers and steam enthusiasts—is evidence of a significant interest in the subject.

Stimela: Railway Poems of South Africa will make a perennial, uniquely South African Christmas or birthday gift.

Steam may be a thing of the past, but the legacy lingers—whistles echo in the memory and imagination, through kloofs and across wide Karoo plains, locomotives huff and chuff in rail yards emanating with the smell of steam, oil and burnt coal, and the clack and rhythm of rolling stock on rail beats in the back of the mind.

These memories connect the mystique of a bygone technological age with a way of life that evokes South Africa’s energetic, visionary, and often troubled passage into the modern age.

Prof. Peter Merrington, in a pre-publication review of Stimela: Railway Poems of South Africa, has written: “I read in awe and delight this collection of South African railway poems. The idea of making an anthology such as this seems to be fundamental South African commonsense; inspirational commonsense . . . .”

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Triptych

by Norman Morrissey

ISBN: 978-0-9802501-5-2
Paperback
Page size A5
Total pages  x + 105

Launched 30 June 2008 R120 (incl. VAT)

Triptych is Norman Morrissey’s major new poetry collection, journeying into more personal territory than his well-received and favourably-reviewed Dog Latin (Echoing Green Press 2006—see below for reviews on, and further information about this book, and the author).

Word: Customized Hype

by Ewok (Iain Gregory Robinson)

ISBN  978-0-9802501-4-5
Paperback viii + 100 pages
Page size 110 mm X 180 mm

D. H. Lawrence around the World: South African Perspectives.

edited by Jim Phelps and Nigel Bell

ISBN: 978-0-9802501-1-4   
Hardback
Total pages  xxii + 335   
Page size  230 mm x 150 mm

South African literary studies are in transition in a changing educational context. Yet valuable work from the past can be lost and current contributions overshadowed in the worthy drive for educational transformation and the development of practical skills.  D. H. Lawrence around the World: South African Perspectives is a compilation of articles on D. H. Lawrence by South African critics and scholars both within the country and abroad. Its retrospective sections reprint outstanding articles written in the last fifty years, and present reminiscences and perspectives from eminent scholars to ensure that a valuable body of work is preserved and offered for current appraisal. In its contemporary section five distinguished, peer-reviewed essays commissioned for the compilation reflect a diversity of current South African engagements with Lawrence’s works. The addenda list South African journal articles, and masters and doctoral dissertations/theses on Lawrence.

Road Work

by Dan Wylie

ISBN: 978-0-9802501-3-8
Paperback
Page size A5
Total pages viii + 82

Launched 30 June 2007 R110 (incl. VAT)

Men, Rivers and Canoes

by Ian Player, Second edition

ISBN: 978-0-9802501-2-1

Launched January 2007 R240 (incl. VAT)

This new edition is published in fine quality hardback, with a dust jacket and the original text, maps (in an envelope inside the back cover), photos, illustrations and drawings. Pages: xxvi + 238 (264 in total). Size 170 mm X 245 mm.

Valuable new material included is a Preface to the new edition by Ian Player; Forewords by Colonel Jack Vincent, Inkosi Zibuse Mlaba, Graeme Pope-Ellis and Willem van Riet; a history of the Dusi’s far-reaching social engagement with the people of the Umsindusi and Umgeni River valleys; all the official Dusi results from 1951 to 2006 (fifty-five races), and including the Non-stop Dusi; a list of all 10000 plus Dusi finishers from 1951 to 2006; an outline of key developments in the growth of the Dusi; statistics of entries; and more. 

Sunshine and Shadows: A Collection of South African Short Stories

by Abel Phelps

ISBN: 0-9584711-1-8
Paperback
Page size A5
Total pages  viii + 145