New poems by Gary Cummiskey

Image: Empty Mirror

Six new poems of mine published in US online literary journal Empty Mirror.

Twelve more collages by Gary Cummiskey on Empty Mirror

Once again honoured to have my collages featured in US online literary journal Empty Mirror.

From centuries of passage

The adoration of the magi

Tu verras des choses plus grandes encore - a collage by Bruno Sourdin

Watch out, Billy Boy!

Three of hearts

I found a Three of Hearts in my garden ...

As he was holding a photo by Man Ray ...

Ridin' the spheres

Try for the sun

Still at breakfast

Dye Hard Interview: Adrian Manning: A poetic microcosm

Adrian Manning is an English poet and micro-publisher. He has had a number of chapbooks published, including Wretched Songs

For Out of Tune Musicians, Down At The Laundromat, Bring Down The Sun(with Henry Denander), These Days, Days Like This (with John Dorsey) and 13 Poems from the Edge of Extinction. His poems have been published around the world and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He is the founder of Concrete Meat Press, a micro-press that publishes poetry broadsides and chapbooks.

He lives in Leicester, England.

DH: How and when did you start writing poetry? I am curious about the contemporary poetry scene in England. I regard most English poetry as conservative. Is there a strong ‘alternative’ poetry/literary culture there? 

AM: I started writing when I was a teenager, about 17 or 18. I had a notebook in which I used to record my thoughts about my confused worldview at the time. It was sort of like a diary but the thoughts took on a poetic prose form...Read more.

Illustrated book covers: Death in Venice, Tristan and Tonio Kruger by Thomas Mann

Death in Venice, Tristan and Tonio Kruger by Thomas Mann, published by Penguin Modern Classics, 1962, Middlesex.

Poems by Gary Cummiskey included in special South African issue of Illuminations

I have two poems included in this special South African poetry issue of the US-based literary journal Illuminations.

Eleven collages by Gary Cummiskey featured on US-based website Empty Mirror

Visit Empty Mirror to view collages.

Talk to you

Copies of Green Dragon #6 still available

There are just SIX copies left in stock of Green Dragon #6, which was the final issue of a literary journal published by Dye Hard Press from 2002 to 2009. Contributors to this final issue were Alan Finlay, Arja Salafranca, Haidee Kruger, Janet van Eeden, Joop Bersee, Kelwyn Sole, Kobus Moolman, Tania van Schalkwyk, Megan Hall, Cecilia Ferriera, Anton Krueger, Allan Kolski Horwitz, Goodenough Mashego, David wa Maahlamela, Vonani Bila, Mphutlane wa Bofelo, Aryan Kaganof, Neo Molefe Shameeyaa, Colleen Higgs, Gus Ferguson, Brent Meersman, Kai Lossgott, Daniel Browde, Ingrid Andersen, Gary Cummiskey, Mick Raubenheimer and Mxolisi Nyezwa. There were also lyrics from Durban folk group The Litchis.

Copies are available from Dye Hard Press at R80 per copy, including postage (South Africa only). Email dyehardpress@iafrica.com to order.

Copies of Khulile Nxumalo's fhedzi still available

Dye Hard Press still has stock of Khulile Nxumalo's second poetry collection, fhedzi, which was a finalist for the SALA Poetry Award in 2014.

Khulile Nxumalo was born in Diepkloof, Soweto, in 1971. He finished school at Waterford Kamhlaba, Swaziland, and went to the University of Cape Town, University of Natal and Wits University.
His first poetry collection, ten flapping elbows, mama, was published by Deep South in 2004. His work has appeared in several literary journals in South Africa, Canada, the UK and the US. Nxumalo has twice won the DALRO award for poetry. He has two children.

'Khulile Nxumalo is one of the few poets in South Africa using longer experimental forms. He has found a creative way of breaking up the English language and fusing it with other languages. He is also capable of intense lyrical expression.' – Robert Berold

'magma-burn. emotion-lava spilling out. of wounds.
and thoughts of them expressed in ghostly words
of the divining spirit. and coming thru the smog.
and dust,blood-rained on strange children's games.
and ever The Voice, lonesome, wearied, spiralling inward...
with this one, sikhulile!' – Lesego Rampolokeng

'The language expands to both participate in reality and recreate perceptions of reality with its metaphors and poetic syntax. This is a highly skilled technical work that evokes the surrealism and interlocking process of South African society.' - Kyle Allan

fhedzi is available for R140 a copy, including postage. South Africa only. Email me at dyehardpress@iafrica.com to order.

Out for the night

Copies of Gary Cummiskey's Off-ramp still available

Dye Hard Press still has copies of Gary Cummiskey's Off-ramp in stock.

