The short drop is never easy, Erik. You need to give a lot of thought to vectors, weights and coefficients which never were my strongest suit. But you, my friend, took full measure of the terminal rationale before you hit the lab and put your grim equation to the test. You scored full marks All went as you predicted Beam + rope + knot + body = X But where does gravity fit in? And how? And so you left us dangling shrugging, cursing that we cannot comprehend such simple mathematics.
- Richard de Nooy
*
Doppelganger
In the middle of it all on a sprung floor a fellow mingler laughed, saying I was such a card I really should meet my other half and marvel.
Miraculously, according to the stranger, my twin was there that night: in wit and waggish turn of verb a perfect match. It was uncanny to find two so alike at the same party.
We must be introduced – the wind must whip the flame! the wave must strike the shore!
“There — at the other end of the room – can you see which man I mean?”
I didn’t need to look. I knew it would be you, my own, and that later, when all our charm was blown we’d fight in the car on the way home.
- Finuala Dowling
*
A Thing of Beauty
Cicadas sandpaper-shaping shadows, sawing away the dry hot holidays, welding that day and dozens like it into one deep, burning sky. This, before words, is our blue and gold childhood melded in memory’s magnificent workshop, enameled in a never-ending half-existent noon.
Folio Books’ poetry series launched with a bang last month and continues with wicked women’s words from BOOK SA regulars, Helen Moffett and Liesl Jobson. You’re invited to come and share a glass of wine while listening to poems that will delight, shock, comfort and amuse.
Helen Moffett is a freelance writer, editor, academic and poet, who’s lectured as far afield as Trinidad and Alaska. Her academic writings include a great deal of gloomy but necessary work on sexual violence in the post-apartheid context. She writes about cricket because it reminds her why she likes men (and because she loves the game with a passion). She has also published a university textbook on poetry, an anthology of South African landscape writing and several short stories. Her debut collection of poems, Strange Fruit</a , was recently published by Modjaji Books.
Liesl Jobson is a musician, photographer and writer, and the author of 100 Papers, a collection of prose poems and flash fiction (Botsotso, 2008) and an anthology of poetry, View from an Escalator (Botsotso, 2008). She is the winner of the POWA women’s writing poetry competition and the Ernst van Heerden Creative Writing Award.
Alert! BOOK SA is not entirely convinced of the genuineness of the call, but Granta magazine is apparently looking for help compiling the top African short stories of the past 50 years. The following notice has been found poking out of various online literary thickets:
The Granta Book of The African Short Story
Edited by Helon Habila and Binyavanga Wainaina
This anthology will bring together the best of the best African short stories published in the last 50 years. You are invited to recommend any great short story you have read in a collection, a magazine, online, or heard on the radio, but it has to be by an African author.
The story could be in English, French, Portuguese, Arabic, or any major African language, but the final language of publication will be English. Send story title, author’s name, and any publication information you have to help us track your recommended story. Send before April 30, 2010, to: africastories2010@gmail.com
Is it real? BOOK SA will be calling Granta later on to find out. Even if not, however, the exercise of considering Africa’s top shorts might be worthwhile. From South Africa, off the top of my head, I’d recommend Siphiwo Mahala’s “The Suit Continued” and Ivan Vladislavic’s “The WHITES ONLY Bench” as strong contenders.
“Dames en Here, vergun my om u voor te stel aan Breyten Breyntenbach, die maer man met die groen trui”.
Die teaterstuk Verse in my vingers, begin met hierdie bekende woorde uit Breytenbach se gedig “Bedreiging van die siekes”. In dié produksie, wat tydens die Woordfees opgevoer is, is voorlesings uit Breytenbach se werke en toonsettings van sy gedigte gebruik om hierdie groot digter se lewensverhaal te vertel.
Breytenbach word vanjaar 70. Ander groot skrywers wat vanjaar die mylpaal van 70 of 75 jaar haal, is by die Woordfees gehuldig. Breytenbach was ongelukkig nie by die fees aanwesig nie, maar Verse in my vingers het wel in sy afwesigheid sy 70 lewensjare gevier.
Musiek is deur Laurinda Hofmeyr verskaf en Johann Nel, Waldemar Schultz, Eugenie Wiggens en Hugo Theart het gedigte en ander skryfwerk van Breytenbach voorgelees. Gedigte, prosa en musiek het in die produksie soomloos in mekaar gevloei.
