Blast from the past: Head by Gary Cummiskey and Roy Bumenthal

 

Roy Blumenthal and I collaborated on this wee chapbook of poems back in 1998. The cover (in fact, the entire chapbook) was designed by Roy. It was also for this publication that Roy created the Dye Hard Press colophon.

Flyer for poetry reading from the late-1990s

 A flyer advertising a poetry reading at James de Villiers's Gallery 111, probably about 1998. Some of the poets reading were the late Lionel Murcott, Alan Finlay (whose The cactus of a bright sky has just been published by Dye Hard Press), Roy Blumenthal and Gary Cummiskey.

Gus Ferguson's rich contribution to poetry, by Gary Cummiskey

Gus Ferguson reading in 2016. Photo: Louis Reynolds 

With his sense of humour, generosity and humility, the late poet, cartoonist and publisher inspired and mentored others to assume the mantle of getting poems out to readers.

I can’t remember how I first heard about the late Gus Ferguson, or got hold of his work number at the Pharmaceutical Society of South Africa in Cape Town. I had no idea that he was a director there. As an aspiring poet, with two published poems and eager to get a full collection out, I had assumed the number was for the poetry publisher Snailpress. This was mid-1993. 

Far from being furious about my calling him at his employer, Gus immediately sounded warm and friendly. He explained that Snailpress was a small, home-publishing venture and that he already had several books in the pipeline. However, he mentioned that he did publish a small poetry magazine called Slugnews. More.

 

Remembering Electric Juice

 

Electric Juice, published by Dye Hard Press in 2000, contained work by, among others, the late Gus Ferguson, who passed on last month.

A poetic odyssey on wings

It was late 1994 when Alan Finlay told me he’d found a venue for us to read our poems. It was at a monthly event called Odyssey Theatre, at the students’ spot called Wings, in Braamfontein, diagonally across from Wits University and opposite Liberty Life head office.

For our first night there, Alan had told me we would be reading about 6.30, so I had got out there about six, to find the place deserted except for the organisers, Alex and Martin, who told me the evening’s proceedings were starting only at eight – something which bugged me, because I was in the middle of writing exams and had wanted to finish the reading and be home by about 7.30 and start swotting. When Alan arrived he also seemed put out by this news, but what the hell, we were there, so we might as well go with the flow.

Before Alan had pitched up there was another young guy hanging around, with a guitar, a rather quiet, shy type; for some reason he had also pitched up too early. We smoked a cigarette together and got chatting. His name was Matthew van der Want and it was his first gig, as I recall. It was my first reading and I was a nervous wreck but as Matthew pointed out, it was good to be nervous because it built up adrenalin.

By about 7.30 the crowds – mainly students, of course – were beginning to pile in and the empty beer bottles on our table were beginning to pile up. There had been a poster advertising the event, highlighting the appearance of “Four Poets On A Mission”, naming Alan Finlay, Robert Homem, Robert Berold and myself, though actually neither Homem nor Berold were there. Allan Kolski Horwitz and Anna Varney also read that night, and it was the first that I met them.

Odyssey Theatre was a mixture of music, poetry and performance – but mainly music. The first act that night was some hectic band, I can’t remember what their name was but they were damn loud – Allan and Anna sat with their fingers in their ears. While the band played some guy at the back of the stage was doing a painting, and at the end of the act he handed to the painting to someone in the audience.

One of the highlights of the evening though was Matthew and that first night he sang The Ville Blues, which was later to be published in the poetry anthology The Heart in Exile. I loved the lines:

But if I hear another pinball machine
If I hear another schoolgirl scream
If I hear another cafe owner’s dream
I think I’m gonna crack
In Rosettenville.

By the time I got onstage, about 9ish, I was almost staggering but at least all the beers had helped my hands from shaking. It was weird getting up on stage and staring into the darkness, you just couldn’t see anyone, only hear cheers or laughter – and of course the applause. It was encouraging and what was even better was that we got a bit of payment for our performance.

