Carnival

Sky Dreaming on Peony Moon

I am searching for André Gide and have been told he is staying with Sinclair Beiles, so I go to Sinclair’s house in Raleigh Street, Yeoville. It’s been years since I have been out this way, but even so, after I knock on the door, Sinclair answers quite friendly and says, ‘Gide doesn’t live here anymore. I think he’s staying at a flophouse – he went loony, you know’...Read more here

Incwadi - Autumn 2011 issue

The latest issue of online poetry journal Incwadi features work by poets such as Gail Dendy, Ingrid Andersen, Arja Salafranca, Kelwyn Sole, Fiona Zerbst, Gary Cummiskey, Kerry Hammerton, Sarah Frost, Michelle McGrane, Anton Krueger, Crystal Warren and Tania van Schalkwyk.

Kobus Moolman: defending the value of poetry

Kobus Moolman has published several collections of poetry, including Time Like Stone, Feet of the Sky, 5 Poetry (with others), Separating the Seas, and most recently, Light and After (Deep South). He has also published two volumes of drama: Blind Voices and Full Circle. He has been awarded the Ingrid Jonker prize for poetry, the PANSA award and the DALRO poetry prize. He lives in Pietermaritzburg and teaches creative writing at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

You can read the Dye Hard Interview here

Independent publishers: how do they survive? Janet van Eeden interviews Deep South's Robert Berold

Janet: Robert, can you tell us a bit about your publishing house? What did you set out to achieve when you started publishing and how long have you been going?

Robert I started Deep South with Paul Wessels in 1995. At the time I was editing New Coin. Seitlhamo Motsapi, whose brilliant poems had been appearing in New Coin, told me he couldn’t find any publisher to take on his work. I was so outraged that I went to Paul and said we have to go into publishing. Our next book, Ari Sitas’s Slave Trades, was published a whole five years later. So in a way we only started in 2000. From 2003 I ran Deep South on my own...Read more here

Invite to the launch of Shaggy: 14 rather amusing rambles by Anton Krueger and Pravasan Pillay

Brion's discourse on Morocco

Independent publishers: how do they survive? Janet van Eeden interviews Modjaji Books' Colleen Higgs

Janet: Can you tell us a bit about your publishing house? What did you set out to achieve when you started publishing and how long have you been going?

Colleen: Four years. I wanted to make a platform available for southern African women’s writing, in particular for writers that were unlikely to find other opportunities to be published, or were writing about issues that would not attract the attention of commercial publishers or even of other indie publishers. I also knew that this might mean I would have to work developmentally with some writers, and find really good editors too...Read more here

Poem for Gerard Bellaart by Ira Cohen, 1975

The poem was published as 'Flaming angel' in Cohen's collection The Stauffenberg Cycle and other Poems, by the bilngual Amerstadam School Poetry Series, 1981. 

Review of Gary Cummiskey's Sky Dreaming - Aryan Kaganof

gary cummiskey was born after a short stint in london in 2009. in that same year he co-opted with sinclair beiles? a collection of titles about the beat poet. it’s intriguing that gary notes high levels of supermarkets in hillbrow as well as his death in 2000 (9 years before the so-called re-birth). gary cummiskey, a midget staring into space, moves on with his legs inspread. he leaps down from buildings into the fire but nobody hears his singing so he drags the terrified, whimpering sinclair beiles? through the hall up to andré gide’s lecture stand where he knocks a glass of papers all over the water. that’s when the cops surround him...read more here

The Poem Again Is Yours: A Tribute to Ira Cohen

Ira Cohen was born in 1935 in the Bronx and attended Cornell University and Columbia University. In the early 1960s, he lived in Tangier and published GNAOUA magazine, an early venue for William Burroughs, among other Beat affiliates. He also produced Paul Bowles's recordings of dervish trance music (Jilala). Between stints in Spain, Paris, London, and Amsterdam, he returned to New York where he conducted shamanic experiments in photography and produced the films Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda and Paradise Now (documenting the Living Theatre's historic American tour). In the early1970s, he went to the Himalayas, studied bookmaking with native craftsmen, and continued to publish poets and writers such as Gregory Corso and Paul Bowles. In 1972 he spent a year in San Francisco reading and performing and mounting photographic shows. In 1981 he again returned to New York, where he lived between travels to Africa and Asia. In India, he documented the great kumbh mela festival in the film Kings with Straw Mats. In the latter part of the decade Synergetic Press published On Feet of Gold, a book of selected poems. Ira was a contributing editor of Third Rail magazine, a review of international arts and literature based in Los Angeles. His photographs have been shown internationally. Ira passed away on April 25, 2011. The following tributes by Ira's friends were compiled for RS by Steve Dalachinsky...Read more here 

da levy film trailer

Golden like the sun

Jean Genet in Tangier by Mohamed Choukri

Introduction by William Burroughs 

Published by The Echo Press, New York, 1974 

Theo Green and Adele Oarker, New York City, with Dreamachine

Theo Green and Adele Oarker, New York City, with Dreamachine, December 2003.

Photo: Ira Choen

The Edge of Things on display at the Franschoek Literary Festival

The Edge of Things, published by Dye Hard Press, together with The Thin Line by Arja Salafranca, published by Modjaji Books, and Glass Jars Among Trees, edited by Alan Finlay and Arja Salafranca, published by Jacana. 

Photo: Arja Salafranca

The Edge of Things, published by Dye Hard Press, together with The Thin Line by Arja Salafranca, published by Modjaji Books, for sale at the Exclusive Books stand.   

Photo: Arja Salafranca

Ira Cohen obituary from The Guardian

Ira Cohen, who has died of renal failure aged 76, participated in the 1960s artistic counterculture as a poet, publisher, film-maker and raconteur. In the middle of the decade, he took up photography seriously. At his loft in Jefferson Street, New York, Cohen built a chamber with walls and ceilings made from sheets of Mylar, a reflective polyester film. Inside this chamber, he took portraits of William Burroughs, Jimi Hendrix, Alejandro Jodorowsky and the steady stream of hipsters who visited the loft....Read more here

Portrait of Theo Green by Ira Cohen

Portrait of Theo Green by Ira Cohen, New York City, May 1985
Photo courtesy of Theo Green

F A Nettelbeck and Ira Cohen

F A Nettelbeck and Ira Cohen, at Robert Lavigne's pad, Seattle July 1988.

Photo courtesy of Theo Green

A bird eclipsed my hand as I was trying to touch the sun

Independent publishers: how do they survive? Janet van Eeden interviews Gary Cummiskey

For some years I’ve wondered how on earth publishers survive in this less than literary country. Perhaps the one or two bestsellers like Spud can make up for the years of publishing books which won’t necessarily do as well. Then I began to think about independent publishers. How on earth do they manage to make ends meet when they have no back-up or a large stable of books to carry them through the tough times? I decided to ask two of this country’s most indomitable publishers how they kept going. I’ve put these questions to Gary Cummiskey, the sole proprietor of Dye Hard Press, to kick off the debate. More indie publishers will comment soon...Read more here

Ira Cohen,an artist and a touchstone

Ira Cohen made phantasmagorical films that became cult classics. He developed a way of taking photographs in mesmerizing, twisting colors, including a famous one of Jimi Hendrix. He published works by authors like William Burroughs and the poet Gregory Corso. He wrote thousands of poems himself. He wrote The Hashish Cookbook under the name Panama Rose. He called himself “the conscience of Planet Earth.” ...Read more here

Philip Hammial's Hear Me Eating

Book cover of Philip Hammial's chapbook Hear Me Eating, published by Makar Press, Brisbane, 1977.