Review of Off-ramp in Cape Times, by Karen Jeynes

Off-ramp is the debut collection of short stories by Joburg-based poet Gary Cummiskey.

The stories read a little like dreams come to life. As with dreams, they are disturbing and disjointed at times, soft and poetic at others. Some meander slowly, others fly past. The stories juxtapose violence, erotica, and a constant sense of fear and foreboding.

And yet the style is simple, clean, and often detached. This adds to the surreal nature of the world that Cummiskey’s characters occupy: it is like ours, and has echoes of the old South Africa in some stories, but it certainly is not ours.

Described as (featuring)“individuals who are slowly being devoured by paranoia and absurdity”, this is an unrelenting read, and one is left at the end of each story feeling uneasy and a little adrift from reality. – Karen Jeynes

(Published in Cape Times)

A review of Allan Kolski Horwitz's There are Two Birds at my Window, by Dorian Haarhoff

There is something of the archer in a poet – letting the arrow fly along the length of an arm. Horwitz’s poems land quivering in many targets.

 Arrows feature in the poems – in San rock art and in a bow drawn beyond breaking point. The 80-plus poems cover a wide range – Addis airport, whales in False Bay, hippos. There are odes to international figures – Neruda, Freud, Kazantzakis – and to South Africans – Abdullah Ibrahim, Ingrid Jonker, Josiah Madsunya – poignant poems.

Then there are the more overt offering - love poems and those that express the continued anger of the protest tradition: forced removals, maintenance courts, Steve Biko, refuges, census.  These perhaps find their strength in performance. Most poems reach their targets.    

(Published in Cape Times, September 14,2012)

Jeanne Hromnik's review of The Edge of Things

There are 24 pieces here, some of which qualify as short stories, others more like prose poems and descriptions of emotional experiences. Relationships are central, aloneness integral and fictional reality

flexible.

The collection displays a variety of writing styles. It includes pieces by some of South Africa’s well-known writers, but also some gems from lesser knowns, including Beatrice Lamwaka’s prize-worthy Trophy and Dan Wylie’s tour-de-force, Solitude.

Interesting reading for those who are curious about the advance of short fiction in the local publishing market and, for all, comfort food for the soul. Jeanne Hromnik

(Published in Cape Times, June 10, 2011)