It was an exciting time. The first democratic elections had happened in April and a much-feared civil war did not occur. Nelson Mandela was president and there was a sense of relief and euphoria. South Africa was going forward and there was a tremendous amount of creative energy. There was a burst of small presses on the scene – Roy Blumenthal’s Barefoot Press, Botsotso, Bleksem, Something Quarterly and I had started up Dye Hard Press. The audiences at Wings were interested in what we had to read and publish; there was a receptiveness to a poetry that was different from what people had been taught at school and they welcomed our voices.

The Odyssey Theatre carried on for about eight months, I think, though I did not attend all the events. There was a lot of poetry being read, much of which found its way into the pages of Bleksem. There were poets such as John Cumming, a tall guy, who read hilarious poems such as this one about cocaine:

Diamonds are forever
Like de Beers in Angola
But the coke we love to import
Isn’t: ALWAYS COCA-COLA

There was a very quiet guy named John Raubenheimer, He had been a journalist and had resigned in order to try to live full time by his creative writing; and now I wonder what became of him. Then there was Brett Locke, who read his nakedly honest gay poems about desire and loneliness – poems he later collected into a small chapbook called 13 Poems for The Superstitious.

Looking back, there seemed to be a definite lack of black poets and performers at the venue. I think it was mainly a white line-up. Even though Botsotso Jesters Allan and Anna performed, I don’t think I ever saw the other members of the group – IkeMboneni Muila, Siphiwe Ka Ngwenya and Isabella Motadinyane - perform there.

I also remember a hectic performance group who did weird pieces with hecticl music and flicker lights. Alex reminded me just last week that they were called Breinskade. I remember asking one of the performers what inspired their pieces and he replied:” Lotsa drugs, man, lotsa drugs!”

There was also the MC, Cito, who used to talk with what seemed like a put-on American accent – this being a time when there were quite a few imitation Jim Morrisons running around Johannesburg. Cito, however came from Pretoria.

I recall the names of Battery 9 and Chris Chameleon being passed around at the Theatre, but I am not sure if they ever performed there, or if they did, maybe it was one of the nights when I did not attend.

Whom I do remember very clearly was a blues player called Black Paul, who would have difficulty getting off the stage. "Just one last song!” he’d say after hogging the stage for about half an hour, then just carry on playing more and more songs. It was annoying as it threw the whole schedule out, and some people - I think myself on one occasion – who were scheduled to read at 9 only got on stage at 11. I heard that once it was so bad they pulled the lights on him.

So the Theatre rolled on for months but eventually I felt there was a drop in energy becoming evident. At the last reading I gave at the Theatre there was a definite change in vibe. The audience was bad; they talked all the way through the first performance, a woman singing softly and playing on keyboards. When I got up to read it was the same thing – I could just hear talking and I at one point I was tempted to just stop and give it a miss, but I carried on to the end. There was clearly no interest in what I was saying.

It was probably also around this time that the initial euphoria of the elections began to wear off. Violent crime was rearing its head and a huge sense of fear was settling in. At work almost every day someone told of themselves or a family member or of a friend being robbed, hijacked, raped, assaulted or even murdered. The economy was going to pieces, interest rates rising and job creation not occurring. Emigration was becoming a hot topic.

By the end of the 1990s there was also a decrease in the number of literary journals appearing, and of those small presses that started up in Johannesburg during the period of the Odyssey Theatre only Dye Hard Press and Botsotso remain – and even I axed Dye Hard temporarily in 1999. There was also a drop in poetry reading venues in the area, although Pretoria’s Up The Creek took up the mantle for a while. I don’t think that in the past 10 years or so Johannesburg has had anything to replace what was happening back then at Wings.

For me, the Odyssey Theatre was an inspiring experience at a time when poetic and innovative creativity was welcomed more easily and audiences were more receptive, interested and engaging. But perhaps the time was also more innocent – it was certainly more hopeful - and in various ways I was naive about what was happening and what could be achieved.

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)

Brutal Syrup - Roy Blumenthal

Published by Dye Hard Press in 1996 (out of print).

Head - Gary Cummiskey and Roy Blumenthal

Published by Dye Hard Press in 1998, cover design by Roy Blumenthal (out of print).