thank you for remembering my birthday
such an important day! yes, you’re
right as always. I am happy and
I hope so are you. did you get
married on your birthday as
you promised? I did in jan
2008 and in november
a little scorpio (mine)
will be born. you can
imagine how happy
am I
yrs
ps.
I’m fat,
baggy titted
and double-chinned
it’s a lot heavier than
this stupid dandruff of yours
“I wrote a very nice article for the Sowetan,
deconstructing the super structure of the minority
complexes.” The professor wore a seersucker suit. His
pronunciation of all the theoretical terms was halting and
self-consciously mannered. The word “deconstruct” came up
at least every thirty seconds in his tirade. He was apparently busy
deconstructing the borrowing wholesale of concepts from America without
realising that deconstruction itself was a concept borrowed wholesale
from Europe. “Ubuntu keeps people poor.” “In fact there is nobody
in poverty; you always have a choice to decide or not to decide.”
“Right now if you can write a proposal on anti-terrorism,
you’ll get a lot of money.” The professor grins, Asks
the poet for his lighter, Sets himself alight, wryly
Deconstructs the briskly cavorting flames
When the man put his gun to my head, a switch tripped inside. I heard a click. Not the click of the trigger. I never heard that, nor would I have. And even if I had heard the trigger pull, I would not be here to recount it. I heard a switch trip below my skull.
I also heard, after the click inside my head, the gunman’s finger playing with the safety catch. He seemed anxious, flick-flick-flicking, like the way I flick my ballpoint when my nerves get going. Perhaps I heard the click after I heard the flick. I wanted to tell him to stop doing that flick-flick-flick story, but he seemed to be in no mood for being told what to do.
The next day, I couldn’t stop talking. I chattered, nattered, uttered and chit-chatted for ten days straight, then discussed, debated, dialogued and disagreed without pausing for breath for ten solid nights as dirty talk accumulated on the chinaware. Night after day, I washed my dishes clean of the strange conversations, the unkind badmouthing, the wicked gossip, swear words, jokes, earnest secrets, the wishful prattle that I had cleansed already. And day after night, I made them dirty again with more of the same until someone took me to hospital.
In the ward I met a man who couldn’t talk.
I asked the cleaner why the man couldn’t talk. He swished his broom and made me jump out his way. I asked the nurse why the man couldn’t talk. She rattled a pill bottle at me and told me to be quiet. The doctor said it was none of my business and asked if I had been feeding my meds to the potted plants.
Outside, the assembly of oaks dropped leaves silently on my head.
One patient told me the ex-wife of the speechless one had used a carving knife to slit his throat. A second said the man had paid a doctor to excise his speech organs. A third said he had swallowed ground glass and lye. Or that, at least, is what he recalled – when he could recall anything – which wasn’t often.
“Beckfluto, blokfluit,” hissed a coffee urn in the lounge.
When tolerably satisfied with life, the man who couldn’t speak took a beige plastic Yamaha recorder from the music therapy room. He took a deep breath, placed his fingers over the holes, and blew a stream of air through the mouthpiece. He emitted twittering chirrups as he watched the stream that meandered through the hospital grounds. Staring at the mossy ferns, he trilled and warbled - crimson shards when angry, an iron gray keening when sad.
The man with no speech occupied the bed next to me. He preached in his sleep. I heard unfathomable warnings, promises of archangels, sobbing of abandoned cherubs, the wailings of the damned. That’s when I started to think his speech loss might be reversible.
Next morning, everyone in the ward had something to say. “He grunts,” said a lady as she knitted a baboon.
“He babbles,” said a boy who knotted together chairs stolen from the cafeteria.
“He gurgles,” said an uncle who wore diapers.
“Blokflojte, blockflöte,” squeaked a linen basket on castors.
I wanted to communicate with the man who could not talk and wondered if we could play a duet, a call-and-response recitative that only we would understand. I took my own, the rosewood Dolmetsch, out from the drawer of the bedside table and started to blow.
“Blockflöjt, blockflõték,” murmured the padlocks on the medicine cabinet.
Suddenly, patients looked up from their beds, momentarily attracted, transfigured by the duet we blew. We played love songs then music from the movies followed by Hans-Martin Linde’s Music for a Bird.
