New Contrast

Small Town Girl

Stuck in the big city,
unhappy holiday maker,
I send myself
postcards of home:
Wish I was here.

– Crystal Warren
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the invisible poem

the invisible poem pre-exists
so that the reader reading thinks
‘but that’s what I was thinking all along’
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Notes

Small Boat

She sails far south,
into growlers and ice.
Yet she is well-fitted,
crafted like a dolphin to love the sea.
When light fills her high sail
it flashes through the mind’s eye
though she is far beyond
satellite and radio.

Ken Barris

This is the final issue of the 2007 volume of New Contrast. It is late, I hope for the last time.

This is also the last cover of this set of my love, Sonja Wilker’s, paintings. I hope you have admired them as much as I have enjoyed sharing them with you. The 2008 volume will feature a new set of artwork and a new artist.

This issue also brings you an etching by Mimi van der Merwe whose work appeared in the Contrast volume of 1964. And a cartoon of Gus Ferguson’s.

I hope you will enjoy the variations, too, in the age old battle of the genders – ever a hardy perennial in these gardens for these gardeners.

There are a couple of interesting reviews too.
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Here are the editor’s note and four excerpts from New Contrast 139, available from better bookshops and by subscription now.

Editor’s note

Part two of Silke Heiss’ new verse novel, The Griffin Elegy, develops the tale set in the south peninsula. Meanwhile, Silke is hard at work on parts three to eight: the ominous tread of ed’s footstep always near.

Recent years have seen a certain budding, if not flowering, of new writing (in this country). Novels sprout fungi-like from dark places wafting the rich odours of imaginations. Well, so it seems to me. And poetry, too: far from being put off by the understandable reluctance of publishers to bring books of verse to a tiny market, poets do it themselves with the aid of ubiquitous and cheap(er) computers and printers. Chapbooks abound, some very professional-looking. I like this. It spells a readiness to get on with life, to write even when the work may never have (commercial) viability.
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New Contrast issue 138 is almost on the shelves. Here are three samples from this issue’s crop of contributors (and see the full list of contributors’ names below):

from Griffin Elegy Part 1
by Silke Heiss

15

It works out well. Drinking and eating are for the taking.
The pics from pap to poulins to financiers
prove this. We record and report on only the best food and drink
nationwide, driving and flying around. In fact,
I hardly need my ‘office’ now. Though we return
to base occasionally, taking stock of the books,
catching up on our admin. On one such occasion Véronique observes,
as we enter by our little picket gate, (more…)

Assuming delivery of material will be on time (perhaps a silly assumption, in this silly season of blackouts), New Contrast issue 138 should be available in bookshops later this week; and issue 139 by Christmas.

Here are their covers, with art by Sonja Wilker, and ads by the Unpublished Manuscript Press / SnailPress / Carapace.

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New Contrast 137 has been published, I’m pleased to report, and is in the post for subscribers. It will be available from better bookshops by the end of the week – and is already on the shelves at Clarke’s on Long Street in Cape Town.

137 features writing from over thirty-five contributors. Click the link below for the complete table of contents, including the titles of the contributions. Here’s an excerpt from Louis Greenberg’s short story, “Mnandi”: (more…)

Welcome to New Contrast @ BOOK SA.

I’m the new editor – my name is Hugh Hodge. Join me here to discuss writing in New Contrast and anything else you would like to share about the journal.

I’m hoping to encourage new writing in any of the country’s languages by publishing stories, poems and articles of quality. To submit, see the contact details here: About New Contrast.

The cover image shown here is from our most recent issue, December 2006; and here follows a poem by Jonty Driver which will feature in an upcoming issue:

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