A review of Thunder on the highway by Gakwi Mashego

Those who have attended the same poetry readings with me where I get to recite will tell you there is a poem I love to read. I have read that poem so many times I sometimes think under the right conditions I can blurt it without referring from the notes - but I insist on reading it because I love how it is written. It's an insightful but tragic piece by artist Gary Cummiskey titled 'And We Watch'. It is one of few painful post-'94 poems I know because it unashamedly peels scabs from festering wounds; just as they are about to heal. That might be the poem I love to read in many poetry readings but it's not the only poem by Cummiskey that I adore; actually I love far more poems than I can admit here. Let me just share three lines from 'And We Watch' so you can get to understand why I think Cummiskey is one of the best poets of our generation - I'm not sure what generation is that, but if you are living today, best believe I'm talking about your time:.

'And we watch the township lesbian being gang-raped, this will cure her and teach her to appreciate cock.../ And we watch the drunken mother hysterical because while she was busy getting laid outside the shebeen her child was butchered for muti.../ And we watch the torture and beatings continue in Harare.../ And we watch the girl in the backroom sticking a knitting needle up her hole/'.

I'll stop right here. And now you might have a clue why this poem speaks to me - not because it speaks about Zimbabwe but it speaks about human rights. It is taken from a collection titled 'today is their creator'.

But today's review is not for 'today is their creator' but for a collection so disarmingly pretty I jest that it is the Mona Lisa or something Pablo Picasso could have offered the world. In the past Cummiskey has given the world plenty of words to ponder and when I finally got my hands on this tiny chapbook which can be read in one five minutes sitting I really felt something - you know that kick in he gut. Interesting enough, I might not be able to write a thousand words about a book with 78 000 words but under the right influence I can write a thousand words about a chapbook with a handful of poems of which none goes beyond seven lines. Yes, you heard me right, seven lines. And you thought you know a sonnet. But Cummiskey has a way of impregnating his sonnets with so much va-va-voom they read like brides awaiting a suitor. You just have a feeling they are whispering 'take me somewhere'. They read like blurbs.

'At the stop

street

a leaf

lands

on

my windscreen'

And you start re-enacting the scenario. Yes, because six out of ten people have had similar experiences. And it brings back memories flooding of what happened next the last time it happened to you: you probably moved a wiper or thought of a parking ticket. And believe me I didn't quote the poem I published the whole poem.

'Listening to

Amy

Winehouse,

sipping

morning coffee'

Damnit! So I am not going to quote more than these two nameless poems because as I say, if I went further I will have quoted the whole chapbook with its 12 pages. Yes, you heard me right, twelve pages like Jesus Christ's disciples or a dozen of eggs. This is classical Cummiskey; no-holds barred, honest to god, undiluted, bitter like bile and sweet like honey. Well, I don't intend to write a poem of my own but I am afraid this review has already amassed more words than the whole 'Thunder on the highway' book.

Now I know Cummiskey's work intimately. And it's just that this is not the space for such a comprehensive overarching review. Actually under the right influence and proper nudging I can give you 5 000 words on Cummiskey's work if you promise you'll read and comment on. I can now relate a poem he recited some time ago which every time I think about I paraphrase. It had something to do with the poet hearing water splashing loudly from a flat above his own; and noticing that they were gushing from a bathtub the poet said his first thought was that the lady upstairs was making love to a crocodile. That's an anecdote I live with. It was a poem once recited to applause and gape.

So, about 'Thunder on the highway' I can't even say go grab yourself a copy because I'm not sure there is a copy for you to grab. The one I have is 17 of 50; like a Picasso or a Rembrandt bought at an art auction. This is my Picasso and maybe the poet can get you yours - I wouldn't know but try him. As a poet Cummiskey never disappoints, he paints with ink and is not afraid to say exactly how he feels - which reminds one of bards Vonani Bila and Alan Finlay on his 'found poems'.

(Un)veiling by Mandilakhe Yengo

A short film by Mandilakhe Yengo, starring Alude Mahali, and based on my poem 'Corner Cafe' from the collection, Today is their Creator. The film was premiered as part of South Africa's City Breath Festival of Video Performance and Poetry.

(Un)veiling by Mandilakhe Yengo

The City Breath Festival of Video Performance and Poetry includes the showing of (Un)veiling, a short film by Mandilakhe Yengo, starring Alude Mahali, and based on the poem 'Corner Cafe' from Gary Cummiskey's collection Today is their Creator.