Later we played three operas and just before handover, while the staff exchanged patient reports, he played Jesus loves me this I know. I tried to ask what Jesus had to do with it, but lost my voice. Instead of a question, a twelve-tone serial pattern flew out of my instrument in a repetitious and jarring seven-beat rhythm:
SCHOEN-berg PEN-de-rec-ki BERG … SCHOEN-berg PEN-de-rec-ki BERG …SCHOEN-berg PEN-de-rec-ki BERG.
As suddenly as we started we stopped. The humid anguish in the ward could not bear our effort. Patients in fetal positions exhaled clouds that waterlogged our instruments.
The man and I held hands across the aisle between our lumpy cots.
The next morning, a flock of guinea fowl eclipsed the sun and hovered about the ward.
I woke to find “Blockflauta,” tattooed on my arm, and “Blockfleita,” on his. Everywhere was blood. Under the bed, in sharp splinters lay his recorder, or perhaps what I saw were sticks, or the spines of autumn leaves that blew in through the window. It wasn’t clear through the cloud of guinea fowl feathers and the screaming of my duet partner. He struggled against two orderlies who were also smeared in blood – or so I thought until a nurse aide scrubbed the red painted lettering off my arm under the bathroom tap. She cursed the fool who left the art cupboard unlocked.
“He jumped on his recorder to make it work again,” explained the lady stitching a bassoon.
“He carved a heart on your arm while you slept,” said the boy, netting soap bubbles blown through a spool.
“He anointed you,” said the aunt who wove a daisy chain.
The staff, which disliked his wailing pipe and, it seemed, mess in general, put him in The Cry Room without his recorder. The Cry Room is not like the one at church where babies are breastfed and toddlers play during the sermon. Mattress coverings rivet to the floor and bolsters line the walls.
“Why is he in The Cry Room?” I asked the janitor who chased me with his broom. I asked the nurse if she’d take him my recorder, but she gave me another pill. I asked the doctor if there were visiting hours in The Cry Room, and he prescribed for me a sleep-deprived EEG the following day.
I stood at the window of The Cry Room and watched silence fade color from the cheeks of the man who could not talk. Could not? Would not? When he was as gray as the stuffing that wept from the walls, he lay down as if to die. I took my recorder out of my pocket and played to him, Nearer my God to Thee.
That night by lamplight from the nurse’s station, I saw a ceramic plate, decorated but unfired, that hung above his bed. I wondered why the man who could not talk had hung it there. Then I remembered I’d given it to him. I’d written it with shaky strokes of a fine bristled brush, remembered that a Zen master said the wise man thinks before speech so mischief won’t result from ill-chosen words. I had written Iwanu ga Hana – the equivalent in Japanese of “Silence is Golden.”
As I stared at the plate over his sleeping head, moisture-darkened patches formed letters in the powdery paint that read, “No.”
The next morning I laid down for a nap under my bed. I woke to hear the medics discussing my EEG, which by the sound of things came back revealing normal brainwaves. The first doctor asked if the recorder was an instrument of music.
The second doctor said it was an instrument of torture.
The third doctor, who I guess was the professor, said, “Stop that woman’s Fluanxol! Wean her off Lithium and halve the Prozac! This is a straightforward case of Post Traumatic Stress. What are you guys doing? Killing a mosquito with an AK47?”
“Blockflauta, blockfleita, blockflauta, blockfleita!” agreed a kiln from the Occupational Therapy workshop.
Suddenly I knew that I could go home again if the man who could not talk would say his name. As long as the plate had not been fired, the man’s speech could be returned. I knew I could decode his peculiar mumbles if we could but walk beside the river. I knew we could walk by the river if the plate got off the wall.
I broke the plate to crack the wordlessness to open the speech vault of the man who had been silenced, so that he could get his voice back to say his name, so that I could once again be still.
Author’s note:
In March 2001, I attended a Baha’ì prayer meeting in Johannesburg. Six armed men intruded. We were assaulted, bound, and held hostage for nearly three hours. The gangsters fled with jewelry, cash and vehicles.
This story is a fictionalised account of the incorrect diagnosis I received when I was admitted to hospital three weeks later. Anti-psychotic medication invoked a semi-psychotic state. When the Professor of Psychiatry heard me practising my flute in the hospital grounds, he called me in and re-assessed me. I am eternally grateful to this experienced clinician for my recovery.
