Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category
by Carolyn on May 16th, 2012
Uitspraak: wortel
Die titel en die kragtige bandontwerp (’n kunswerk deur Christiaan Diedericks, Death of the Inside Warrior) roep die aflegging van aspekte van die self op.
In “Skielik skemer” word die titel van toepassing gemaak op die digter John Berryman, wat in 1972 selfmoord gepleeg het, maar dit word deurgetrek met betrekking tot die liriese spreker in verskeie verse en van toepassing gemaak op die korpus van De Lange se vorige bundels.
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by Lindsay on May 16th, 2012
Verdict: stick
If writer Lesego Rampolokeng was given to overt off-stage narcissism, he would probably compare himself to a Johnny Dyani bassline. In a country in which populist guitarist Jimmy Dludlu just took a South African Music Award for best jazz album, Rampolokeng’s increasing obscurity is nothing if not symbolic.
In 2007 the journal Chimurenga put out its 11th issue, Conversations with Poets Who Refuse to Speak. Had that volume been released this year, Rampolokeng would have featured in its pages, reiterating his “difficulty” with being thought of as a “performance poet” while throwing in some caustic humour about bards who sell petrol and body lotion.
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by Carolyn on May 8th, 2012
Uitspraak: wortel
Kort ná Tom Gouws se bekroonde bundel Ligloop (2010) verskyn Stigmata (2012). Oppervlakkig gesproke lyk dit of die beklemtoning van die lig nou plekmaak vir ‘n visie op die donker; asof die bundel die beginsel van verwonding, en veral tekens of manifestasies daarvan, aan die orde stel en die digter daarmee ‘n somber terrein betree. Maar is dit so, en hoe pak Gouws dit aan?
Eerstens is die digter klaarblyklik sterk onder die indruk daarvan dat hy tekste skep tussen, uit en saam met ‘n magdom van geskrewe en ander tekste. Deur die motto’s wat dikwels die verse vergesel, sowel as deur verwysings binne die gedigte, sit hy die ketting van optekening voort om die idee van ‘n gelaagdheid van tekste oor te dra en die nuutgeskepte poësieteks in ‘n breër perspektief te plaas. Die leser word nie slegs gekonfronteer met ʼn enkele stuk weefwerk, selfs die enkele draad van Gouws se hand nie, maar gedwing om wyer en dieper te kyk – na ‘n oneindige of tapisserie, ʼn web waarin verskillende weefsels meespeel om dimensie aan die nuwe teks te gee. Lesers weet al dat dit ‘n kenmerk van hedendaagse tekste is en dat die postmodernisme so ‘n veelheid en verweefdheid sanksioneer omdat dit die kompleksiteit van dinge onder die aandag bring. Hierdie benadering van hibriditeit, vermenging en veelheid is die keersy van die eenvoudige en gestroopte siening, aanbieding of gedig, en ʼn enkelvoudige kyk op sake. Vir Gouws gaan dit hier om die web en die wonder daarvan; dit is wat hy wil sigbaar maak.
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by Sophy on Apr 30th, 2012
Alert! New Contrast, South Africa’s foremost prose and poetry journal, has a new look.
Formed from an amalgamation of the earlier journals Contrast and Upstream, New Contrast has become something of an institution in the world of SA Lit since its inception in 1990. Now Volume 40, No.1 of the journal has just been released, with a cover design that deviates substantially from that of previous issues (see the minimalist Volume 40 cover above and the colourful Volume 39 cover below). The journal has also gained a new editor in Michael King, previously on the journal’s board of directors, who has taken over the reigns from Hugh Hodge.
Contributors to Volume 40, No.1 include Azila Reisenberger, Silke Heiss, Allan Kolski Horwitz, Julian de Wette and Patricia Schonstein. We look forward to seeing what the new look New Contrast has in store!
