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(115). In short, she elucidates the strategic choices she has been confronted with in her own work. In addition, she demonstrates the complexities of these choices by pro- viding a detailed discussion of the writing of several of her poems, including Small Passing, Transfer, Mending and At the Commission.
The balance which is achieved in the de Kok interview between, on the one hand, a consideration of the contexts that give a poem life and, on the other, questions of craft and technique, is noticeably absent in most of the other interviews. This is not to suggest that the poets concerned have not contemplated the practical questions as deeply, but the lack of attention to this as- pect brings home the overwhelming, near- deterministic power of the political impera- tive in the period covered by the collection.
This is scarcely surprising, given the devel- opments in South Africa during the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed, the value of the collec- tion lies, in part, in the range of insights it provides into the relationship between art and politics during a period of dramatic social change.
But perhaps inevitably there is also, especially if one reads one interview after another, a certain amount of repetition, of mulling over the same questions and com- ing up with similar answers. Perhaps more would be gained if one read each interview in relation rather to that poets work, mov- ing from the poetry itself to the comments about the poetry and back again, so that distinctiveness comes to the fore, rather than the flattening effect which tends to arise from repeated engagement with related preoccupations.
An anthology of this nature would have benefited from a much fuller and more gen- erous introduction. The one provided is only a page long: it was clearly the editors intention that the interviews should speak for themselves. But I believe that most read- ers would have welcomed an introduction
which contextualized and highlighted some of the recurring preoccupations, areas of agreement and divergent views as they emerge in the interviews.
Several poets express anxiety about the precarious state of poetry in this country and uncertainty about its future. Denis Hirson sums up the situation as follows:
Poetry in any case, in any part of the world, expresses a very fragile position existen- tially, and even more so in a country like South Africa where there is not a large place given to literature, and a place no wider than a hairs breadth given to poetry (79).
Poetry in South Africa may well be as beleaguered as Hirson suggests, but the poets who are interviewed in this anthol- ogy tend to provide ardent affirmations of its centrality, however poorly it is being promoted or funded. In their different ways, they attest to the pertinence of Miroslav Holubs large claim that poetry is embedded in everybodys life and it sur- faces in the drastic experiences and during the more dramatic periods of human his- tory (85).
David Medalie
University of Pretoria
Email: [email protected]
it all begins.
Robert Berold (ed.) Scottsville: Gecko Books [an imprint of Natal University Press], 2003. 240 pp, ISBN 1-86914-008-7.
Robert Berolds collection of poetry enti- tled it all begins, recently published by Gecko Books, is a must have for all lovers of poetry and for all serious critics of South African literary outpourings, notwithstand- ing the fact that its content belies the prom- ise invoked by the title, itself suggestive of a new beginning, a turning of the page. Its subtitle is likewise misleading. Although subtitled poems from postliberation South Africa, this anthology includes poems from
TYDSKRIF VIR LETTERKUNDE 41 (1) &' the five years prior to 1994 (and what is
referred to as the first democratic elections) as well as those from the five years after that momentous watershed in our coun- trys history. Effectively, then, this is a record of the wisdom and vision of our poets from the earliest negotiations to free Madiba, through to the unbanning of the ANC and embracing their first five years in Office.
This decade of writing from 1989 to 1999 is of singular importance, for it is our poets who have been our griots recording, for posterity, our memories yet pregnant with the violence of the past. They have also been our sangomas, gathering the herbs and tossing the metaphorical bones so vital for the nations recovery. It is un- doubtedly these poets who have felt the moral responsibility to be the voice of our countrys memory; and it is also their writ- ings that have therefore embodied our sense of national identity. As in Russias com- parably turbulent history, the arts in South Africa have served as the arena for politi- cal, philosophical and religious debate in the absence of a [democratic] parliament and a free press. Nowhere has the artist been more burdened with the task of national leadership, nor more feared and persecuted by the state (Anon. 2002: 32).
This, then, is an important collection, rep- resenting not only ten years of New Coin selections but also a crucial decade in South Africas political history. Reading like a veri- table whos who in South African poetry, it features poems by such anthologized givens as Kelwyn Sole, Lionel Abrahams, Ingrid de Kok, Mazisi Kunene, Stephen Wat- son, Jeremy Cronin and the late Tatamkhulu Afrika among others; but it also includes such hitherto largely unsung voices as Karen Press and Lisa Combrinck, whose Hearts Hunger and In the Moonlight, respec- tively, remind us of our innermost beings, our souls, our essential humanity (even in loss), of the capacity to love that is so nec-
essary to pave the way for the healing of our beloved country.
