September 11 series - drawing 7

Suite Of The Auto-Self With Dread I - Henry Avignon

Henry Avignon is a Rochester, New York-based conceptual photographer (photosculptor) and poet whose primary artistic interest lies in identifying and cultivating art which evokes the myriad signatures of energy everywhere in nature.

September 11 series - drawing 6

Arja Salafranca's The fire in which we burn available as a free ebook

Arja Salafranca's collection of poems, The fire in which we burn, published by Dye Hard Press in 2000 and now out of print, is available as a free ebook.

Salafranca's first poetry collection, A life stripped of illusions, received the 1994 Sanlam Award for poetry, while a short story, ‘Couple on the Beach’ was a winner of the same award in 1999 for short fiction. She co-edited an anthology of prose and poetry, glass jars among trees, which was published by Jacana Media in 2003. Her debut collection of short stories, The Thin Line, was published by Modjaji Books, in 2010. She has also won the DALRO award for poetry in 2010.

You can download The fire in which we burn as a PDF here

September 11 series - drawing 5

September 11 series - drawing 4

Poster for The Lovers

Trailer for The Lovers

The Lovers - a short surrealist film from BlackMilk Productions

Soon after completing Regression in September this year, Ronnie and myself (DR-BENWAY) finalised the script of our latest movie, The Lovers. We began filming on September 19 to finish final edits on October 4. Three locations in Cape Town were selected: an apartment in Gardens, an industrial area in Salt River and the sea front in Mouille Point. Even though the film took about a month to complete from final concept to screen, due to it being worked on over weekends and after hours, The Lovers was completed in about 56 hours....Read more here

(The film contains a poem of mine also called The Lovers)

September 11 series - drawing 3

September 11 series - drawing 2

Poetry as intervention: an interview with Alan Finlay

Alan Finlay lives in Johannesburg where he works as a writer, researcher and editor on issues of media freedoms and internet rights. His poems have appeared in various journals locally and abroad, and short selections of his poetry have been published by small presses. Over the years he has founded and edited a number of literary publications, including Bleksem and donga (with Paul Wessels). With Arja Salafranca he co-edited a collection of prose and poetry called glass jars among trees (Jacana, 2003). He was editor of New Coin poetry journal from 2003-2007. His latest collection of poems, pushing from the riverbank, is to be published by Dye Hard Press in October 2010.

To read the interview, click here

Spring 2010 issue of Incwadi

Check out the Spring 2010 issue of Incwadi, a South African online journal of poetry and photography. This issue of Incwadi includes poems by Robert Berold, Ingrid Andersen, Gary Cummiskey, Isabel Dixon, Gus Ferguson, Sarah Frost, Colleen Higgs, Aryan Kaganof, Aryan Salafranca, Kobus Moolman, Fiona Zerbst and many others.

September 11 series - drawing 1

(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.

A daisy in the memory of a shark - Pete Winslow

A daisy in the memory of a shark is a collection of poems by little known US surrealist poet Pete Winslow, published by City Lights Books in 1973. Winslow was just 37 when he died the year before as a result of complications following surgery. He had published a handful of small collections since the early 1960s. There is very little information about Winslow on the internet.

Lines from some of the poems in A daisy in the memory of a shark read as follows:

I called the ocean by its first name

I became an eon but a billion years passed in an instant...

A strange wind carries children to the tops of buildings...

How may I become your clothes when you are so lovely nude

This is the problem of the moon

Whose solution is to disappear...

The invisible telephones of the wind are ringing...

I am famous for the beer which flows from my hair...

Morning stretched its layers of light so softly

That hundreds of night creatures caught unaware

Run about on the table while we have coffee...

I bid my life for the girl tasting of poppies...

The murmur of the city is the beginning of the earthquake...

Your eyelids close

And you inspect me with your alternate eyes...

My pillow over my face

Its hair turning my mind to feathers...

My portrait is ill today its hair is falling out...