I ain't gonna let no one steal my jellyroll

Tout peut arriver ... (une conversation avec Gary Cummiskey)

Une conversation avec Gary Cummiskey a été publiée par  The Odd Magazine dans son 14e numéro (Oddity 14). Très moderne et inspiré, ce e-magazine est animé, depuis Kolkata (Calcutta) en Inde, par Sreemanti Sengupta. Il est ouvert à la création internationale (textes, poèmes, interviews, photographies et vidéos) ... Read more

A corporate sell-out (real girls)

Like brown fire

A corporate sell-out (real girls)

When the deal goes down

Beginning outward

Poetry reading at David Krut Bookstore on 29 March

 There will a poetry reading at David Krut Bookstore next Wednesday, 29 March. The poets who will be reading are Saaleha Idrees Bamjee, Gérard Rudolf,Makhosazana Xaba, Linda Lindrish Ndlovu, Arja Salafranca, Victor Khulile Nxumalo and some lunatic named Gary Cummiskey.

The address of the bookstore is 151 Jan Smuts Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg. Please do not confuse it with the David Krut Gallery, which is diagonally across the road, as there will probably not be anyone there.

There is secure parking on the corner of Jan Smuts and Wells.

The reading will start at 18:30.

RSVP to elzette@davidkrut.com. Refreshments will be served.

'Anything can happen ..' An interview with French poet and collagist Bruno Sourdin by Gary Cummiskey

GC: You were born in 1950, so I am curious about what it was like being a young man in the late 1960s and and early 1970s. It was the end of the idealism of the 1960s and the beginning of something new in the 1970s, though maybe people did not yet know what the 1970s would be like.

BS: We cannot refer to this period without mentioning the impact of the May Revolution of 1968 in France and how liberating it was for a whole generation I grew up with. I was barely 18 years old. It was both a rejection of the consumer society, a protest against knowledge, a revolutionary moment of illusion and a much-needed change of life. I can remember in those days the academic poets spoke like mandarins. We were on the brink of asphyxia. It was a pitiful old film, pathetic and especially very annoying. Poetry had lost its luminous glow. We lived those May 1968 events as emancipation — many slogans which seemed to come straight from a surrealist poetry book could be seen anywhere: “Under cobblestones is the beach”, “It is forbidden to forbid”, “Run away my friend, this old world is behind you”… Read more plus view collages and read poems by Bruno Sourdin, followed by poems by Gary Cummiskey

Another Saturday night

Rock me baby

Dye Hard Interview: Kyle Allan: Poetry as physical intensity

Kyle Allan is a poet, performer, writer, recording artist and literary festival organiser living in Himeville in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. He released a CD of poetry, Influences, in 2013 and his debut print collection of poetry, House without walls, was published by Sibali Media in 2016. 

His poems have been published in South African literary journals such as Fidelities, New Coin, New Contrast, Carapace, Kotaz,and Botsotso, and in literary journals in India and the USA. 

He has contributed writing to a variety of publications, including the Natal Witness, LitNet, Mindmapsa and potholesandpadkos. More here

Won't you come on over, Valerie?

Three years' editorship of New Coin

For the past three years I have edited New Coin, one of South Africa's oldest and most prestigious poetry journals. New Coin is published twice a year by the Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA) at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. I have now handed over the reins to Dashen Naicker, who will edit the journal from 2017. All cover art for the issues under my editorship was by Lionel Murcott.

Glad to be unhappy

Eye in the Sky