Sinclair Beiles in Cape Town

 Good to see that Gregory Penfold in Cape Town has received his copy of Who was Sinclair Beiles?, published by Dye Hard Press.

Glowing review of Who was Sinclair Beiles?

I found this glowing review of Who was Sinclair Beiles? on Goodreads today: I certainly could not have asked for more!

Thank you, Mat!

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An excellent 'festschrift' (or 'celebration'), rather than a strict biography, on the mysterious South African beat writer, Sinclair Beiles.

Beiles is probably most famous for helping Burroughs get Naked Lunch published at Olympia through Girodias, at a time when Burroughs was really strung out on paregoric and/or heroin. His most famous work in print is probably as one of the four contributors (Beiles, Burroughs, Corso & Gysin) of the now legendary cut-up compilation, Minutes to Go, published in 1960.

 However, as this book illustrates, Beiles is [sic] quite a prolific poet and playwright and apart from the above two works, much of his writing has surfaced 'under the radar' and hasn't been the subject of much attention by either critics or fellow poets and writers. Beiles is someone whose quality of writing is as notoriously inconsistent as it is hard to track down and read his books in the first place.

One of his books of poetry, Yeoville, for example, was only published in a limitation of 4 copies.

What Beiles has in common with Burroughs is their meeting in Tangier and in Paris, an interest in drugs, an interest in experimental artists and writers and also, interestingly, a regular allowance from their families which allowed them both to focus much time on their writing.

I hope this book goes some way to revealing more about this great writer to the literary world. His poetry and plays have been criminally neglected and underrated and it is high time that his work is evaluated alongside many of the other great beat writers who are already firmly and undeniably well ensconced in the beat cannon and annals of history (in particular Burroughs, Kerouac and Ginsberg).

Gary Cummiskey and Eva Kowalska have done a terrific job of compiling these (mostly flattering) articles on Sinclair and his art. This is the best introduction to a little-known artist.

If you can obtain a copy, I recommend getting the second edition which is revised and expanded and contains an excellent bibliography-in-progress of Beiles' works in print.

Read the original post.

Raymond Foye writes about Who was Sinclair Beiles?

 

Burning the midnight oil with SINCLAIR BEILES, a wonderful poet who I always heard about, but knew very little about. A South African poet who lived at the Beat Hotel and was the editor of Naked Lunch + Samuel Beckett, at Olympia Press, followed by many years of mental illness which he often documented in his poems. Thanks to Gerard Bellaart for sending this book, full of essential information and many poems.

Originally posted on Facebook, 25 September, 2022.

Sinclair Beiles and the Beat Generation

 A new article about Sinclair Beiles has been published in New Frame, and Who was Sinclair Beiles?, which was published by Dye Hard Press, gets a mention.

The article starts: The 1950s were a tumultuous time for an Australian criminal and con artist called William Lindsay Pearson. An array of jewels was stolen from Brenthurst, the Johannesburg estate of the Oppenheimer family, founders of the Anglo American mining giant, in 1955. This treasure was, ultimately, derived from political connections to the apartheid state and the exploitation of Black workers.  ... more.

Out now: Who was Sinclair Beiles?, revised and expanded edition.

Available from Dye Hard Press at R150 per copy, including postage (South Africa only). Email dyehardpress@iafrica.com.  For overseas orders, price will vary according to increased postal rates - please enquire with publisher.

Coming soon from Dye Hard Press: a revised and expanded edition of Who was Sinclair Beiles?

Michael Adamis - Sinclair Beiles: collaboration on Genesis

Sinclair Beiles: "(I wrote a) choral drama called Genesis, which I did with the Greek composer Micheal Adamis, which was originally performed at the Athens festival, which is the largest cultural festival in the world. The text was a cut-up which I used from a book on water, and after the cut-up, the text began to look like the story of a rise and fall of a civilisation. I wanted to have it performed here (in Johannesburg), but the arsehole I spoke to said no, because it was written in Greek. I objected, saying that it had been performed in Japan, to which he replied 'That’s different'.

(Sinclair Beiles interviewed by Gary Cummiskey, 1994, included in Who was Sinclair Beiles?, edited by Gary Cummiskey and Eva Kowalska, Dye Hard Press, 2009). 

