Tymon Smith Goes to the Boek Bedonnerd Festival; and Koos Malgas sculptor of the Owl House Wins Richmond Prize

November 2nd, 2009 by Ben - Editor

Alert! Sunday Times books editor Tymon Smith headed down Karoo way late last week, to attend the second annual Boek Bedonnerd booktown festival in Richmond, Northern Cape, along with the likes of Rian Malan. He filed a report this weekend on his blog.

But before we get to that, a quick visit to the official Richmond homepage yields up some interesting information: this year marked the festival’s inaugural Richmond Literary Prize, which went to Julia Malgas and Jeni Couzyn for their book on the Karoo’s premier eccentric art site, Koos Malgas sculptor of the Owl House. The book was launched in Cape Town last September.

It’s not certain what the authors win, apart from the good wishes of the book people at Richmond, but congratulations are certainly in order!

Now, on to Smith’s report:

When I received an e-mail early this year to participate in the second Boekbedonnered literary festival in Richmond in the Karoo, I immediately said yes, without really knowing what I was getting myself into.
I’d heard of Peter Baker and Darryl David, the duo behind the festival, mostly thanks to an enthusiastic account by Denis Beckett who had participated in the inaugural festival in 2008 and was to return this year as part of a group that included David Bullard, Rian Malan, Etienne Van Heerden, Stephen Gray, Dana Snyman, and a host of other literary types.
As I made the much-longer-in-reality-than-on-paper journey down the N1 from Joburg, I tried to imagine what exactly lay in store: a weekend of Afro-pessimism, jaundiced predictions, cold-water showers, lamb chops, Klippies and Coke, boeremusiek … Driving past Springfontein and Hanover with their dusty streets and desolate air, I had little hope for Richmond.
I was also a little worried about what the hell I was going to talk about. In reply to my exploratory e-mail, Baker had sent a rather “chillaxed” suggestion of doing whatever I felt like doing - and so I spent a lot of time on the way down, talking aloud about “the magnificent desolation of the Karoo and its prelapsarian attraction to novelists.and stuff”.