Daar is begin met gedigte en prosa oor Breytenbach se herkoms en familie. Hofmeyr het ‘n toonsetting van “Ek sal sterf en na my vader gaan” gesing. Daarna is Breytenbach se liefdesgedigte voorgedra en “Ek wag in my hart” is onder andere gesing.
Breytenbach se ontnugtering toe sy vrou gedurende apartheid toegang tot die land geweier is, is in sy eie woorde oorgedra. Die gehoor is bewusgemaak van Breytenbach se ambivalente gevoelens van liefde én haat teenoor Suid-Afrika.
Breytenbach se gedigte uit sy periode in die tronk is met gevoel voorgedra en so ook sy gedigte oor die dood.
Die applous aan die einde van die produksie was nie net vir die akteurs se gevoelvolle voordrag nie, maar ook vir dié meesterdigter: die maer man met die groen trui.
Die volgorde waarin Hennie Aucamp se kortverhale in sy bundels verskyn, dra betekenis.
“Dit is soos ‘n goed-gekonstrueerde konsert,” het Aucamp gister in gesprek met Daniel Hugo by die Woordfees gesê. “Daar is ‘n rede waarom dit so is en ek wil hê jy moet dit in daardie volgorde lees.”
In sy nuutste bundel, Die huis van die digter, eindig die verhaal “Die stolp” byvoorbeeld met die geboorte van ‘n tweeling. Dit word die skakel na die volgende verhaal, “In rooi grond, tussen kanniedood en vuurklip”, waarin daar ook ‘n tweeling verskyn.
In die titelverhaal skryf ‘n digter pornografiese briewe aan sy geliefde. “Ek maak hier ‘n kunsteoretiese stelling,” het Aucamp verduidelik. “’n Kunstenaar werk met ruwe materiaal en dit moet deur baie filters gaan voordat dit kuns word.”
‘n Verwysing na okselhare in laasgenoemde verhaal is weer die skakel na “Kouekoors” wat met homoseksuele liefde te make het. In hierdie verhaal word daar ook klem op okselhare gelê.
Wanneer dit kom by die uitbeelding van die erotiese en ook die homoërotiese gaan Aucamp maar “doldapper” voort. “Ek glo aan eerlike mededeling. Ek skep nie doelbewus verhale om te skok nie.”
Soms voel Aucamp dat dele van ‘n verhaal aan hom “gegee” word. Die verhaal “Droë meer” is egter die eerste verhaal wat volgens Aucamp in geheel aan hom gegee is. Dit het ná die literator Elize Botha se dood gebeur. Aucamp was emosioneel en het gevoel dat ‘n era verby is. “Droë meer” is selfs vir Aucamp ‘n vreemde verhaal en hy “durf dit nie probeer verklaar nie”.
Dié meesterskrywer hou hom tans besig met die skryf van kinderverse. Hy skryf nie uit die hoogte af na kinders nie. “Ek skryf vir die kind in myself,” het hy gesê.
As a white South African, I’d like to write to other whites about a book I believe offers a new way of understanding our role in the “race issue”. Into this divided country, one of our deepest thinkers, Antjie Krog, has dared to publish Begging to Be Black – my choice for non-fiction book of the year in 2009, and a book I maintain is one of the most important to be released post-1994.
I realise that is a sweeping statement, that many people don’t like Krog’s writing or her politics, and that many whites are of the opinion that the past is past and it’s time to move on. Nevertheless, I stand by it because in her book Krog lifts the carpet and asks us at least to look at the elephant in the room.
Where oh where can one buy South African poetry, laments Kalk Bay Books‘ Ann Donald. Apparently local poets’ verses are not easily found in bookstores and the publishers who support them are struggling. Why is there such a general lack of interest in poetry?
In January I was part of a large gathering of poetry fans who had the privilege of listening to a live performance of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land by John Cartwright, accompanied on the double bass by Leroy Cowley.
For 45 minutes we were entranced by the words and the music, and were reminded of how rare a pleasure it is to hear classics such as this read aloud (Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats sung loudly on an opera stage may be entertaining, but doesn’t count).
Alert! Sarah Ruden, acclaimed translator of Vergil’s Aeneid, and friend to many a Cape writer – Ruden lived in Cape Town for many years – has just released The New Places, a collection of her new and selected poems.
