Linda Stenman on Romancing the Dead

Romancing the Dead (Tearoom Books, 2009) is a short collection of prose poems.

The poems are beautiful, provoking and sometimes shocking. All of them are good and some are very good.

To read Gary Cumminskey is a special experience that shouldn’t be missed! My personal favourite is the title story. And I really like the cover.

I say: ***(**)Thank you Tearoom Books for the review copy.

First published on Linda Loves Books.

Rough Rider: an interview with Gary Cummiskey by Pravasan Pillay

Last year Tearoom Books published a chapbook of Gary Cummiskey’s prose poems entitled Romancing the Dead. What follows is an interview between Tearoom Books editor Pravasan Pillay and Cummiskey...Read more here

Robert Berold on Romancing the Dead

Gary Cummiskey's Romancing the Dead is a 20 page collection of dream fragments and images -- more prose poems than stories -- which orbit round the confused intersections of death and sex. While the content is dark, frustrated, alienated and at times shocking, the texture of the writing is innocent, straightforward and non-egotistical. I hope Cummiskey will take this direction further into longer narrative forms. Thanks to Tearoom Books for showing how attractive very short books (chapbooks) can be. From both writer and publisher -- more please!

First published on Tearoom Books

Review of Romancing the Dead - Kobus Moolman

With the appetite of a new razor blade, Gary Cummiskey’s latest collection Romancing the Dead (Tearoom Books, Durban), slices through pretence and politeness. It is tough writing. It is uncomfortable. In your face. Tough and uncomfortable and in your face the way Lesego Rampolokeng is, or Cormac McCarthy, in his early novels – Child of God and Outer Dark. But unlike these two authors, Cummiskey’s eye and ear are far too world-wise (and weary) to take themselves very seriously...Read more here

Random thoughts and an incidental notquitereview - Haidee Kruger

I’ve been putting off reading poetry for a while now. Mostly because I’ve spent most of my time stumbling around the weird stitched-together monster that this year has been. It’s been half glutted days of bodily fluids and the dazed plumpness of new flesh, half excess of dead words that had to be hauled around and reconfigured in various positions. Sometimes I had to break some bones since rigor mortis had already set in.

So I’m feeling somewhat fuzzy at the moment, and queasy, and a bit patchy. There are stunned bits of me all over. Given this I figured I’d better stay away from poetry for a bit. It’s not for the weak of spirit. Instead I bolstered myself with some bland pap: magazines, baby books, some mostly nondescript novelly things. I know.

It’s just as well I waited before reading Gary Cummiskey’s new poetry chapbook, Romancing the Dead, published by Tearoom Books. Sure, there’s plenty of razorwire, but it’s not the razorwire that will get you. It’s the big, hollow, echoing melancholy below the jagged, surreal surface. Gary’s deadpan surrealism is December on the Highveld, with its blisters of hot tar and endlessly bleached afternoons that hide the sinkholes quietly opening up below.

(And I love the cover, with its austerely retronostalgic look. The design sensibility over at Tearoom Books is totally lovely.)

First published on Messy Things With Words

Romancing the Dead: A Sharp Cunt Dripping Honey, by Aryan Kaganof

Pravasan Pillay’s Tearoom Books has published the chapbook of the year.

There’s no escaping it.

The moment you see Gary Cummiskey’s face you start screaming

because

there is fire in the enema of art

he put it there

poignantly

not yet free of the dream nor of the memory of when you came to me not wearing panties beneath your light summer dress

but the moment you got on top of me and you saw my face you started screaming

As far as South Africa is concerned a reason for Gary Cummiskey’s neglect may stem from the fact that he spent almost 20 years in Randburg, and by the time he returned to settle down in Sandton, the political situation had changed and so Cummiskey’s surrealist work seemed out of place. Thus Gary had become a marginalised figure as a result of both psychogeographical and cultural factors.

He writes in “European Writers” “Some people became poets after corresponding with European writers. I became a poet after sleeping on a razorblade.”

And this means that Gary is sharp.

He’s busy looking for a magic wand - no strings attached.

Another problem that may account for the relative obscurity of Gary’s work is the difficulty of placing it within the various ‘movement’ categorisations. While Romancing the Dead contains a number of poems dealing with the colonial city scene in Joburg, the rest of his work does not particularly reflect the social context in which it was created.

In the end it boils down to the “Painting”:

I am hungry and dirty.
My feet stink.
I want to brush my teeth.

However, it can also not be ignored that Cummiskey’s illness sometimes made him an extremely difficult person, and most publishers and editors were reluctant to deal with him. For this reason alone Pravasan Pillay must be commended. Despite there being no physical attraction Pillay liked Cummiskey as a friend.

Gary was aware of his outsider status, and openly declared that he did not wish to fit in with any particular group or category. But there is a difference between being an outsider and being marginalised to the point of neglect - and Cummiskey’s work is neglected. (Although Stephen Gray would probably not agree).

Romancing the Dead is a funeral ceremony and all Gary’s sleeping relatives sit on the floor of the bathroom around the bath where his corpse is laid. Once the sleepers have been given the pills to swallow when you left you took them out from your handbag and slipped them back on.

Some people become poets after sleeping with European writers.

Gary Cummiskey is a razorblade.

Very sharp.

Tearoom Books isbn 978-0-620-44717-1

First published on Kagablog

Portrait of Gary Cummiskey by Jenny Kellerman Pillay

Gary Cummiskey: Extreme Romantic

Aryan Kaganof, in a recent review of Gary Cummiskey and Eva Kowalska's Who was Sinclair Beiles?, drew an insightful parallel between Cummiskey and Beiles and, rightly, highlighted the scandalously fact that Cummiskey remains uncelebrated in South Africa....Read more here

New from Tearoom Books: Romancing the Dead by Gary Cummiskey

Tearoom Books is pleased to announce the publication of Romancing the Dead by Gary Cummiskey. This small collection of 11 prose poems from one of South Africa's leading underground poets displays writing that is laconic, unfussy, surreal, morbidly humourous and unsentimental.The world presented in it is one where the rules of causality have either broken down or are on their last legs. It is thus an absurd world, but, and this is Cummiskey's talent, it is also a world that is instantly and, in some cases, frighteningly recognisable.

Available at R40 including postage (R50 for overseas orders). For order information, contact tearoombooks@gmail.com

Forthcoming from Tearoom Books: Romancing the Dead by Gary Cummiskey

Forthcoming in September 2009. Romancing the Dead, a small collection of prose poems from underground legend Gary Cummiskey. Available at R40 including postage. For order information, contact tearoombooks@gmail.com or visit Tearoom Books.