**
Liesl Jobson works as a communications officer for the South African Police Service in Gauteng Province. Her fiction and poetry have been published, or is forthcoming, in Exquisite Corpse, InkPot, Gator Springs Gazette, Retrozine and FRiGG magazine online and in the South African print journals New Coin and New Contrast.
this short story first appeared on konundrum.com
ALLAN KOLSKI HORWITZ
Founded in 1994, initially as a poetry group named the Botsotso Jesters, our free-floating collective of poets, writers and visual artists soon became involved in publishing and organising performances and exhibitions.
The objective was to create a space for South African literature and spoken-word art that, though respectful of and celebrating the differences in our cultures and languages, was attempting to build links and facilitate cross-fertilisation. As such, we wanted to include the whole mosaic of South African cultures and to do so with a political awareness that was radical without being sectarian or dogmatic.
These objectives have not changed. Over the past 14 years we have managed to publish 15 editions of Botsotso (a literary journal), another 20 books (by individual authors as well as anthologies) and organised numerous exhibitions and events. The main ones have been Manuscript Exhibitions, Isis X (photographs and poems by 14 women) and the Jozi Spoken Word Festival. The political and aesthetic openness we practice enables diverse writers and artists to work under our umbrella. Combining verbal and visual images in our books and performances has led to fruitful collaborations.
However, the fact that we generally work in art forms that are not mainstream (mainly poetry, short fiction and photography) has made financial independence impossible. South Africa is still culturally backward in that literacy and reading levels and the markets for local literature and visual arts are extremely limited. Our reliance on public funding — via the National Arts Council (NAC) and the National Lottery Development Trust — is unlikely to be reversed for the foreseeable future. Of course, we appreciate this support so that powerful and original work, not viewed as “marketable” by commercial publishers, has still managed to find a public platform. But there are many key problems that could be resolved if it were not for the failure of state and private sector groupings to advance mass reading and cultural awareness.
For example the NAC, while offering funding, has not taken up our request to link us with the national library system and the Department of Education. If we were able to sell our books to these two state-funded departments we would achieve two major goals: firstly to enable new work by a wide range of writers (emerging and established) to reach a readership of hundreds of thousands and secondly to provide financial sustainability.
The Publishers Association of South Africa has no public programme to encourage reading and no systematic marketing of local literature. Added to this, the major booksellers will not offer marketing assistance or publicity to our titles (poetry in particular is regarded with disdain and short fiction is given a similar status). Most distributors are loath to take on our titles, arguing that sales of these genres is too limited. We thus have a classic chicken-and-egg scenario where distributors blame the booksellers and the reading/buying public and booksellers blame the “product”.
Added to this is the phenomenon of the “celebritisation” of writing, in that writers are now forced to become media personalities to draw attention to their work; those who do not wish to position themselves as a “brand” risk public indifference and marginal critical attention. Here the blame must be laid at the door of the media. The trivialisation of book reviews and the “dumbing down” of review writing (together with ad hominem attacks) have become a hallmark of our books pages. There is also more space given to vacuous interviews with writers than to engagement with the work itself. If poetry and short fiction enjoy limited readership, is that a reason to deny them serious attention? Surely it is the role of the few substantial newspapers we have to sift through and expose this shallowness rather than capitulate to it?
The irony is that there is a flowering of literary and artistic talent in South Africa and the globalised world seems to be more interested in our work than we are ourselves. Botsotso receives numerous manuscripts from all over the country that testify to this explosion of creativity. But here again we must note the reluctance of South African writers and artists to engage with the work of fellow South Africans. There is too much small-mindedness and pettiness, jockeying for a slice of a small pie.
In addition the anthem of our new democracy seems to be that art which explores the interplay between the social world and individual consciousness, as opposed to individual experience in isolation or fantasy for its own sake, is dull and inevitably trite. The days of the struggle having been superseded by a self-oriented way of living, Botsotso as a collective is viewed as a relic of an outmoded era, out of touch with new values and a consumerist lifestyle. Our response is that, given the local and global crises humankind faces, we make no apology for having a political consciousness — but that does not mean we have a particular “party” position or dedication to a “line”.
Classic misrepresentations of socially conscious art claim that it inevitably reduces literature to propaganda and distortion. We believe that realism, magical or otherwise, is but one of many possible approaches to making art and that art which is truly profound ignores fashion, remaining true to the core issues of living. As such, Botsotso will not compromise with regard to the multiplicity of themes and styles we publish and present as long as they have both stylistic and thematic authenticity.
