"Ham & Jam" is an experimental poetic playlet for 2 voices, based on "Hamlet". "Ham & Jam" has been performed occasionally before -- it's legendary among performance poets -- but never published. Till now.

The author, Childe Roland (a.k.a. Peter Meilleur), is a celebrated experimental concrete performance poet. Originally from Canada, he's lived since the 1970s in Llangollen.

In "Ham & Jam" and its sequel, "A Pearl", 'mad'? Polonius quizzes 'mad'? Hamlet. Their dialogue's only as mad as language itself is mad, or made mad, in wrong hands and mouths.

"Ham and Jam" is the latest Hafan Books publication. Hafan Books has been publishing in Swansea since 2003, mainly presenting work by refugee writers, always side by side with other writers in Wales -- established and upcoming.

Hafan Books has published several anthologies, with poems, stories, essays, mini-dramas: "Between a Mountain and a Sea", "Nobody's Perfect", "Soft Touch", the bilingual "Gwyl y Blaidd / The Festival of the Wolf", and most recently the all-women "Fragments from the Dark".

In 2008 we began a series of magazine-format booklets by single authors, starting with Humberto Gatica's haunting poems and photographs ("The Sand Garden / El Jardin de Arena"). "Ham & Jam" is the latest of these. There are over a dozen in the series -- for details see www.lulu.com/hafan -- and more on the way.

About half our authors are refugees (or asylum seekers). All proceeds go to refugee charities.

"Ham & Jam" benefits the charity Asylum Justice, set up by Roger Warren-Evans QC of Mumbles, to meet the massive need for legal advice for asylum seekers. Access to legal aid is so severely limited that many refugees have no chance of justice, unless people like Roger give their time to enable them to fight their case. The work saves lives.