Gail Dendy in conversation with Janet van Eeden about her poetry collection Closer Than That

Gail Dendy’s new collection, Closer Than That, is full of delicate observations about the human condition, as are many anthologies, but these poems are crafted with the utmost skill and imbued with the musical soul of a dancer.

The poetry lilts and dances in rhythmic metre and one can almost imagine Dendy’s feet keeping time to the words, as if they were notes on a musical score...Read more here 

Janet van Eeden of LitNet reviews The Edge of Things, and chats to Arja Salafranca and other contributors about their stories

The Edge of Things is an eclectic collection of short stories traversing a vast distance emotionally and intellectually.

For example, Arja Salafranca’s moving story about a woman forced to live in a restrictive apparatus in “Iron Lung” is a million miles away stylistically from Aryan Kaganof’s tale of decadence and debauchery on a night out in Durban in “Same Difference.”

As with all anthologies, some stories will resonate with each reader more than others...Read more 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

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

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

Gary Cummiskey, author of Sky Dreaming, in conversation with Janet van Eeden

Sky Dreaming is Gary Cummiskey’s most accomplished work so far. In this volume his work takes a more introspective turn with the unifying theme of a profound existential questioning of life. This kind of depth comes, I believe, from suffering through difficult times. There’s a world-weariness to this collection which takes it into universal territory... Read more here

Bleeding on to the page: a review of pushing from the riverbank by alan finlay and an interview by Janet van Eeden with the author

pushing from the riverbank is Alan Finlay’s latest collection of poetry. It deals with, amongst other things, the sensitive underbelly of a life in transition, of a man in the fluid space between identities as partner, father and writer. As such, the poet resonates with universal emotions, dealing in his poetic exploration with the intransigence of his own role as it moves into territories which are not so much unformed as they are unexplored....Read more here

Interview with Gary Cummiskey and Eva Kowalska about Who was Sinclair Beiles? on Litnet

Interviewer Janet van Eeeden: I found Who Was Sinclair Beiles? a fascinating read. It was so interesting to read about Sinclair Beiles, someone I didn't know much about, from so many different perspectives. The interviews between Beiles and Gary Cummiskey and Beiles and dawie malan especially throw much light on the nature of the man himself. The essays by Cummiskey, malan, Earle Holmes, Alan Finlay, Eva Kowalska, George Dillon Slater and Fred de Vries serve to delve behind the man's words and give us a glimpse into a unique character. I'd be grateful if you answered a few of my questions about this enigmatic man....Read more here

Poet or Publisher? Janet van Eeden meets Gary Cummiskey

The 12th Poetry Africa International Poetry Festival takes place in Durban from the 29 September to 4 October 2008. One of the featured poets is Gary Cummiskey. I asked Gary a few questions about his writing, as well as his publishing through his press, Dye Hard Press...Read more here

Creating magic through poetry

Gary Cummiskey is one of the featured poets at the 12th Poetry Africa International Poetry Festival in Durban which runs from September 29 to October 4. Janet van Eeden asked him a few questions about writing and publishing.

Is your desire to write a need to change history, or make a mark on the world in some way?

The first thing I ever wrote was a short story about Mary, Queen of Scots, and after I had written it I felt I had achieved some major accomplishment. There is a definite sense of magic involved in the creative process. And yes, also probably a wish to leave a mark on the world. I have always been struck by some lines by the South African poet Wopko Jensma, from his poem spanner in the what?works, which read: i hope to leave some evidence/that i inhabited this world/that i sensed my situation/that i created something/out of my situation..

You have also become a publisher and have been remarkably resilient in the fickle world of South African literature. How did Dye Hard Press start?

I started up Dye Hard Press in 1994. Like a lot of poets, I was frustrated back then by the lack of publishing outlets. There were only New Coin, New Contrast, Slug News and Staffrider, which was on its last legs. I wanted to start up a literary journal but was initially put off by the financial outlay needed. Gus Ferguson’s maverick Slug News was a good example. It wasn’t printed but photocopied, and he laid it out himself in his lunch hour. So I realised I could produce one myself, cheaply. It was doomed from the start. I didn’t know the first thing about publishing and nobody knew me. So I figured a solution might be to publish a small collection of my work, and distribute it for free. I put together a collection: The Secret Hour. Roy Blumenthal suggested that I create an imprint name too and so I created Dye Hard Press. I then published Alan Finlay’s collection, Burning Aloes, and things continued from there. Sun Belly Press published a small pamphlet of my poems back in 1996, called City, and that same year Gus Ferguson published my collection When Apollinaire Died. Apart from that, all my other collections have been published through Dye Hard Press.

Do you see yourself as a poet or a publisher?

I see myself as a poet-writer first and a publisher second. Last year, at the Cape Town Book Fair, two people expressed surprise that I was a writer. I admit it was of some concern that my work as a publisher was apparently eclipsing my work as a poet. I might stop publishing at any moment, but I would never stop writing.

What sorts of work do you publish?

Dye Hard Press has to date published mainly poetry, and recently Kobus Moolman’s play Full Circle. Through my literary journal Green Dragon I also publish short fiction and creative non-fiction.

What is the future for poetry in South Africa? Is it relevant at all to the majority of people or is it only ever in the foreground at events such as Poetry Africa?

The future of poetry in South Africa is a challenge, to put it mildly. Throughout the world poetry is becoming a marginalised genre, but even more so in South Africa. Yet when I started up Dye Hard Press in the nineties there was an intense creative energy around and people were interested in the poetry we put out.

But that has changed. There is a fair amount of interest, particularly among the youth, in spoken word, hip-hop-type poetry. In one way this is a good thing. It’s certainly supporting the concept of spoken word poetry. At the same time, a lot of the poetry is becoming standardised, unoriginal and predictable.

But events such as Poetry Africa really help.

Schools should teach more contemporary local poetry and then people will not grow up thinking poetry is something that they cannot relate to. Book readers should make a point of reading contemporary South African poetry too or subscribe to a literary journal.

What are your personal ambitions as a poet, writer and publisher?

I want to explore more genres in my writing. I’ve started writing short fiction and there is also a novel floating around in my head. I also want to publish fiction through Dye Hard Press.

(First published in The Witness, September 26, 2008)