She who comes to the shore

Review of Off-ramp in Cape Times, by Karen Jeynes

Off-ramp is the debut collection of short stories by Joburg-based poet Gary Cummiskey.

The stories read a little like dreams come to life. As with dreams, they are disturbing and disjointed at times, soft and poetic at others. Some meander slowly, others fly past. The stories juxtapose violence, erotica, and a constant sense of fear and foreboding.

And yet the style is simple, clean, and often detached. This adds to the surreal nature of the world that Cummiskey’s characters occupy: it is like ours, and has echoes of the old South Africa in some stories, but it certainly is not ours.

Described as (featuring)“individuals who are slowly being devoured by paranoia and absurdity”, this is an unrelenting read, and one is left at the end of each story feeling uneasy and a little adrift from reality. – Karen Jeynes

(Published in Cape Times)

Reality betrays the image

Totem poles

By night I came to an open womb

This girl can't be blamed for her beauty

Spooks haunt the master's master plan

Select titles from Sea Urchin Editions, Rotterdam

Black Dogs Circled, poems by Mick Farren, published by Sea Urchin Editions, 2011.  

The Unparalleled Adventure of one Hans Phaall, Edgar Allan Poe, Sea Urchin Editions, 2011

Ectojizzed, art by Ben Schot, Sea Urchin Editions, 2012 

So, this is the heart's sister

Focus on Dye Hard Press by the Centre for African Poetry

This issue of African Poetry focuses on Gary Cummiskey’s Dye Hard Press, as part of a planned regular feature highlighting the work of book traders, agencies, educational institutions, publishers and bloggers with a notable commitment to African poetry. Since 1994 Dye Hard Press in South Africa has published not just Cummiskey’s own books but also work from such significant recent poets as Gail Dendy, Kobus Moolman, Gus Ferguson, Arja Salafranca, Alan Finlay, Allan Kolski Horwitz, Khulile Nxumalo and Phillip Zhuwao. Dye Hard has publishing credits too for The Edge of Things, a selection of South African short fiction edited by Arja Salafranca, and other fiction and non-fiction work mostly by authors who are primarily poets. His own bibliography of about fifteen books, mostly poetry collections and chapbooks, also helps to identify him as a significant name in recent South African writing. In celebrating the work of Dye Hard Press, the Centre for African Poetry spoke to Cummiskey on the experience of owning his own press as a poet, the challenges of poetry publishing in Africa, especially in his own country, and about what should be the correct contemporary attitude towards self-publishing, especially in the developing world....Read more here

“Hand-made” – litmag editor on publishing poetry: an interview with Gary Cummiskey

Gary Cummiskey was recently appointed the editor of New Coin, one of SA’s oldest literary magazines
– it celebrates its half century this year. Cummiskey is a writer himself, and is the engine behind Dye Hard Press, which has published numerous titles by an impressive array of literary South African writers, including Arja Salafranca, Khulile Nxumalo, Allan Kolski Horwitz, Phillip Zhuwao from Zimbabwe, Gail Dendy, Kobus Moolman, Alan Finlay and Gus Ferguson. He shares his thoughts on publishing and on whether lit mags still have a role to play in the digital age....Read more
here 

Contours of Desire

I see the window is cracked

Diplomatic Relations, by Nanos Valaoritis

Diplomatic Relations, followed by Birds of Hazard and Prey, poems and collages by Nanos Valaoritis, published by Panjandrum Press, San Francisco, 1972.

Hired Hierogylphs by Nanos Valaoritis

Poem and collages by Nanos Valaoritis, published by Kayak Books, Santa Cruz, California, 1971.

Out there in the night