Botsotso Publishing co-presents the Jozi Spoken Word Fest 2008 until August 16 at Wits Theatre and the Writing Centre, Wits University. For more information call: Allan Kolski Horwitz 082 512 8188 or Pamela Nichols 083 233 5270
Hot off the press
Recent Botsotso books include: Botsotso 15 (a special edition featuring participants in the Jozi Spoken Word Festival 2007); two books by Liesl Jobson — 100 Papers, a collection of flash fiction, and View from an Escalator (poems); Mma Afrika (poems in Sepedi by Tlou Setumu); and two books by Allan Kolski Horwitz — Blue Wings, a prose poem for children and Out of the Wreckage, a collection of dream parables and stories.
Forthcoming are two books by the actor and playwright Gamakhulu Diniso: Ikasi and other Plays and Siyanuka and other Plays; Sections of Six (an anthology of poems by Khanyi Magubane, Natalie Railoun, Gift, Abu Solomon, Alison Green and Thuto Mako); Izinhlungu Zomphefumulo (Emotional Pain), poems by Bongekile Mbanjwa; and Bluesology and Bofelosophy, poems, stories and essays by Mphutlane wa Bofelo, as well as a co-publishing venture, being an anthology of poems and short fiction drawn from the literary website Donga, edited by Alan Finlay and Paul Wessels.
this article first appeared on the mail & guardian online
by TUNKU VARADARAJAN
Thursday, June 23, 2005 12:01 A.M. EDT
NEW YORK–Oriana Fallaci faces jail. In her mid-70s, stricken with a cancer that, for the moment, permits only the consumption of liquids–so yes, we drank champagne in the course of a three-hour interview–one of the most renowned journalists of the modern era has been indicted by a judge in her native Italy under provisions of the Italian Penal Code which proscribe the “vilipendio,” or “vilification,” of “any religion admitted by the state.”
In her case, the religion deemed vilified is Islam, and the vilification was perpetrated, apparently, in a book she wrote last year–and which has sold many more than a million copies all over Europe–called “The Force of Reason.” Its astringent thesis is that the Old Continent is on the verge of becoming a dominion of Islam, and that the people of the West have surrendered themselves fecklessly to the “sons of Allah.” So in a nutshell, Oriana Fallaci faces up to two years’ imprisonment for her beliefs–which is one reason why she has chosen to stay put in New York. Let us give thanks for the First Amendment.
It is a shame, in so many ways, that “vilipend,” the latinate word that is the pinpoint equivalent in English of the Italian offense in question, is scarcely ever used in the Anglo-American lexicon; for it captures beautifully the pomposity, as well as the anachronistic outlandishness, of the law in question. A “vilification,” by contrast, sounds so sordid, so tabloid–hardly fitting for a grande dame.
“When I was given the news,” Ms. Fallaci says of her recent indictment, “I laughed. Bitterly, of course, but I laughed. No amusement, no surprise, because the trial is nothing else but a demonstration that everything I’ve written is true.” An activist judge in Bergamo, in northern Italy, took it upon himself to admit a complaint against Ms. Fallaci that even the local prosecutors would not touch. The complainant, one Adel Smith–who, despite his name, is Muslim, and an incendiary public provocateur to boot–has a history of anti-Fallaci crankiness, and is widely believed to be behind the publication of a pamphlet, “Islam Punishes Oriana Fallaci,” which exhorts Muslims to “eliminate” her. (Ironically, Mr. Smith, too, faces the peculiar charge of vilipendio against religion–Roman Catholicism in his case–after he described the Catholic Church as “a criminal organization” on television. Two years ago, he made news in Italy by filing suit for the removal of crucifixes from the walls of all public-school classrooms, and also, allegedly, for flinging a crucifix out of the window of a hospital room where his mother was being treated. “My mother will not die in a room where there is a crucifix,” he said, according to hospital officials.)
Ms. Fallaci speaks in a passionate growl: “Europe is no longer Europe, it is ‘Eurabia,’ a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense. Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty.” Such words–”invaders,” “invasion,” “colony,” “Eurabia”–are deeply, immensely, Politically Incorrect; and one is tempted to believe that it is her tone, her vocabulary, and not necessarily her substance or basic message, that has attracted the ire of the judge in Bergamo (and has made her so radioactive in the eyes of Europe’s cultural elites).
