Gary Cummiskey and Alan Finlay at the joint launch of pushing from the riverbank and Light and After at Love Books, Melville

Photo: Arja Salafranca

Alan Finlay and Kobus Moolman launch poetry collections at Love Books, Melville

A special report by Arja Salafranca

In the past few weeks I’ve been to quite a few poetry activities in Johannesburg. A rare treat indeed. I met Amitabh Mitra of the Poets Printery at the Wits Writing Centre where I heard him read his poetry in both English and Urdu, with subtitles, so to speak. Then it was off to the launch of Colleen Higgs’s Lava Lamp Poems, at Love Books. And then this past week, another launch at that eponymous bookshop in Melville – a delightfully warm and intimate launch of KZN poetKobus Moolman’s Light and After (Deep South Publishing) and Alan Finlay’s pushing from the riverbank (Dye Hard Press)...Read more here

Heading into Dali's arsehole

Launch of pushing from the riverbank and Light and After, at Love Books, Melville, Johannesburg

Kobus Moolman and Alan Finlay

Alan Finlay

Alan Finlay

Alan Finlay and Kobus Moolman

Arja Salafranca and Myesha Jenkins

Kobus Moolman

Owen Early and Khulile Nxumalo

Richard Fox and Eva Kowalska

Myesha Jenkins and Lionel Murcott

Forthcoming publication from Dye Hard Press: The Edge of Things

ISBN: 978-0-620-49506-6

The Edge of Things consists of 24 South African short stories selected by Arja Salafranca.

The authors are Jayne Bauling, Arja Salafranca, Liesl Jobson, Gillian Schutte, Karina Magdalena Szczurek, Jenna Mervis, Jennifer Lean, Fred de Vries, Margie Orford, Aryan Kaganof, Bernard Levinson, Hamilton Wende, Pravasan Pillay, Beatrice Lamwaka, Hans Pienaar, Rosemund Handler, Tiah Beautement, Angelina N Sithebe, Jeanne Hromnik, David wa Maahlamela, Perd Booysen, Gail Dendy, Silke Heiss and Dan Wylie.

280 pages.

Publication is scheduled for April. Will be available in bookstores countrywide.

Pricing to be confirmed.

Fly me to the moon

Waiting in the earth's womb

Review of Who was Sinclair Beiles? by Christopher Nosnibor

Sinclair Beiles was a friend of the Beats, lived at the Beat Hotel when it was all happening, had a hand in editing William Burroughs’ seminal novel Naked Lunch, was a prolific poet and led an eventful life. Yet strangely, he remains largely unknown. Who Was Sinclair Beiles? attempts to address this matter. This volume may be slim, but plugs a very big gap in the coverage given to the criminally underrated poet Sinclair Beiles...Read more here

Invitation to the launch of pushing from the riverbank by alan finlay, at Love Books, Melville, Johannesburg, February 22

Ingrid Andersen: the literary shift from print to pixel

Ingrid Andersen was born in Johannesburg, read for a degree in English literature and film and theatre criticism at the University of the Witwatersrand, and is currently completing her master's degree. Her work has been published in poetry journals for 16 years. Excision, her first volume of poetry, was published in 2004 and her second, Piece Work, was published by Modjaji Books in 2010. She is the founding editor of Incwadi, a South African journal that explores the interaction between poetry and image...Read more here

Making Love To The Rain by Catfish McDaris, published by Propaganda Press

Making Love To The Rain is the 20th chapbook by US poet Catfish McDaris, and published by Alternating Current imprint, Propaganda Press. A small format collection of poetry and prose, McDaris's work is reminiscent of Charles Bukowski but more sensitive and surreal.

One of the poems is:

Miracles Never Cease

I was reading this book
about a man in Russia
who wrote stories and poems

The KGB came and knocked
him around but didn't kill
him they sent him

To Siberia and stole his
bag containing six onions
then my doorbell rang

There was my aunt
bringing me six onions
and a bottle of vodka.

Making Love to the Rain can be ordered from Alternating Current.

Ophelia on the run from the ghost who is her father

The Streets, The Bubbles of Grass by Subhankar Das

The Streets, The Bubbles of Grass is the latest collection of poems by Subhankar Das and is published by Graffiti Kolkata.

While Das may have abandoned the Burroughsian cut-up techniques of his earlier work and embraced an indigenous approach to language - turning more to the influence of Jibanananda Das - there is still an unmistakable post-modernist approach at play, whether in prose poems such as That Boy, Old Rust and Sailor's Song, the mixed forms of City Blues, or the longer verse works such as A Little More Than The River Khorkai.

As Santanu Roy writes: 'Subhankar's style departs from the conventional wisdom of poetry and anti-poetry. All such margins are being challenged and the reader is finally led to the magic stairs of open text.'

For order details, visit Graffiti Kolkata.

You can read a Dye Hard Interview with Subhankar Das here.