You can read more about Beiles's Genesis collaboration with Michael Adamis here

Excerpts from Who was Sinclair Beiles? on RealityStudio

The following is an excerpt from Gary Cummiskey and Eva Kowalska, Who Was Sinclair Beiles?, published in 2009 by Dye Hard Press. The book contains interviews and essays that create a portrait of Sinclair Beiles, the South African poet who worked for Olympia Press, helped to edit Naked Lunch, and collaborated with William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Gregory Corso on the first cut-up book, Minutes to Go."...Read more here

Review of Who was Sinclair Beiles? from The Beat Scene

Jan Herman on Who was Sinclair Beiles?

Who was Sinclair Beiles?Good question. It's the title of a new book, just published in South Africa by Dye Hard Press. Although Sinclair Beiles was a prolific poet, novelist, and playwright, "there is very little information available" about him and even less about his work, co-editor Gary Cummiskey writes in the introduction...Read more here

Interview with Gary Cummiskey and Eva Kowalska about Who was Sinclair Beiles? on Litnet

Interviewer Janet van Eeeden: I found Who Was Sinclair Beiles? a fascinating read. It was so interesting to read about Sinclair Beiles, someone I didn't know much about, from so many different perspectives. The interviews between Beiles and Gary Cummiskey and Beiles and dawie malan especially throw much light on the nature of the man himself. The essays by Cummiskey, malan, Earle Holmes, Alan Finlay, Eva Kowalska, George Dillon Slater and Fred de Vries serve to delve behind the man's words and give us a glimpse into a unique character. I'd be grateful if you answered a few of my questions about this enigmatic man....
Read more here

Berold on Beiles

Poet Robert Berold writes about Who Was Sinclair Beiles?:

I thought the Beiles book was excellent - nice balance of interviews and essays, thorough bibliography, well edited, good design, readable and inviting. And as far as I know the first non-academic book about poetry to appear in South Africa for years (ever?). Definitely not a booklet as Stephen Gray called it in his M&G non-review. I wish all our poets got such attentive treatment.

It's sad that Beiles's work and his mental state went kind of downhill. But he did write some good poems -the best of them of full of startling images, going off on tangents in interesting ways. An aesthetic that no other South African was doing. And he wrote about his madness with courage and humour.

I had a few meetings with him, and like everyone else, had to deal with his erratic attitude (which started with his proclaiming me a great poet and degenerated over time to the death threat 'by spells' quoted in Dawie Malan's essay).

Once when I was visiting him, he said "Would you like a suitcase?" and produced a very battered very heavy leather suitcase. Which my computer monitor now sits on - so I live with a reminder of Beiles every day.

Perhaps in his later years, his real creation was a character called Sinclair Beiles. But I hope Dye Hard will prove there was also a poet called Sinclair Beiles by publishing a 'best of' selection.

Editors' introduction to Who was Sinclair Beiles?

The idea for Who was Sinclair Beiles? originated in early 2008, after an edited version of an interview I had conducted with Beiles in 1994 was finally published in the literary journal New Coin. I had intended to put together a small number of previously published pieces about Beiles that had been written by Alan Finlay, dawie malan and myself – the latter two had been written for a feature on Beiles published on the donga website (now offline) that challenged his exclusion from the South African literary canon. However I did not feel these would be enough to create a bound book. On the other hand I did not wish to publish about 300 pages of contributions about ‘crazy Sinclair’, with an emphasis on his erratic behaviour as a result of his mental illness, although I realised it would be impossible not write about Beiles’s illness, because it was intrinsic to his work. Instead I wanted a compilation of writings that focused mainly on Beiles as a poet by people who had met him and/or respected his work.

In biographies of the major American Beat writers, such as William Burroughs or Allen Ginsberg, Beiles is often given a mere walk-on part. For example, in Barry Miles’s detailed The Beat Hotel, more attention is given to writers who were not even involved in the Minutes to Go collaboration. Thus Beiles is represented as, to use Joyce Johnson’s phrase, a minor character. Even in South Africa his work is almost totally ignored, and it is hoped this book will lead to some serious consideration of Beiles the poet.

Who was Sinclair Beiles? is not a biography, nor does it pretend to be an authoritative work about him. It is intended rather as a tribute, and was produced while keeping both financial and time constraints in mind. When I invited Eva Kowalska – who is completing her Master’s degree on Beiles’s work – to come on board as co-editor, she, like myself, was restricted by the demands of a fulltime job and other responsibilities. So, with a few exceptions, we opted to use previously published or readily available material.