A finalist for the 2014 Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award, Off-ramp is the debut short fiction collection of Gary Cummiskey and consists of ten stories often characterised by a surreal eroticism. Set mainly in contemporary South Africa, the book opens with a young man’s hallucinatory encounter with a derelict in a Johannesburg street; there is a couple’s visit to a sinister Free State farm; an editor who reluctantly agrees to meet an aspiring woman writer at midnight; two young men who go out on a drinking spree as the country teeters on the edge of civil war; a restless teenager who stalks an unknown woman; and a middle-aged academic who engages in an obsessive, sadistic relationship with a prostitute.

The stories in this startling collection offer a vision of individuals who are slowly being devoured by paranoia and absurdity. Beyond the off-ramp lies a pervasive, heavy dread and an unnameable, perhaps unknowable fear. Cummiskey creates an off-kilter reality that is both disturbing and compelling.

Off-ramp is available at R150 per copy, including postage - South Africa only. Email me at dyehardpress@iafrica,com for order details!

Anything can happen: Bruno Sourdin in conversation with Gary Cummiskey, published on Empty Mirror

An interview with French poet and collagist Bruno Sourdin, published on US-based website Empty Mirror. The interview originally appeared on the Kolkata-based website The Odd Magazine. 

Bruno Sourdin is a French poet and collagist. He was born in 1950 in the Mont-Saint-Michel area. After studying journalism in Paris, he travelled in Morocco, Egypt, and India. He now lives in Normandy.

His first collection of poems, Les Haillons d’Ecume, was published in 1977. His more recent titles include Hazel (2005), L’air de la route (2013), Vers les fjords de l’ouest (2015) and Chiures de mouches au plafond(2016). His blog, titled Syncopes, contains interviews, commentaries, poetry, and art ... Read more

I ain't gonna let no one steal my jellyroll

Tout peut arriver ... (une conversation avec Gary Cummiskey)

Une conversation avec Gary Cummiskey a été publiée par  The Odd Magazine dans son 14e numéro (Oddity 14). Très moderne et inspiré, ce e-magazine est animé, depuis Kolkata (Calcutta) en Inde, par Sreemanti Sengupta. Il est ouvert à la création internationale (textes, poèmes, interviews, photographies et vidéos) ... Read more

A corporate sell-out (real girls)

Like brown fire

A corporate sell-out (real girls)

When the deal goes down

Beginning outward

Poetry reading at David Krut Bookstore on 29 March

 There will a poetry reading at David Krut Bookstore next Wednesday, 29 March. The poets who will be reading are Saaleha Idrees Bamjee, Gérard Rudolf,Makhosazana Xaba, Linda Lindrish Ndlovu, Arja Salafranca, Victor Khulile Nxumalo and some lunatic named Gary Cummiskey.

The address of the bookstore is 151 Jan Smuts Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg. Please do not confuse it with the David Krut Gallery, which is diagonally across the road, as there will probably not be anyone there.

There is secure parking on the corner of Jan Smuts and Wells.

The reading will start at 18:30.

RSVP to elzette@davidkrut.com. Refreshments will be served.

'Anything can happen ..' An interview with French poet and collagist Bruno Sourdin by Gary Cummiskey

GC: You were born in 1950, so I am curious about what it was like being a young man in the late 1960s and and early 1970s. It was the end of the idealism of the 1960s and the beginning of something new in the 1970s, though maybe people did not yet know what the 1970s would be like.

BS: We cannot refer to this period without mentioning the impact of the May Revolution of 1968 in France and how liberating it was for a whole generation I grew up with. I was barely 18 years old. It was both a rejection of the consumer society, a protest against knowledge, a revolutionary moment of illusion and a much-needed change of life. I can remember in those days the academic poets spoke like mandarins. We were on the brink of asphyxia. It was a pitiful old film, pathetic and especially very annoying. Poetry had lost its luminous glow. We lived those May 1968 events as emancipation — many slogans which seemed to come straight from a surrealist poetry book could be seen anywhere: “Under cobblestones is the beach”, “It is forbidden to forbid”, “Run away my friend, this old world is behind you”… Read more plus view collages and read poems by Bruno Sourdin, followed by poems by Gary Cummiskey

Another Saturday night

Rock me baby

Dye Hard Interview: Kyle Allan: Poetry as physical intensity

Kyle Allan is a poet, performer, writer, recording artist and literary festival organiser living in Himeville in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. He released a CD of poetry, Influences, in 2013 and his debut print collection of poetry, House without walls, was published by Sibali Media in 2016. 

His poems have been published in South African literary journals such as Fidelities, New Coin, New Contrast, Carapace, Kotaz,and Botsotso, and in literary journals in India and the USA. 

He has contributed writing to a variety of publications, including the Natal Witness, LitNet, Mindmapsa and potholesandpadkos. More here

Won't you come on over, Valerie?

Three years' editorship of New Coin

For the past three years I have edited New Coin, one of South Africa's oldest and most prestigious poetry journals. New Coin is published twice a year by the Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA) at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. I have now handed over the reins to Dashen Naicker, who will edit the journal from 2017. All cover art for the issues under my editorship was by Lionel Murcott.

Glad to be unhappy

Eye in the Sky