Review of Who was Sinclair Beiles? from The Beat Scene

Who was Sinclair Beiles? - Jan Herman

Good question. It's the title of a new book, just published in South Africa by Dye Hard Press. Although Sinclair Beiles was a prolific poet, novelist, and playwright, "there is very little information available" about him and even less about his work, co-editor Gary Cummiskey writes in the introduction...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

April in the Moon-Sun available as free ebook

April in the Moon-Sun by Gary Cummiskey, published by Dye Hard Press in 2006 and now out of print, is an astonishing cut-up prose sequence with delirious images shifting between Johannesburg and London, capturing the instances of experience through a simultaneous and multi-layered kaleidoscope rather than by linear perception.

It also formed the basis of a short film by Aryan Kaganof, called Velvet.

April in the Moon-Sun can be downloaded for free here

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

Green Dragon 3 now available as free ebook

Green Dragon 3, published by Dye Hard Press in 2005 and now out of print, contains poetry and prose by Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, Kelwyn Sole, Tania van Schalkwyk, Abdul Milazi, Allan Kolski Horwitz, Kobus Moolman, Ingrid Andersen, Michelle McGrane, Vonani Bila, Silke Heiss, Arja Salafranca, Richard Fox, Bernat Kruger, Khulile Nxumalo, Gus Ferguson, Liesl Jobson, Gertrud Strauss, Joop Bersee, Alan Finlay, Paul Grillo, Lesego Rampolokeng, Philip Hammial, David wa Maahlamela, Colleen Higgs and Gary Cummiskey.

Download as a free PDF here

Atio

Atio was a short-lived poetry jounal that Dye Hard Press brought out in those heady days of the South African poetry renaissance of the mid-1990s.

Published in 1995, with poems by Gus Ferguson, Robert Homem, Gary Cummiskey, JDU Geldenhuys, Steve Shapiro, Brett Lock, Michael Anderson and Alan Finlay. Graphics by Gus Ferguson and Gary Cummiskey.

Published in 1995, with poems by Seitlhamo Motsapi, Gus Ferguson, Alan Finlay, Rudi Roussow, Roy Blumenthal, Gary Cummiskey, Candy Neubert, JDU Geldenhuys, Steve Shapiro, Val Sing, Sonya Meyer. Graphics by Gus Ferguson and Val Sing.

Published in 1996, with poems by Roy Blumenthal, Ike Muila, Temba Mhlope, Gus Ferguson, Steve Shapiro, JDU Geldenhuys, Val Sing, Elza Lorenz, Alan Finlay and Gary Cummiskey. Graphics by Val Sing and Gus Ferguson.

Published in 1996, with poems by Sonya Meyer, Hadass Segal, Cyril Edelstein, Lars Dewing, Michael Morain, Robert Homem, Tony Ullyat, Gus Ferguson, Walter Saunders, Linda Colleen Saunders and Candy Neubert. Graphics by Gus Ferguson and Val Sing.

Focus on South Africa

The London Book Fair is now just a few months away, and there is considerable excitement in publishing circles here about the South Africa Market Focus that will be part of the fair.

In preparation for the event, the London Book Fair and the London organised a three-day workshop for representatives from South African publishers in order to prepare and orientate them for the event, as well as to guide them on how to maximise opportunities at the fair...Read more here

The Kindle arrives in South Africa

As of October, Amazon's e-book reader Kindle was made available to South Africans, and even the company's director of Kindle Books, Laura Porco, arrived in Johannesburg to announce the reader's availability...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

Writing on the Margin from the Margin: Sinclair Beiles

From left: Gary Cummiskey, Michael Titlestad, Eva Kowalska, Fred de Vries.

Eva Kowalska and Fred de Vries


Eva Kowalska and Fred de Vries

Fred de Vries

Fred de Vries

Gary Cummiskey and Michael Titlestad

Gary Cummiskey and Michael Titlestad

Gary Cummiskey

Gary Cummiskey

All photographs courtesy of Arja Salafranca

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

Writing on the margin from the margin: Who was Sinclair Beiles?

Dye Hard Press, in conjunction with WISER, invite you to

Writing on the margin from the margin: Sinclair Beiles

Who was Sinclair Beiles?, a compilation of writings about the South African Beat poet who died in 2000, was recently published by Dye Hard Press.

Co-editors Gary Cummiskey and Eva Kowalska, along with contributor Fred de Vries, will discuss issues about the book, such as:

· Why has Sinclair Beiles’s work been neglected in South Africa?
· Why has there previously been no serious attempt to evaluate his work, and why has it fallen to a small publisher to make the first attempt at doing so?
· What are the challenges involved in trying to evaluate a marginalised writer such as Beiles?
· What is the purpose and relevance now, in 2009, in writing about Beiles?

The panel discussion will take place in the Seminar Room at WISER, 6th Floor, Richard Ward Building, East Campus, Wits University on Monday, 9 November 2009, at 18:30


Copies of Who was Sinclair Beiles? will be on sale at the event

Mots souples

Couché près de toi
en silence pendant que

le vent frappe
le rideau à côté

traduit par Dionysos Andronis

(translation of 'Soft Words', from Bog Docks, Dye Hard Press, Johannesburg, 2005)

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