The New Places is currently only available in ebook format – and it can be purchased online from lulu.com for just ten US cents per poem, as the author puts it. The book follows on from Ruden’s debut collection, which won the CNA award, Other Places (Justified Press, 1995).
Here’s Sarah’s email advising us of the news:
***
Target
(With grovelling apologies to George Herbert)
Yesterday I was shuffling through a store And choosing several things I didn’t need: Lipstick, conditioner, a candy bar, A gel pen, Tupperware, ceramic beads—
But at the orange cheese popcorn I was sighing About professed ideals and tedious jobs. Was this the best my long hours could be buying? I peered at several carts of other slobs—
Then heard a laugh, and turned, and Love was there: “How could I mind you buying some cheap thing Out of your costly work—how would I dare? I bought you out of all My suffering,
In spite of what it said about My taste, And the endlessly more worthwhile things to do— And no, I’ve never thought it was a waste: I’m Love, you idiot, and though you’re you,
I hold you in extravagant compassion. No yard sale browser ever gave less thought To use or charm or storage space or fashion— And yet I never part with what I’ve bought.”
*
Hello, everybody!
With the help of your friendship, advice, teaching, and prayers, I’ve had some success in commercial publishing during the past few years. However, when it comes to poetry book publication, a line of Dante applies best:
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate. [Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.]
I’ve now done what I never expected to and published a lulu.com ebook, The New Places, which is a collection of my new and selected poems.
My poetic oeuvre has been celebrated at the All-Alberta Musical Saw Festival’s Lyric Competition/Moose Cook-Off with the judgment “People who like stuff like this would like this.” In case you think you would like it, the new book is available for $5—that’s 10¢ a poem—and does not need to be printed, so that you can save toner and trees.
BOOK Chat regular Ingrid Andersen writes in on a new initiative inspired by BOOK Chat and the Book Lounge’s Mervyn Sloman.
It all started right here on Book Chat
Confession time: I get dreadfully envious when I read regularly on BOOK SA about the great literary vibe going in Cape Town’s Book Lounge.
This story really begins when Mervyn Sloman challenged me…
In August last year, amidst the animated congratulations on BOOK Chat for Mervyn on the Book Lounge’s being named the best bookshop in the country at the PASA/SABA Sefika awards dinner, I asked Mervyn if he didn’t want to start something like that in my own town, Pietermaritzburg. Locals here reminisce about the good old days of poetry readings in Maritzburg – and I was missing the poetry readings at NELM, the public library and the Rhodes English Department in Grahamstown.
“We love books, we’re passionate about some of the amazing writing coming out of SA and we work damn hard. For that, we’ve received wonderful support from people. There’s no reason why others can’t do the same, be it in Maritzburg or anywhere else for that matter.”
Straight talk, Mervyn. The problem is, I’m always game for a challenge.
Well, I wasn’t about to start a book store, and I don’t have time to launch a large venture – so with all of this in mind, I approached Cheryl, the local Exclusive Books branch manager at the Midlands Mall, and Val, the manager of Fego, its partner coffee shop, with a proposal for a regular Poetry Cafe, which would be supported and publicised by Exclusive Books. Both managers were very enthusiastic and supportive. I undertook to co-ordinate the readings and the poets.
The idea was that four times a year, on Monday nights, poetry readings will be held. Local poets would be invited to read. (And to sell their books themselves, should they wish – very generous of Exclusive Books).
The first Poetry Cafe kicked off recently on February 8th, when local poets, Kobus Moolman, Floss Mitchell and myself entertained a lively crowd in a delightfully gesellige literary cafe vibe. Poetry had decidedly returned to the everyday marketplace in PMB.
Further readings are planned in May, August and October, with three published poets reading at each event. Kudos to Exclusive Books and Fego in the Midlands!
‘n Mens sal nie sommer sport en literatuur saamvoeg nie, maar dit is presies wat die organiseerders van die Woordfees beplan om vanjaar te doen – en wat hulle aanbied lyk beslis belowend!
Met die sokker-wêreldbeker om die draai is dié fees, wat van 1-7 Maart in Stellenbosch gehou word, se tema vanjaar “baljaar”. Oudergewoonte gaan die woord in alle sfere gevier word. Dit sluit in beprekinge, debatte, toneelstukke, musiekvertonings, kuns en kos. Vanjaar word daar egter ook gekyk na die rol van die woord in sport.