“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder,” the historian Arnold Toynbee wrote, and these words could certainly be Ms. Fallaci’s. She is in a black gloom about Europe and its future: “The increased presence of Muslims in Italy, and in Europe, is directly proportional to our loss of freedom.” There is about her a touch of Oswald Spengler, the German philosopher and prophet of decline, as well as a flavor of Samuel Huntington and his clash of civilizations. But above all there is pessimism, pure and unashamed. When I ask her what “solution” there might be to prevent the European collapse of which she speaks, Ms. Fallaci flares up like a lit match. “How do you dare to ask me for a solution? It’s like asking Seneca for a solution. You remember what he did?” She then says “Phwah, phwah,” and gestures at slashing her wrists. “He committed suicide!” Seneca was accused of being involved in a plot to murder the emperor Nero. Without a trial, he was ordered by Nero to kill himself. One senses that Ms. Fallaci sees in Islam the shadow of Nero. “What could Seneca do?” she asks, with a discernible shudder. “He knew it would end that way–with the fall of the Roman Empire. But he could do nothing.”
The impending Fall of the West, as she sees it, now torments Ms. Fallaci. And as much as that Fall, what torments her is the blithe way in which the West is marching toward its precipice of choice. “Look at the school system of the West today. Students do not know history! They don’t, for Christ’s sake. They don’t know who Churchill was! In Italy, they don’t even know who Cavour was!”–a reference to Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, the conservative father, with the radical Garibaldi, of Modern Italy. Ms. Fallaci, rarely reverent, pauses here to reflect on the man, and on the question of where all the conservatives have gone in Europe. “In the beginning, I was dismayed, and I asked, how is it possible that we do not have Cavour . . . just one Cavour, uno? He was a revolutionary, and yes, he was not of the left. Italy needs a Cavour–Europe needs a Cavour.” Ms. Fallaci describes herself, too, as “a revolutionary”–”because I do what conservatives in Europe don’t do, which is that I don’t accept to be treated like a delinquent.” She professes to “cry, sometimes, because I’m not 20 years younger, and I’m not healthy. But if I were, I would even sacrifice my writing to enter politics somehow.”
Here she pauses to light a slim black cigarillo, and then to take a sip of champagne. Its chill makes her grimace, but fortified, she returns to vehement speech, more clearly evocative of Oswald Spengler than at any time in our interview. “You cannot survive if you do not know the past. We know why all the other civilizations have collapsed–from an excess of welfare, of richness, and from lack of morality, of spirituality.” (She uses “welfare” here in the sense of well-being, so she is talking, really, of decadence.) “The moment you give up your principles, and your values . . . the moment you laugh at those principles, and those values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period.” The force with which she utters the word “dead” here is startling. I reach for my flute of champagne, as if for a crutch.
“I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger.” I had asked Ms. Fallaci whether there was any contemporary leader she admired, and Pope Benedict XVI was evidently a man in whom she reposed some trust. “I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It’s that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion.”
Ms. Fallaci, who made her name by interviewing numerous statesmen (and not a few tyrants), believes that ours is “an age without leaders. We stopped having leaders at the end of the 20th century.” Of George Bush, she will concede only that he has “vigor,” and that he is “obstinate” (in her book a compliment) and “gutsy. . . . Nobody obliged him to do anything about Terri Schiavo, or to take a stand on stem cells. But he did.”
But it is “Ratzinger” (as she insists on calling the pope) who is her soulmate. John Paul II–”Wojtyla”–was a “warrior, who did more to end the Soviet Union than even America,” but she will not forgive him for his “weakness toward the Islamic world. Why, why was he so weak?”
The scant hopes that she has for the West she rests on his successor. As a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI wrote frequently on the European (and the Western) condition. Last year, he wrote an essay titled “If Europe Hates Itself,” from which Ms. Fallaci reads this to me: “The West reveals . . . a hatred of itself, which is strange and can only be considered pathological; the West . . . no longer loves itself; in its own history, it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive, while it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure.”
“Ecco!” she says. A man after her own heart. “Ecco!” But I cannot be certain whether I see triumph in her eyes, or pain.