New Contrast 155
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by Sophy on Apr 26th, 2012
London based poet Katharine Kilalea, author of the award-winning collection One Eye’d Leigh, has been chosen to represent South Africa, the country of her birth, in the inaugural Poetry Parnassus, to be held at London’s Southbank Centre from 26 June to 1 July.
The Poetry Parnassus is an attempt to recapture the cultural spirit of the ancient Olympic Games, which included, among its athletic competitions, the display of works by sculptors and poets. The Poetry Parnassus is part of the finale of the Cultural Olympiad, which is being held to coincide with the 2012 Olympic Games. An estimated 204 poets, one from each one of the Olympic nations, are expected to take part in what is being called the “biggest gathering of poets in world history”.
From Ireland’s Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney to Kim Jong-il’s exiled former court poet Jang Jin Seong, hundreds of poets from around the world are set to gather on the banks of the Thames this summer in an attempt to recreate the poetic spirit of the ancient Olympic Games.
Thousands of nominations were received from the public for the best poet in their country, with a panel including the poet Simon Armitage and other experts whittling this down to find one poet from each of the 204 competing Olympic nations. One hundred and forty poets, from Kazakhstan’s 24-year-old Akerke Mussabekova to 83-year-old Anise Koltz from Luxembourg, have already confirmed attendance at the festival, with the quest now to pin down writers from the remaining 64 Olympic countries.
Press Release: Southbank Centre Poetry Parnassus
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by Carolyn on Apr 24th, 2012
‘n Gemengde uitspraak: “Soom is ‘n bundel met absoluut wisselende kwaliteit”
Ons weet die meeste letterkundiges is closet-digters, maar dit bly altyd ʼn groot verrassing as ʼn deurwinterde letterkundige eers laat in sy loopbaan debuteer. T.T. Cloete se toetrede as digter tot die produksiesy van die literêre sisteem het almal laat regop sit. In bundel na bundel het hy ons getoon wat beleë digterskap behels. Dis noodwendig dat Hennie van Coller, ten regte, of ten onregte, dan met hom vergelyk sal word. Maar dis te verstane dat ʼn digter wat lank in die tand is teen die bestes van sy tradisie gemeet word – ʼn mens skryf immers altyd teen ʼn literêre tradisie in. (Alhoewel die digter in ʼn onderhoud met Versindaba dit duidelik gestel het dat hy nie by enige heersende literêre tendense aansluit nie.)
Met die verloop van jare het Van Coller in verskeie literêre tydskrifte, versamelbundels en selfs kompetisies sy kreatiewe staal getoon. En met hierdie lywige bundel van 90 gedigte wys hy duidelik dat hy nie bloot ʼn Sondagsdigter is nie.
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by Sophy on Apr 16th, 2012
In an article for The New Yorker‘s Book Bench, Teju Cole, author of the acclaimed novel Open City, considers the works of German writer WG (Winfried Georg) Sebald.
According to Cole, Sebald’s poetry not only contains the same “mournful grandeur” of the prose for which he is better known, but it also reflects his skilful blurring of literary boundaries.
Cole’s piece centres around Sebald’s book of selected poems, Across the Land and the Water, released roughly 10 years after his death. He argues that, because Across the Land and the Water contains much of the writer’s early work, it is “different to every other Sebald book”:
Throughout his career, W. G. Sebald wrote poems that were strikingly similar to his prose. His tone, in both genres, was always understated but possessed of a mournful grandeur. To this he added a willful blurring of literary boundaries and, in fact, almost all his writing, and not just the poetry and prose, comprised history, memoir, biography, autobiography, art criticism, scholarly arcana, and invention. This expert mixing of forms owed a great deal to his reading of the seventeenth-century melancholics Robert Burton and Thomas Browne, and Sebald’s looping sentences were an intentional homage to nineteenth-century German-language writers like Adalbert Stifter and Gottfried Keller. But so strongly has the style come to be associated with Sebald’s own work that even books that preceded his, such as those by Robert Walser and Thomas Bernhard, can seem, from our perspective as readers of English translations, simply “Sebaldian.”
