Statue in the madness

 

Thunder doing the rounds

And now Musawenkosi Khanyile in Cape Town has received his copy of Thunder on the highway too!

'A lovely book to touch and to read'

Nice to see that Silke Heiss has received her copy of Thunder on the highway - a lovely book to touch and to read, she says.

I remember New Orleans

 

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'.

Trials and dreams in Chatsworth

I don't recall having seen this Facebook post by Shafinaaz Hassim when it appeared two years ago, and if I am duplicating a post, well here we go again!

Thunder in Pretoria

 Okay, so a posted copy of Thunder on the highway reached its destination in Pretoria three weeks later, which is not bad considering Pretoria is only 45 minutes' drive away. But I am chuffed to see it has pride of place on the same shelf as William Burroughs and Gregory Corso.

Thunder on the highway by Gary Cummiskey: a limited edition

Thunder on the highway is a chapbook of short poems by Gary Cummiskey. 

24 pages. 

ISBN 978-0-9869982-7-0 

It is a limited edition of 50 numbered copies. 

Thunder on the highway is available directly from Dye Hard Press. For postal delivery by the post office the cost is R70. You will receive a tracking number and will have to collect it from your local post office. Should you want it couriered to your door, with 24-hour delivery, the price will be R140.00.

Send an email to dyehardpress@iafrica.com to order.

An extract from 'Idris', a story in Pravasan Pillay's collection, Chatsworth

Soon after I finished high school I began taking driving lessons three times a week. In total, I paid for twenty lessons with Avalon Driving School, which was owned and run by driving instructor Mo Singh.

Mo was in his mid-fifties but looked much younger, especially since he usually wore a flat cap that hid his bald spot. He was short, but had the broad build of a boxer; it often seemed as though he was too big for the car seat. The most distinctive thing about him was the huge number of cigarettes he would smoke during a lesson. The car was permanently filled with the aroma of his Dunhills.

Mo was generally good-humoured and patient with me. He would rarely issue any explicit instructions, apart from street directions. Usually he would talk to me about football, as we were both big Manning Rangers fans.

Within four lessons I found myself much more comfortable behind the wheel – which I attributed mostly to Mo’s laid-back manner. Early on, Mo said that he could tell I wouldn’t have any difficulty passing my driving test. All I needed to do was to work on the finer details like checking my mirrors and improving my parking. “You going to be a lekker driver one day and you must remember who taught you,” he said the first time I successfully completed a three-point turn.

I was six lessons in when I met Idris Shaik for the first time....

From Chatsworth by Pravasan Pillay, a collection of 11 short stories that highlight working class life in a residential area that was allocated for South Africans of Indian descent during apartheid. The stories take place in the recent past and bring to life the nuances of life in this community, without leaning into stereotypes.

Available at www.madeinchatsworth.co.za.

Love birds

 

And then there were six ....

There are now only six copies of Graeme Feltham's With the Safety Off in stock.

Contact Dye Hard Press at dyehardpress@iafrica.com to order. 

In a magic city

 

Otherworld eyes

 

An extract from 'Mr Essop', from Pravasan Pillay's collection Chatsworth

 

An extract from 'Mr Essop':

Three years after we moved into our house in Chatsworth, my father built a granny cottage on the property. He said that once the cottage was rented out, it would bring in an additional R800 a month to our household.

The cottage was small – a bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen – but clean and comfortable by the standards of township outbuildings, most of which were damp, poorly constructed hovels. The most unique part of the building was its veranda. It was a two-by-three-metre space, with a tiled floor, bordered by cement balustrades, and covered by a blue corrugated-plastic roof.

Despite the builder’s advice that such a small building didn’t warrant a veranda, my father insisted on adding it. His reasoning was that it would set the cottage apart from all the other outbuildings being let out across the neighbourhood.

When the cottage was ready for its first tenant, my father placed an ad in the classifieds of the Chatsworth Sun. It took him almost a week to compose it.

“We must be careful,” he cautioned my mother, the night before phoning it into the newspaper. “We don’t want to rent to katchara people. You meet anyone first time, they act nice in front of you, but, must see, two months later, they don’t want to pay their rent.”

From Chatsworth by Pravasan Pillay, a collection of 11 short stories that highlight working class life in a residential area that was allocated for South Africans of Indian descent during apartheid. The stories take place in the recent past and bring to life the nuances of life in this community, without leaning into stereotypes.

Available at www.madeinchatsworth.co.za.

With the Safety Off - only 10 copies left in stock

 

Contact Dye Hard Press at dyehardpress@iafrica.com to order.

An extract from 'The Albino', a story from Pravasan Pillay's collection, Chatsworth

    

I had entered my tenth year of teaching when the albino girl came to Montford Secondary. Cookie Govender was one of a batch of 90-odd pupils who entered high school that year, the majority of them from our sister school, Primrose Primary. I had previously heard about Cookie from one of my colleagues at Primrose; he had said that she could almost pass for white and that she was one of the most popular pupils at the school.

I was sceptical whether her popularity would continue in high school.

Cookie wasn’t the first albino I encountered during my time at Montford. In my second year I had taught one, a boy, his skin as pale as any white person’s, and his hair blond. His name was Chandra, but almost as soon as he arrived at the school the other pupils began calling him “Bird Shit”.

From Chatsworth by Pravasan Pillay, a collection of 11 short stories that highlight working class life in a residential area that was allocated for South Africans of Indian descent during apartheid. The stories take place in the recent past and bring to life the nuances of life in this community, without leaning into stereotypes. Available at www.madeinchatsworth.co.za