As for the vilipendio against Islam, she refuses to attend the trial in Bergamo, set for June 2006. “I don’t even know if I will be around next year. My cancers are so bad that I think I’ve arrived at the end of the road. What a pity. I would like to live not only because I love life so much, but because I’d like to see the result of the trial. I do think I will be found guilty.”
At this point she laughs. Bitterly, of course, but she laughs.
Mr. Varadarajan is editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal.
this article first appeared on the wall street journal
nat mos en ander amper-tautologies.
Sarah and Helge, relaxish! Mister Machen’s views are his own, and in several moments spot-on. While his ‘pre-emptive’ isn’t quite that, the general aura of hesitance and contra-qualifiers are.. mefinds it innersting that many Kaga-critics are hesitant in going full-throttle with their negative assessments - they sense, perhaps, that there’s more going on than they’re privy to (conceptually or otherwise).
It be very much so that Aryan’s art playfully negotiates so-called art’s categories.. and while he proclaims his media-specifity, the central blur of his artistic self is play.. and the generally intrusive persona of his authorial is knowingly loud and look-at-me’eish.
All credit to Mr Machen (and he may) for a central apprehension (mind’s the pun): Aryan’s art, its centre, all-blurry mistique inside (what? has Kaganof cracked the Dasein code??), is his soul. In Kagian economy then: his ego.
Much of Kaganof’s output Does seem, what was it, conceptually lightweight? And much of it is..
but the (shifting, necromancial) point be: Kaganof’s output perpetua-wields ulterior profundity. There are too many sides, too many gestures and moments, for even the healthiest critic to definitively pin down (and he knows this. Ah yes, Another one-anna-quart minute film about some lass’s ass, or some Ass’s lass, or sum helix’s swirl edited to the beat of pre- and/or post-pornographic sound.. There always are those EVENTS - where he/it unleashes violent genius (and delivers it suavely [in Kaga-speak: casually]. And the Kaga-structuring knows this. Which is why he/it exists in brackets..)
The ‘kananof’ protest, Sarah, is mute; misreading the ‘SA gothic’, Helge, is unnecessary. And the swelling of my comment, which aimed at a polite two-sentence space, is telling.
Kaga does not care about the blander shades of shit.
Conceivably, Aryan cares about the brighter shats of shit y’ken? Having intra-transcended artistic worries, his genetic code breathes an occult truth:
self as art.
[there’re many more acute fings me would’ve sed: Aryan, above else, being a fascination of soul/I/ego/organicism, but me’s aware now that my initial design of: “chill Helge and Hills..” has reconinterswollshqueened into some accent of mistra Mache (”Jy mag mar”)implication of some emotional, ‘Heated’-like cult of, like, three or, like, firteen fans]
Imaginary interview, circa Eternity:
unknowable interviewer: “So, but like [mind all puns], what was it like?”
AK: “It was very much up and down”
UI: “Any regrets? And butt what I want to know is actually - what was best?”
AK: “No. Be specific.”
UI: ” Uhrm. Was ‘up’ best, or ‘down’”?
AK: “It depends where you’re asking from. It’s actually ‘inside’ and ‘outside’.. and you wouldn’t know.”
UI: “Erm.”
AK: “Yes”
Ca y est, le DICTIONNAIRE DE L’AMOUR ET DU PLAISIR sort le 13 novembre,
avec la participation du célèbre Hanakuma (mangaka alternatif devenu
pop-star au Japon), de la star Junquo Mizuno et d’une floppée
d’artistes contemporains inédits…
Voilà l’occasion d’un article sur l’amour au Japon… et la réponse à
plein de questions !
Pourquoi les geisha se maquillent le lobe des oreilles en blanc ?
Pourquoi on ne dit pas “Je t’aime” au Japon ?
Pourquoi les hommes nomment-ils leur pénis “mon fils” ?
Pourquoi on dit Okama (”honorable fond de marmite”) pour désigner les
travestis ?
Pourquoi les hommes, pour flatter une femme, la comparent à un poulpe ?
La taille, ça compte ?
Quelle est la position sexuelle considérée comme la plus normale sur
un futon ?
Le Dictionnaire de l’amour et du plaisir au Japon
Sortie le 13 nov. 2008
Chez Glénat
Je me tiens à votre disposition pour la réponse à toutes ces
questions. Et j’ai des images, pour illustrer.