Só word daar in diskoers met Freek Robinson vanjaar gevra: “Wie se sokker-wêreldbeker is dit?” en “Gaan die wêreldbeker kool ekonomies die sous werd wees?” Supersport bied “Woordfiks” aan, waar sportuitsaaiers se gebruik van woorde onder die loep kom. Die iArt Gallery en David Krut Publishing stel ook die offisiële plakkaat van die 2010 Sokker-wêreldbeker ten toon.
Woorde en sport word vermeng en so ook woorde en ander genres. In “Oopmond” kom digters soos Danie Marais (Al is die maan ‘n misverstand), Jo Prins en Ronel Nel (En die Here het foto’s geneem oor Vanderbijlpark) byvoorbeeld teen musikante van Klopjag en DKW te staan in ‘n “bekgeveg met tunes” (4 Maart om 20:15 in die Fismer-saal teen R40). Dana Snyman (Op die toneel) en Klopjag span saam om die gehoor op ‘n reis te neem in “Baby as ek verby ry…” (5 Maart om 20:15 in die Fismer-saal teen R80) en Laurinda Hofmeyr span met akteurs saam om die werk en lewe van Breyten Breytenbach (Oorblyfsel/Voice Over) in woord en lied uit te beeld. (6 Maart 17:30 en 7 Maart 18:00 in die Japie Krige-saal teen R80). Dit is ter viering van Breytenbach se 70ste verjaarsdag.
Nog ‘n “groot gees”, Tannie Evita Bezuidenhout, is ‘n spesiale gas by vanjaar se Woordfees. Sy kom stel haar nuwe kookboek, Kossie Sikelela, bekend (2 Maart om 15:00 in die HB Thom Teater – Gratis) en sy is ook op die verhoog te sien in “‘n Koeksister vir Zuma” (2 Maart om 20:15 en 4 Maart om 20:15 in die HB Thom Teater teen R100).
Talle boeke wat die afgelope jaar verskyn het, sal deur hul skrywers bespreek word:
Naweek deur Toast Coetzer (6 Maart om 09:30 in die kykNET-Boektent teen R30)
Immergroen deur Dave Pepler (5 Maart om 10:00 in die Erfurthuis – Gratis)
Apostroof deur Fanie Olivier (3 Maart om 18:00 in die Erfurthuis teen R40)
Dit is ook nie net Afrikaanse of Suid-Afrikaanse skrywers wat aan die woord is nie. Soos gewoonlik word Nederlandse skrywers, toneelspelers en kunstenaars in die fees betrek, veral by die Neerlandistiekdag (6 Maart, 09:00-14:00 in Lokaal 693 in die Lettere gebou teen R50) en die Soete Groete-ete (5 Maart om 19:00 by Stellenrust teen R170).
Die Zimbabwese skrywer Shimmer Chinodya kom ook oor sy boeke gesels (5 Maart om 17:00 in die kykNET-Boektent teen R30).
Nuwe skrywers word nie afgeskeep nie. Nuwe stemme 4, ‘n bundel propvol werke van nuwe digters word by die fees bekendgestel (5 Maart om 18:00 by die Erfurthuis – Gratis).
‘n Splinternuwe toneelstuk, Draadwerk, die wenner van die Nagtegaal Teksprys, word vir die eerste keer by die Woordfees opgevoer (6 Maart om 20:15 en 7 Maart om 18:00 in die HB Thom Teater teen R80). Willem Anker se nuwe toneelstuk, Skrapnel, kan ook nie gemis word nie (4 Maart om 18:00 en 6 Maart om
09:30 in die HB Thom Teater teen R80).
Vir die duur van die week sal daar verskeie kunsuitstallings in Stellenbosch te sien wees, byvoorbeeld “Oor die einders van die bladsy” waar kunstenaars met die konsep “boek” gespeel het.
Die fees bied beslis iets vir almal. Besoek gerus die Woordfees webtuiste vir die volledige program.
Feestelike Frankryk: Fabels en Geregte uit die Franse Platteland deur Louis Jansen van Vuuren, Hardy Olivier, Anet Pienaar Boektuisblad EAN: 9781868423606 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Alert! Sarah Ruden, 
