I’m really pleased to see reviews of the poetry collections, as there aren’t many publications that carry reviews of Poetry. So thanks for that Litnet. I look forward to seeing reviews of Oleander and Burnt Offering in due course.
Talking of which Joan Metelerkamp read from Burnt Offering at Wordsworths in Knysna last evening. Joan let me know today that the event was well attended, and Gillian Carter introduced Joan. I will see if I can get a copy of her talk and post it. I’m longing to hear Joan read from Burnt Offering. She did read at the Cape Town Book Fair last year, but only one poem.
In preparing a Modjaji Books catalogue, I was aware that I didn’t have any comments on Fiona Zerbst’s new book, Oleander, apart from the shout at the back of the book by Rustum Kozain. I asked Fiona if any of her literary friends had read it and if so to send me any comments. Well it took her a while to get this done, but it was worth the wait. I think Fiona is someone for whom self promotion is not an easy job. (But speaking as a publisher, it is important for writers to be able to do this to some extent, otherwise your books will lie unread in the distributor’s warehouse. And we all know where that leads…)
Here are comments on Fiona’s book by Peter Wilhelm, Karen Jayes and Gabeba Baderoon.
In Oleander, Fiona Zerbst’s lyrical voice reveals itself – not for the first time, she has been long been evident as an interpreter of her private and public worlds — but yet again strongly, freshly. Her continual reinvention of the self – and self-consciousness about the frame and objects of the invention – is perhaps more fully present than in any other young contemporary poet in South Africa. This is because the poems – offered as the fruit of expanding experience — suggest (along with a canny and precise observation of the natural world) an inner voyage not simply of discovery, but of a need to place this process – one of passing through as well as lingering to suggest and explore – in a personal, social, and spiritual adventure. This has its stopping-points (literally as well as metaphorically) in the world beyond ourselves as well as within our own perspective on our faith and hope and our embedding in the evolution of all the qualities of decency, passion, charity, and lucidity.
Above all, Ms. Zerbst is unafraid to allow her gifts both full and yet discreet expression. The visible is intensified; and this is present in poems on her travels in South-East Asia, her tracing of the workings of love in our racked world, and, abundantly, the green places as well the Cambodias of the soul. There is no flinching in such an expressive – and yet gentle – invitation into her lovely mind. One notes an affinity – beautifully stated – with several divergent life-artists from Frida Kahlo and Thom Gunn to men and women who root their being in experience and live as fully as the cage of life allows.
The intensity of her focus is truly realised: as in “Death of a Dog” with its compassion, illumination, and unfleering observation. So again in the notably titled “In Praise of Loss” with its yearning for transcendence. This collection shows a person reaching for her full human potential, and choosing her right path.
The exquisite language of Oleander is integral to the ethos of the collection – in an ungiving world, the poems find an honest, austere beauty in the stories of those whom history erases. Here, the patient ghosts in abandoned places speak. ”This was a school/before it was wire and silence,” we learn in “Remembering S-21 Cambodia”.
In these generous and attentive poems, we hear the quiet engine that moves the whole world: “Gravity makes its noise,/a factory hum’. The poet takes evident delight in the eccentric, welling sounds of nature in “Shredding,” where birds “scritch in mulch/and leaves.’
And there is always beauty in the fragile body, as our gaze works along ‘the beadwork nubs of spine’.
Each poem holds in it gigantic themes of loss and attachment (to place in particular) and what it is to create, and the beauty when seasons and landscapes collide, and ever turning time, and movement, always movement, in its careful, very female hands.
Fiona embraces the personal as well the global political, and grapples with the question of separating them, failing that she acknowledges that they are, at least for her, locked in a dance that is unending, unable to be separated, perhaps without a need ever to be.
The rhythm of each poem can be sighing, plucking and attentive, resigned, breaking, dancing, breathing, then reaching at the very end, that last gasp, which invites us to step higher, or dive lower, or leap off the little cliff, or simply take a single magical step across the room… and for this reason is worth reading to the very end.
By exhorting rain-wet, star-skied natural landscapes, she draws us into mysterious clearings, beaches, lakes, constellations inside ourselves… and says that in nature’s desolation and ruthless growth and mysterious pauses, there are moments of great catastrophe and realistion, of creation and of comfort.
Some highlights for me: butterflies, shepardess, oleander Here I found a very deep sense of place, and form, and in these forms – of the beating wings, the stubborn flowers, the icy statue, Fiona conjured up something of the immortal soul of these things, and maintained that personal distance required for a strong, omniscent voice, and through this, that essential thing of fine poetry: the guided epiphany.
leaving the summer house Here I felt unending time, the vacuum of leaving into which step animals haunting, nature’s mysterious coverings, the bend of a creatures paw, hushed shadows. I remembered as a child turning around in the back seat of a car to catch a glimpse of a shadow I thought I’d seen behind me then wondering if it was a creature in my mind, and understanding that it could be, and that was wonderful… Into this pause, this after, imagination seeps and grows. For me, this was a lovely meditation on creativity, on imprinting what we imagine on what we don’t, and cannot ever possibly, know.
patterns I really loved the way this poem opened with a leap; then it picked out the sounds of the seamstress and the factory, the disembodiment of people that the ’system’ requires, and then, within these workplace sounds and rhythms, it hunted for, hunkered after that precious thing, that restless, humane and lofty goal of finding beauty in its patterns. A true writer’s poem, but also a very feminine take on the ‘factory’ that is the unpeaceful world.
