Bob Dylan in Jack Kerouac's Lowell ...1975

Published by  Beat Scene Press, Coventry, England. Visit www.beatscene.net for more details. 

Yesterday's dream

William Burroughs/ Local Stop on the Nova Express

Published by Inkblot Publications, Rhode Island, USA. 

Contact Aftermath Books at orders@aftermathbooks.com for more information.  

Graffiti - it's a fun crime!

Rachel Zadok reading Off-ramp

Cape Town writer Rachel Zadok posted this self-portrait on Twitter, and described Off-ramp as "an artwork by Jo'burg's literary Max Ernst, Gary Cummiskey".

The assumption of sound

The year of the short story

Article from the Melville-Northcliff Times on the launch of Off-ramp at Love Books, November 13.

New Book, New Broom, New Coin - the launch of Off-ramp, by Rene Bohnen

Die virus tref haar tussen twee verkeersligte naby Wespark. Sy sweet en bestuur, sweet en bestuur, konsentreer deur die spitsverkeer en die yskoue prikkels in haar voete en hande. Genadiglik maak sy dit tot by die parkeer-area, sluit die motor en storm dramaties verby die wit tafels met die wynglase, verby die silwer ysemmer en camembert-broodjies, tot by die badkamer. Hoe lank bly sy daar, nee sy weet nie – deur die venster hoor sy vaagweg hoe lag en gesels die gaste wat nou reeds aangekom het vir die boekbekendstelling. ʼn Skoonmaker kom in met emmer en mop, verbaas om ʼn vrou op die vloer te sien lê naby die wasbak. Is daar fout, wil sy weet. Nee, antwoord die vrou, ek is doodreg, ek het kom foto’s neem. Ek voel soos ʼn karakter in ‘n film van David Lynch, dink sy. Of in een van Gary Cummiskey se kortverhale...Read more here

Gary Cummiskey appointed New Coin editor

Grahamstown, 13th November 2013: Well-known South African poet and publisher, Gary Cummiskey, is to become the editor of poetry magazine New Coin from 2014, taking over from this year’s guest editor, Vonani Bila. A widely published writer, Cummiskey is based in Johannesburg where he runs Dye Hard Press and a number of other poetry projects.

Cummiskey’s poetry and short stories have been featured extensively in literary journals both locally and overseas for the past 20 years.  He founded Dye Hard Press in 1994 specifically to give a platform to new voices, and has since published over thirty titles from local poets. He sees his New Coin editorship as a fresh opportunity to promote the kind of challenging, original work that keeps South African poetry alive and awake:

“A poetry that is restricted and does not offer the reader anything new adds to the view of poetry as something stuffy and dead that has no resonance with contemporary readers and makes publishers even less likely to take a chance on it.  A journal such as New Coin, which has always focused on writing that is willing to break out of the mould and take risks, is an essential vehicle to continue to promote and offer poetry as a form worthy of attention and admiration.”

New Coin was founded in 1965 by Guy Butler and Ruth Harnett and is published twice a year by the Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA) at Rhodes University.  Cummiskey will work with an editorial board made up of the four poets who teach on the Rhodes MA in Creative Writing course: Mxolisi Nyezwa, Brian Walter, Joan Metelerkamp and Robert Berold – the last two of whom have edited New Coin in the past.

Berold comments: “Gary Cummiskey has a good grasp of the range of voices and sub-cultures that make up South African poetry in English.  His approach to publishing is the only way to keep poetry vital.  His appointment is good news for South African poetry.”

Subscribe now to get both the June and December 2013 issues of New Coin for R170. Email isea@ru.ac.za or call 046 603 8565.  

Impulse

Poetry that creates an interactive space: a review of Khulile Nxumalo's fhedzi, by Kyle Allan

fhedzi, subtitled iamgoingtoknowgwalopatterns, is the second volume of poetry published by innovative South African poet Khulile Nxumalo.

He continues in his craftsman’s ability to take words and syntax, and the process of language and the meaning attached to everyday symbols, and startlingly evokes fresh and potent perceptions of reality.

His technical ability to play with normal notions of time, space, the nature of the political and reality, reveals the sense of unease in contemporary existence. This encourages the reader to continue beyond the poem, to engage more critically with the larger text that is society.

It is a boldly pan-African voice that breathes in many iconoclastic continental influences. The words trumpet in an interactive space where language and reality make each other. The reader can visualise a restless electric choreography in the words. The subtitle comes from the decorative geometric Ndebele patterns and paintings known as Mgwalo, and this echoes the way the poems and their language encircle each other with meaning.

To understand fhedzi, you have to think of the words inhabiting an interactive space—much like the geometric drawings — which interact with culture, cosmology and the real world around them. They reflect patterns within reality — the order and disorder co-existing.The language both creates new patterns and destroys clichéd patterns of speech and belief through its ability to estrange even ordinary speech effectively.

The incorporation of different languages embraces the reality of poetry as a dialogue of culture, a process in which language itself evolves.The title is TshiVenda, meaning “only, but almost, nearly”, which is also a contraction of fhedzani, meaning “to complete”.

The language expands to both participate in reality and recreate perceptions of reality with its metaphors and poetic syntax. This is a highly skilled technicalwork that evokes the surrealism and interlocking process of South African society. It is a strong read, albeit probably heavy for the layman at first attempt.

(Published in The Witness, September 27, 2013) 

Launch of Off-ramp by Gary Cummiskey on November 13 at Love Books, Melville

Review of Kobus Moolman's Left Over

The mostly nameless poems in Left Over, Moolman's sixth collection, are hard to crack at first. Sense emerges from the whole, rather than the constituent parts.

A bleak narrative unfolds the story of a mind adrift in a body that requires from both narrator and reader absolute attention.

The feeling of containment within skin, set off against the boundary-less flapping into madness of the mind, is intensely and carefully carried through the whole work.  Progression hides inside the repetition that manifests itself in each poem in the corporeal.

Moolman uses simple, exact language to delve into abysses where the usual boundaries between inside and outside, between body and mind, should exist. The reader's fine attention and engagement are required, and richly rewarded.

Karin Schimke

(Published in Cape Times) 

Second book means it’s read poet’s society

After watching the award- winning poet, Khulile Nxumalo, perform on the opening night of Poetry Africa at UKZN, I woke up early the next day and in the rising Durban spring sun read some of his poems from his latest book, fhedzi.

What was surprising was that, unlike many of his counterparts who chose on the previous night one long poem for their five minutes on stage, Nxumalo chose four short poems. Yet, in fhedzi he has used longer forms of poetry in almost all of the published work...Read more here

Keep on Riding

Kobus Moolman wins 2013 Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award

Kobus Moolman has won the 2013 Sol Plaatje European Union Award for his poem “Daily Duty”. Moolman was announced as the winner on Saturday evening at the 17th annual Poetry Africa International Poetry Festival, where The Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Anthology Vol III, comprising the best poems by the shortlistees, was also launched...Read more here

Moolman's latest poetry collection, Left Over, is published by Dye Hard Press