Pimp My Poetry, by Iain EWOK Robinson

Spoken Word artist, MC and SLAM champion Iain EWOK Robinson finds his way back onto the page (following the success of his first Echoing Green Press title, Word: Customized Hype) with his second anthology of work, fresh from the stage. Pimp My Poetry is a call from EWOK to the minds of his generation to reclaim control of its collective creativity.

Pimp My Poetry presents EWOK’s most recent writing from his widely-acclaimed 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 2009

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Chris Mann has established himself as a leading poet in South Africa with many collections in print. As with his previous, highly-regarded books, Horn of Plenty and Lifelines, Home from Home: New and Selected Poems will be published in collaboration with the visual art of Julia Skeen.

Home from Home: New and Selected Poems, his first Echoing Green Press title, will be launched at the Grahamstown Festival in June 2010, and will feature as the centrepiece of a multi-media show of music, art and poetry that will go on the road in South Africa and overseas.

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Two South Africans, Cyril Crompton and Peter Johnson, both served in the South African army and, unbeknownst to themselves, were made POWs to Italian forces in North Africa, Crompton after the Sidi Rezegh battle, and Johnson at the fall of Tobruk.  In this book they tell their dramatic stories in the form of personal memoirs.

Johnson had an eventful transfer as a POW to Italy, and at the time of the Italian capitulation, managed to escape, and for the remainder of the war lived in hiding with an Italian family near L’Aquila (which was devastated by an earthquake in 2008).  This is one man’s tale of his experiences and the help he received from really poor Italian folk who put their own lives at risk to help him.  He has written his memoir in a matter-of-fact, engaging style, and tells a memorable story that is both a spellbinding read and a fascinating historical document.  Johnson is presently 89 years old.

Crompton had, after capture, an even more eventful transfer.  The Italian ship taking him from North Africa to Italy was torpedoed near Methoni, Greece, by a Royal Navy submarine (H. M. S. Porpoise) not knowing it was carrying Allied POWs.  Crompton, an excellent swimmer, swam a rope to shore that helped with the rescue of the men who survived the torpedo attack.  At the time of the Italian capitulation, he was re-captured by the Germans and sent by train to Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), where he was made to work on farms and in factories.  When the Russian advance pressed upon Breslau the city was evacuated in the freezing winter of January 1945, and he and his South African and British comrades were marched 900 km westwards. Towards the end of this brutal march his column was strafed by American Mustang and Thunderbolt fighter planes, killing numbers of the surviving POWs, and forcing them to march at night.  He was liberated to the American forces in April 1945.  He tells his gripping story at a fast pace that holds the reader on every page.  Crompton is presently 93 years old.

There is a global demand for well-told war memoirs, and those of the Second World War continue to be called for.  Indeed, as the men from that war are fast fading away, the as yet unpublished memoirs become all the more precious and appealing.

Due for publication in October 2010.

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