Grahamstown launch of Burnt Offering by Joan Metelerkamp

November 4th, 2009 by Colleen

Modjaji Books and NELM (The National English Literary Museum)
take great pleasure in inviting you to the Grahamstown Launch of

Joan Metelerkamp’s 7th collection of poetry

Burnt Offering

On Thursday 26th November 2009
At 5.30
The National English Literary Museum in Beaufort Street, Grahamstown

Robert Berold (who edited the collection) will introduce Joan Metelerkamp and Burnt Offering.
Wine and snacks will be served

RSVP: Crystal Warren at C.Warren@ru.ac.za or tel: 046 622 7042

About the book
Burnt Offering is Joan Metelerkamp’s seventh collection of poems. The title comes from a poem in a cycle that embodies the labours of the medieval alchemists – heating and burning, transformation of passionate intensity, the search for an enduring element. In the process malignant doubt is burnt off, and what takes its place is trust in the everyday:

take this day, here, take it
all its clarity, all its gold –

Like all of Metelerkamp’s work, these generous poems draw on and weave together, with this poet’s distinctive energy and passion, the details of family and rural life, dreams, landscapes and journeys:

the chainsaw in the valley;

the chainsong of canaries, cisticolas, sombre bulbul, sunbirds,
despite the cloud cover;

the script of named fynbos; the clear horizon, the still sea;

the discomfort of day’s plans, narratives, narratives.

About the author
Joan Metelerkamp is the author of seven books of poems: Towing the Line (1992), Stone No More (1995), Into the day breaking (2000), Floating Islands (2001), Requiem (2003), Carrying the Fire (2005), and Burnt Offering (2009). She lives with her family in the Southern Cape.

Book details