(Un)veiling explores voyeurism and the power of the gaze. In the midst of the bustle of constrained living spaces in the city, privacy becomes a necessity but isn’t always a given.

The city has eyes; it covers and uncovers and someone is always watching- hidden or revealed. Using the poem as its premise, (Un)veiling looks at the fine line between seeing, being seen and not seeing.

Aujourd’hui est leur Créateur - Dionysos Andronis

Ce nouveau recueil de poèmes de Gary Cummiskey a comme titre une phrase du peintre américain Robert Rauschenberg. La quotidienneté serait le sujet du recueil (le mot « Aujourd’hui » est le premier du titre), mais ce serait une quotidienneté transformée poétiquement. L’univers des reportages télé (surtout dans le poème central « Et nous voyons ») est un premier point d’inspiration de ce recueil vital et significatif de l’auteur. La poésie de Cummiskey, à travers son pessimisme et sa tension existentielle, devient un champ libre de réflexion et de Création humaine, comme le dernier mot du titre aimerait nous le rappeler. Chacun de nous peut apporter sa pierre de construction de cet édifice solide d’une poésie humaine, fragile, simple et baignée dans l’immédiat et les inattendus pour la plupart involontaires de la vie quotidienne.

A travers la sensation du macabre et du danger évident dans la vie quotidienne (l’exemple le plus caractéristique serait le dernier poème « Café du coin » où le propriétaire se fait tuer en secret et loin des yeux des clients) et du thème de la chasse quotidienne (le deuxième poème « Le rêve d’un rat » est caractéristique où l’on témoigne de cette chasse entre chat et rat dans notre domicile), Cummiskey nous livre un recueil qui nous concerne tous directement. C’est un recueil écrit d’après les visions et les angoisses de tous les jours mais dans la tête d’un observateur serein et calme qui est le poète lui-même. Il est observateur seulement parce qu’il sait très bien que son imagination offrira un produit artistique différent et meilleur mais s’inspirant de toutes ces situations affligeantes et grotesques de tous les jours. Ce sera une vision « noire » (au sens artistique du terme) aux antipodes des souhaits initiaux.

Café du coin

Je t’amène
au café du coin.
Il est vide
ainsi nous glissons derrière le comptoir
et nous commençons à baiser.
Après,
quand nous remontons à l’étage
nous voyons le propriétaire allongé
près de la porte, mort.

(Op.cit. page 25, traduit par Dionysos Andronis)

A short review of Today is their Creator from Pravasan Pillay

The short twenty-five pages of Gary Cummiskey’s poetry collection Today is their Creator are the best I’ve read in a while. The poems in these pages disrupt both the meanings of words and their relation to reality and also, and most crucially, for me at least, the overly precious poetic register that dominates local verse. Cummiskey’s devices (deadpan lines, surreal word combinations, absurd contexts) are admirably cold but the ideas and emotions being piped through these devices are as hot as hell. This is a difficult art to master and Cummiskey, like Burroughs before him, does it exceedingly well. File under essential.

(First published here on www.kaganof.com)

A chronology of the most important events in his life: a review of Today is their Creator

Aryan Kaganof writes: "It starts with the cover. Nicola Deane has described it as 'rough, edgy and seductive'. And that’s a perfect description of the kind of verse assembled by Gary Cummiskey in the 26 pages of Today is their Creator" ...Read more here

The 9th Letter: a review of Today is Their Creator

Goodenough Mashego writes: "Dye Hard Press founder and poet of serious note Gary Cummiskey writes about 'minister's daughter stoned on crack', then moves on to write about 'so we slip down behind the counter/ and start to fuck', then jumps and writes about '...we watch the girl in the backroom sticking a knitting needle up her hole'. All in one book, titled Today is Their Creator"...Read more here

New publication from Dye Hard Press: Today is their Creator - Gary Cummiskey

"Urgent, edgy, undaunted, the poetry in Gary Cummiskey's latest collection resonates with a fluent energy, a post-classical reverb that holds both the mock-ordinary of our daily routines and the gross complications of our global condition in equal and critical contrast." - Fox

Twenty-eight pages, staple bound.

ISBN: 978-0-620-40282-8

Will soon be available at bookstores countrywide, estimated retail price R50.

Available directly from the publisher at R40 per copy, including postage.

E-mail dyehardpress@iafrica.com for purchase details.