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Photo courtesy The Guardian
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by Carolyn on Apr 11th, 2012
Uitspraak: wortel
Amper Elders is Louis Esterhuizen se negende bundel en Wat die water onthou (2010) is bekroon met die Protea-prys vir poësie. Amper Elders dra die sub-titel: ʼn reisjoernaal. Reis is ʼn vorm van transportasie, van beweging. Sowel die binnelandskap van die digter as die vreemde omgewing word in hierdie soort gedig gestulp. En geen digter keer ooit onaangeraak terug na ʼn reiservaring nie. Die binnelandskap registreer iets van die komplekse, vreemde buitelandskap. Party digters hou ʼn notaboek; ander herkonstrueer ná die reis die impak hiervan in die gedig. ʼn Joernaal impliseer dat die digter ten tyde van die reis aantekeninge en inskrywings gemaak het wat hy dan later tot poësie verander.
Reis is nie net opwindend nie. Dit is eweneens gevaarlik, selfs by tye vervelig. Ander kere is dit weer spannend. En die digterskap is eweneens ʼn reis. Ruth Padel in The Poem and the Journey – and sixty poems to read along the way (Chatto & Windus, 2007) gebruik dus nie om dowe neute nie die reismetafoor om die aard van die digkuns op te som.
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by Carolyn on Apr 3rd, 2012
Uitspraak: twee wortels!
Hoe lyk die vingerafdruk en DNS
van die woekeraar met “die stil avontuur”,
die “glansende kiemsel”, die “woord en wonder”?
Daardie een wat ‘n vilanelle, rondeel
of Luc Bat soos ‘n stiervegter kan beheer?
Dié vraag word in die gedig Klankdig in Joan Hambidge se nuutste bundel Lot se vrou gevra. Dele van die antwoord skemer deur elke gedig in dié bundel. Of die bundel inderdaad beoordeel kan word soos die sprekende ek later in dieselfde gedig vrees, sal hierdie resensie aan die lig bring:
In Joan Hambidge se oeuvre is daar ’n aantal bundels wat hoogtepunte registreer – bundels soos Verdraaide raaisels, Ewebeeld, Lykdigte en Visums by verstek”. Met Lot se vrou bereik Hambidge ’n nuwe hoogtepunt in haar digkuns.
Kritici het dikwels daarop gewys dat Hambidge se bundels eenselwig is en telkens terugkeer na bekende temas: verlies van ’n geliefde, vorme van afskeid neem en selfgerigte verse. Dat haar temas in onderskeie bundels ander nuanses en ander vorme van diepgang verkry, is gereeld misgekyk. Op stuk van sake: Skryf digters en skrywers nie maar ’n lewe lank een bundel en een roman nie? In “Fonteine van Tivoli” (Dolosse) merk DJ Opperman in gesprek met Aristoteles op:
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by wombatsamwilson on Apr 2nd, 2012
Verdict: carrot
Malikhanye is Mxolisi Nyezwa’s third collection of poetry, continuing his trend of potent and highly lyrical poetry containing the reality of a landscape that is both political and personal, both painful and beautiful, in writing filled with intense and startlingly evocative imagery.
Everyday experiences and things become intensely real in these poems, rendered brutally potent by his use of images and symbols. His steel container in Motherwell where he operates his business becomes a “blue ship” on a shallow sea, symbolising the uncertainty and hardship of poetic explorations into meaning and experience, as well as a sense of alienation and existential solitude. You get compelling pictures of a landscape, one of pain and beauty and intense reality. Mxolisi proclaims: “i’m a shadow/ geometrical/ in a blue ship/ freezing/ or boiling.” And elsewhere: “my house is built of sharp stones/ and red quills/ from a hornet’s wings”, evoking in startling terms the real nature of the personal and its relation to being.
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Apr