En pièce jointe : le communiqué de presse.
Amicalement
Agnès
++++++++++
Agnès Giard
Apt 43 - 13 av. Faidherbe - 93310 Pré St Gervais
Fixe : 09 51 78 59 88
Mobile : 06 60 86 92 36
http://www.agnes.giard.com
http://www.japinc.org
http://sexes.blogs.liberation.fr/agnes_giard
26 Sep 2008
Janet van Eeden
Gary Cummiskey is one of the featured poets at the 12th Poetry Africa International Poetry Festival in Durban which runs from September 29 to October 4. Janet van Eeden asked him a few questions about writing and publishing.
Is your desire to write a need to change history, or make a mark on the world in some way?
The first thing I ever wrote was a short story about Mary, Queen of Scots, and after I had written it I felt I had achieved some major accomplishment. There is a definite sense of magic involved in the creative process. And yes, also probably a wish to leave a mark on the world. I have always been struck by some lines by the South African poet Wopko Jensma, from his poem spanner in the what?works, which read: i hope to leave some evidence/that i inhabited this world/that i sensed my situation/that i created something/out of my situation..
You have also become a publisher and have been remarkably resilient in the fickle world of South African literature. How did Dye Hard Press start?
I started up Dye Hard Press in 1994. Like a lot of poets, I was frustrated back then by the lack of publishing outlets. There were only New Coin, New Contrast, Slug News and Staffrider, which was on its last legs.
I wanted to start up a literary journal but was initially put off by the financial outlay needed. Gus Ferguson’s maverick Slug News was a good example. It wasn’t printed but photocopied, and he laid it out himself in his lunch hour. So I realised I could produce one myself, cheaply. It was doomed from the start. I didn’t know the first thing about publishing and nobody knew me. So I figured a solution might be to publish a small collection of my work, and distribute it for free.
I put together a collection: The Secret Hour. Roy Blumenthal suggested that I create an imprint name too and so I created Dye Hard Press. I then published Alan Finlay’s collection, Burning Aloes, and things continued from there. Sun Belly Press published a small pamphlet of my poems back in 1996, called City, and that same year Gus Ferguson published my collection When Apollinaire Died.
Apart from that, all my other collections have been published through Dye Hard Press.
Do you see yourself as a poet or a publisher?
I see myself as a poet-writer first and a publisher second. Last year, at the Cape Town Book Fair, two people expressed surprise that I was a writer. I admit it was of some concern that my work as a publisher was apparently eclipsing my work as a poet. I might stop publishing at any moment, but I would never stop writing.
What sorts of work do you publish?
Dye Hard Press has to date published mainly poetry, and recently Kobus Moolman’s play Full Circle. Through my literary journal Green Dragon I also publish short fiction and creative non-fiction.
What is the future for poetry in South Africa? Is it relevant at all to the majority of people or is it only ever in the foreground at events such as Poetry Africa?
The future of poetry in South Africa is a challenge, to put it mildly. Throughout the world poetry is becoming a marginalised genre, but even more so in South Africa. Yet when I started up Dye Hard Press in the nineties there was an intense creative energy around and people were interested in the poetry we put out.
But that has changed.
There is a fair amount of interest, particularly among the youth, in spoken word, hip-hop-type poetry. In one way this is a good thing. It’s certainly supporting the concept of spoken word poetry. At the same time, a lot of the poetry is becoming standardised, unoriginal and predictable. But events such as Poetry Africa really help.
Schools should teach more contemporary local poetry and then people will not grow up thinking poetry is something that they cannot relate to. Book readers should make a point of reading contemporary South African poetry too or subscribe to a literary journal.
What are your personal ambitions as a poet, writer and publisher?