The first part consists of memoirs about, and interviews with, Beiles by malan, Earle Holmes, George Dillon Slater and myself. In the second part of the book, Kowalska examines Beiles’s poetry with an emphasis on his relationship to the American Beat poets, while in a review of the Beat Hotel Exhibition in Johannesburg, Finlay provides a snapshot of Beiles in the Rockey Street milieu in the mid-1990s. Fred de Vries, who is working on a biography of Beiles, describes some of his journeys and interviews in Africa, England and Europe as part of his research. Lastly, we examine some of the reasons for Beiles’s relative obscurity and provide a bibliography of his publications.

There is some overlap in the book, particularly in the interviews. Editorial cuts have however been kept to a minimum.

Gary Cummiskey


My experience of undertaking a study of Sinclair Beiles’s writing has been frustratingly, but intriguingly, devoid of much useful secondary material. There is very little information available about Beiles, much less so about his work. Many people know of him, though not really about him, and, aside from a handful of reviews of his earlier collections, notably Ashes of Experience, he seems to have become a name without a presence in South African literary culture. This is
unfortunate, because in addition to a colourful reputation Beiles left behind a considerable amount of poetry and plays. Though admittedly it is uneven in quality, I have found his writing to be innovative, humorous, and genuine. Though he is remembered primarily as a poet, his plays and dramatic fragments, a handful of which were staged during his lifetime, reveal a versatile writer with a talent for satire and an unusual outlook which remains interesting beyond its original context.

My involvement in this project came as a result of perceiving a lack of material on Beiles, be it factual biography or any real consideration of his work. I see Who was Sinclair Beiles? as an opportunity to do something towards remedying that gap. Secondly, it was out of a desire to assert Beiles as a poet worth considering, remembering, studying, writing about – someone who should not continue to be left out of our conceptualisation of South African and/ or Beat literature.

Rather than being a complete summary of Beiles as a person and a poet, which would be impossible, or a thorough appraisal of his life and his writing, which would be a vast and entangled project, I hope that this book is a start in the right direction. I hope that it will encourage others to reinvestigate Beiles’s writing, and that it might be useful to them in doing so. I feel that it goes some way towards establishing the worth of a poet who has been almost systematically ignored on his home ground. Through the previously published texts and new perspectives offered it might provide a context or a framework for understanding and appreciating a writer who has long been preceded by his reputation to the detriment of knowledge and appreciation of his art.

Eva Kowalska

Who was Sinclair Beiles? - soon available in bookstores throughout South Africa

New publication from Dye Hard Press: Who was Sinclair Beiles?

Who was Sinclair Beiles?
edited by Gary Cummiskey and Eva Kowalska

ISBN:978-0-620-42792-0

In 1960, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Brion Gysin and Sinclair Beiles collaborated on the now legendary collection of cut-ups, Minutes to Go. Readers of Beat literature know of Burroughs, Corso and Gysin, but who was Sinclair Beiles?

Sinclair Beiles was a South African poet and playwright, born in Uganda in 1930. He moved to Paris during the 1950s, where for a time he was an editor at Olympia Press and a resident at the Beat Hotel. He later spent several years in Greece and his first poetry collection, Ashes of Experience, won the first Ingrid Jonker poetry prize in 1969. Many other collections followed, published either overseas or in South Africa, to where he returned in the late 1970s. Beiles died, generally ignored by the mainstream South African poetry anthologies, in Johannesburg in 2000.

Who was Sinclair Beiles? brings together a collection of interviews, memoirs and essays about Beiles and his work by Gary Cummiskey, dawie malan, George Dillon Slater, Earle Holmes, Eva Kowalska, Alan Finlay and Fred de Vries.

The book also includes previously unpublished photographs of Sinclair Beiles. Perfect bound, 136 pages. Beiles's work is in danger of sliding into obscurity forever, and it is time for a renewed assessment of his contribution to South African literature.

Who was Sinclair Beiles? will soon be available at bookstores throughout South Africa, estimated retail price R160. If purchased directly from the publisher, the price is R100, including postage (South Africa).

E-mail dyehardpress@iafrica.com for more order details.