Hazel Press newsletter: Autumn 2023
Nkateko Masinga poetry collection - Hal Rhoades on the Hazel blog - an upcoming Hazel Catkin by Anna de Waal - Ruth Padel at BridLit
We’re excited to say that in Spring 2024 we plan to publish Daughter Wound, the first collection of poems by young South African poet Nkateko Masinga.
Daughter Wound is provisionally scheduled for publication in April next year and explores a young woman’s negotiation of intimate relationships: sexual, familial and political.
This is not the first time Hazel Press has published Nkateko’s work. We included one of her poems, ‘to consummate’, in O, our 2021 anthology celebrating women’s sexual pleasure, which was edited by poet Anna Selby.
Nkateko is an award-winning writer and scholar. A graduate of the University of Iowa's 2021 International Writing Program, she was a 2019 Fellow of the Ebedi International Writers Residency, a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow and a Golden Key Scholar. In 2018 she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
You can read more on Nkateko’s website here.
Autumn seeds
The Hazel Blog has restarted after the August pause with an appropriately autumnal selection of poems by Hannibal (Hal) Rhoades, which you can read here.
Hal works with Action for Conservation’s Penpont Project in the Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) National Park in Wales. Penpont aims to help reverse devastating ecological breakdown and create a global gold standard for intergenerational environmental action.
We first met Hal back in January at the Oxford Real Farming Conference and were impressed by his creativity and dedication to environmental causes. Since then, we have donated a set of Hazel Press books to the Adfyw Land Library currently being developed at Penpont.
Inspired by the Rocky Mountain Land Library in Colorado, the Adfyw library hopes to reconnect young people, local communities and disadvantaged groups including refugees with nature, ecological thinking and local heritage.
Hazel Catkin upcoming
Our next Hazel Catkin will be by Anna de Waal, in response to her time as Hazel poet-in-residence at Charleston Festival of the Garden. Catkins are our limited edition chapbooks written in relation to specific places and events.
Anna camped with us for the four-day festival in the grounds of Charleston House in East Sussex, where she also gave poetry readings.
Charleston was the home of artist Vanessa Bell (Virginia Woolf’s sister), painter Duncan Grant and his lover, the writer David Garnett.
It was a privilege to park the Hazel Press caravan in the Paddock. We held readings and workshops, enjoyed long conversations with like-minded people and were wonderfully looked after by Charleston staff and volunteers.
The Hazel caravan then went on to the Primadonna Festival in Stowmarket, Suffolk. We love Primadonna - this was the second year we have attended and we hope to be there next year as well.
Ruth Padel at BridLit
A date for your diary - Ruth Padel will be reading from Watershed, her collection of poems about water, on 7th November at the Bridport literary festival. More details and tickets here.
thank you for reading,
Daphne and Sara