I want to explore more genres in my writing. I’ve started writing short fiction and there is also a novel floating around in my head. I also want to publish fiction through Dye Hard Press.
this interview first appeared on the witness
The future marched backwards
into me. My ear lids shut out
the sounds of the muse
saying goodbye
the first time
was way back then
that first weekend
after my confinement
it was evening
and all my friends
had vampire faces
later that night
i saw it clearly
it was everywhere
the whiteness
a landscape of snow
splattered with red
two polar bears
bludgeoned
by then
i was alone on my bed
trying hard
to hop off
that trip
years later
i stuck one
under my tongue again
i was with you
just me and you
tripping
into a perfect day
what a sumptuous
johannesburg afternoon
summer
and all around us
pulsating
i wanted it to be
tearless and true
but my dark heart
was racing double time
not trip hopping
or be bopping
more like a hideous techno beat
my nose burning with the scent
it was everywhere
the whiteness
that garden snowing
with iceberg roses
smelling of blood
and remember all of this “themed” stuff is just politically correct rhetoric
the work gets written and produced because of POLITICAL IMPERATIVES
not because of inner necessity
it is staged in order to create the impression that there is a viable culture at work
not because there is a viable culture at work
something entirely different
these are tricky times
aryan kaganof
so i awoke from a dream where you came crashing in .. glowing like one
of dem there fairies of a spielberg production,your eyes made four
with mine and we danced this miming sensual dance till at long last
you smiled that catlike smile where your lips curl down and your eyes
and forehead dip only to reveal your big pupils showing the pacific
ocean crashing and splashing…in them… i tell you i drowned..
i laugh now writing about it.. but as it happened it was like being
teleported to another dimension…another inbetween..
love of lust and the dust of being revealed.. to be only a dream..
i have
an untidy mind
the doctor’s diagnosis
bi-polar
disorder
she prescribed pills
to stop my thoughts
from swimming
but mostly it’s
the writing
that’s tidying me up
my thoughts
going in
a direction
swimming
right onto this page
When the lights came on at the Sasas Bar
all the potential sex offenders had
already fled. The barmaid and
the balding doorman were
left in each other’s care
I sat watching my hell
phone waiting to be
re-called
28 sept to 12 oct 2008
o b e r t c o n t e m p o r a r y
at melrose arch
featuring six variously scaled oil on canvas works, barlow continues to explore the realm of light and its origins. this highly anticipated solo exhibition follows the artist’s previous sell-out shows at obert contemporary in 2004 and 2006.
o b e r t c o n t e m p o r a r y
at melrose arch: 11am to 7pm daily
o b e r t c o n t e m p o r a r y s a t e l l i t e
at 155 smit street in braamfontein (crn de beer): appointment only
(011) 684 1214
25.09.08
South Africa faces the challenge of boosting a book–reading culture, but because new books are expensive, access to libraries in rural areas is limited and internet penetration is low, the task at times seems overwhelming. However, 80% of South Africans own a mobile phone, and an innovative concept launched in July looks set to bring short fiction to the masses via their handsets.
Novel Idea is an initiative of a company called MOBfest, which commissions short fiction written for a mobile phone platform. The stories consist of 28 episodes of a maximum of 900 characters, which are delivered to a mobile phone for 28 days. To receive the stories, the user simply sends a text message to the provider and registers on the WAP site via their phone.
The writers who have been commissioned have already been published in print. For the recently-completed first round of stories, the writers included Lauren Beukes, Sam Wilson, Sarah Lotz and this year’s Caine Prize for African Writing winner, Henrietta Rose-Innes.
Readers are encouraged to vote for their favourite story and Wilson was the winning “mobilist” of the first round, netting a R8,000 prize sponsored by mobile service provider Vodacom. The second round will be launched by the end of the year.
As with any new concept, it hasn’t been without teething problems. Commissioning editor Michelle Matthews, formerly of Oshun Books, admits there were a few technical hiccups. But, she says, it was mainly about educating people about the capabilities of their mobile phones. The phone has to be WAP-enabled and some people who had this capability were not aware that they could access the internet via their phone. “I sat with people who had no idea their phones were WAP-enabled and helped them to register, and they were thrilled,” Matthews says.
She agrees that the concept could help to boost book reading in South Africa. “However,” says Matthews, “I think that for now, fiction on mobile phones is a different experience to your traditional 300-page novel. Writers tend to write differently for the platform and readers don’t want to read long texts on a small screen—at least not yet. I think it appeals to an overlapping market. It is always possible that someone will seek out a book by an author they’ve read and enjoyed on their mobile phone, so Novel Idea is a good marketing tool for established authors.”
It can also be a good way to spot new talent. According to MOBfest’s website, in Japan last year, five out of the top ten selling hardcopy novels were originally written for mobile phones.
Some might consider Novel Idea a gimmick, but it has potential—particularly in South Africa—to develop new readers, and this is not something to be dismissed.
this article first appeared on the bookseller.com