The collection is divided into eight un- named sections; these are seemingly arbi- trary, but only until one detects the subtle inner coherence informed by a few lines from one of the poems in each of these sec- tions. These function as the proems or epi- graphs to each segment of the text. Take, for example, the first section comprising eleven poems which is introduced by a stanza from Lesego Rampolokengs Lines for Vincent. Here, the nostalgic impera- tive that gives birth to the poem is the red rage of injustice, in lines recalling the na- tions homicidal glory that has left so many of our brave young men dead.
In like manner, the dozen poems in the second movement are informed by their proem, this time from Raid! one of sev- eral poems in this anthology by the cel- ebrated Zimbabwean writer-activist, the late Dambudzo Marechero, whose self-ex- iled voice records the bitter sweetness of
Uhuru. The ambivalences of freedom are also encapsulated by the first poem in this segment. Here, the English Academys 2001 Olive Schreiner award winner, Mzi Mahola, with his telling title How will I trust? sets the tone to this series of twelve cautionary poems including two by popular poet, Vonani Bila.
The pattern is repeated throughout and the final segment contains thirteen poems, appropriately prefaced by Seitlhamo Motsapis river Robert to suggest the theme of lifes dichotomies, and the sym- biosis of hope and despair:
i have one eye full of rivers & welcomes the other is full of flickers and fades.
As the blurb on the back cover an- nounces, these are essentially experimen- tal poems, the innovation of which in- heres in their inimitable African rhythms reminiscent of the Drum generation but with the newer Kwaito beat; their catholic para- digm shifts; their unexpected yet compel-
TYDSKRIF VIR LETTERKUNDE 41 (1) ' ling use of englishes; and their graphic im-
ages often yoked by violence together
(to appropriate Alexander Popes reaction- ary critique of mixed metaphors). Consider, for instance, Don MacLennans fructifying fig trees, the full blooded fruit of which at once belies and accrues from the suicidal climatic furnace of the drought of March
in his poem The sky is on fire tonight.
Then, there is Karen Presss poem incar- nate eternity where jasmine flourishes like the weed of rape, and sun warmed strawberries signify blood, the blood of the nations endemic violence against women and children.
Perhaps the most interesting experimen- tal poem in terms of voice and mode, remi- niscent as it is of the mode that CS Lewis termed proemdra, with its a cross-generic mix of poetry, prose and drama is Ari Sitass Delirium (final section of Slave Trades). Sitass satanic apocalyptic vision is tempered only by his powerful, central in- junction
you will realise that you need to invent and grow the trees of paradise again and his clever subversion of the clichéd Cartesian adage into
I hope still, therefore
I am.
The new poetic consciousness, as articu- lated in Lesego Ramolokengs rap narra- tive Welcome to the New Consciousness, is earthy, sensuous and con-sensual, rooted and transcendent, a bringing to- gether of the sacred and the profane, a syn- thesis of Euro- and Afro-centrism, reflect- ing strands of the partial recovery inherent in Modernism and the kaleidoscopic chaos of Postmodernism.
The anthology is commendable for its vast range here we have in a singular col- lection 107 poems with something for eve- ryone. In the words of the editor, poetry is the resilient human vision, the mind flying, the body speaking.
It all begins with the voice and vision of the people, for the people, by the peo- ple! Not since Wole Soyinkas Poems of Black Africa (1975) have we had a collection with a greater capacity to help the nation to move ahead or sideways, by the thorough- ness of ingestion within a new organic mould, by the original strength of the new entity. As a final year student noted in re- sponse to an examination rubric I set to test Broken Strings: The Politics of Poetry (1992) against the presupposition that poetry is more compelling than pure political pro- test or sloganeering, is more than the mere sum of its parts, is the most intimate form of communication:
If poetry is man meaning to man [as opposed to political clap-trap], then consid- erations of the closely intimate and per- sonal precede the more totalizing notions of the body politic. The accent falls on mean- ing what is important and what is meant or signified and not (as with political dia- tribes) what can be achieved in the saying or writing. To put it in another way, the true achievement of poetry does not reside in its ability to communicate ideology but, instead, in the way it bridges all agendas and hones in on the most basic (and the most political) state of being of all, the fel- lowship between listener and speaker.
It all begins invites just such an intimate fellowship.
Reference: Anon. 2002. BBC History, 3(11): 32.
Rosemary Gray University of Pretoria
Email: [email protected]