The African Publishing Book Recordpublished a short incisive review of Fourth Child by Megan Hall last year. Modjaji Books is delighted that Megan Hall, the first author we published, is participating in the Badilisha Poetry X-change, next week in Cape Town.
Megan Hall Fourth Child. Athlone, South Africa: Modjaji Books, 2007. 55pp price not reported pap. ISBN 9780980272901
These are searingly honest poems that cut deep with deceptive simplicity. Megan Hall approaches love with a clinical romanticism, laying bare long-held hopes and illusions. Fourth Child is a complex, carefully constructed collection of poems. The overall effect is of homely comfort: the reader is invited to cuddle up by the fireside with a glass of wine and enjoy some beautiful lines and images, to share in heartbreaks and, ultimately, to savour the wonderful healing power of words. The author has a dark sense of humour that surfaces at unexpected moments where, rather than reflect a pervading sense of abandonment and disillusion, it elicits an enduring sense that hope and love will prevail.
This is a book the reader will return to repeatedly. Fourth Child is recommended for school libraries, special collections and general readers.
Peter Midgeley University of Alberta The African Book Publishing Record Vol 34, no. 4, 2008
Malika Ndlovu and her new book, Invisible Earthquake – a mother’s journal through stillbirth, got a lot of media coverage this past weekend.
First came the excerpt and short review in Parent 24.com, thanks to Adele Hamilton, and then came the Editor’s Choice pick in the Cape Town community newspaper The Tatler. Chantel Erfort’s carrot: “Invisible Earthquake handles the subject matter of still birth sensitively both in content and packaging, and I recommend this to anyone who is looking for healing or insight into the path that can lead there.”
On Friday Tanya Farber’s interview with Malika is a full half page of the Cape Argus, much of the piece is Farber quoting Malika and summing up by saying that the book is “courageous”.
And then on Saturday, Tyrone August also in a half page interview with Ndlovu in The Weekender talks about Invisible Earthquake and her play, Sister Breyani which is on at The Baxter now this May. Malika tells August that the book is a way of remembering her daughter, of rendering her visible and is a “tribute to my daughter, my only daughter… We were blessed to have her, even for that short time.”
Malika and I are delighted with the positive attention the book is getting.
Malika wrote a Post Script for Invisible Earthquake during the process of turning the manuscript into a book. The manuscript covered journal entries Malika wrote from 2003 to 2006. The Post Script was written in January 2009. She looks back over the six years since she lost her baby and where she is now. What has changed, how she feels now. You will find this moving account and reflection posted by Adele Hamilton on Parent24.com
January 2009
On the 3rd of January 2006 my mother, five close friends and I gathered on a beach at dawn and sat silently in the disappearing dark, listening to the sea. Witnessing the silhouetted mountain and horizon gradually birthed into the light, we finally broke the hush with a few soft, heart-spoken words. I gave each one a white daisy to cast into the waves and we each in our own time approached the icy water’s edge and made our offerings to the sea and sky. Joy carried me at that moment, filled me with a deep gratitude for each precious one who supported me through my journey of recovery.
When I stepped into the water I walked till it washed up to my knees. As the sea swirled around me tugging at my feet in its retreat, I felt the same sudden powerlessness and aloneness of the moment of that single push that finally flushed her from my womb. I started to cry when an unexpected gust of wind caught my daisy, took it from my hand, helped me let it go. I felt myself open instead of close, felt the glow of her, my daughter, being proud of me.
Sistah Judah blogged about reading Whiplash. Here’s an excerpt of what she says…
Oh my Gosh…. What a book. To quote Tracey’s own words, Whiplash “was inspired by the feisty street workers I met during my journalistic research. I was fascinated by the horror of their daily lives, and the audacious courage that it takes to confront it. The main character, ‘Tess’ was born of my deep curiosity and their indomitable spirit.”
It’s Saturday night and we’re sitting around a huge bon fire. It’s a perfect night, not a breeze in the air. It’s after 9pm and I’m restless. I’m watching Brother Gad kneading together flour, mountain garlic and water, and rolling the dough in his hands to form perfect little rolls to be put directly into the fire ash. Unleavened bread, that’s yeast less bread, a favorite amongst many Rasta people, certainly a favourite of mine.
We’re at the annual Reggae Music Paarl Festival and I’m watching the venue fill up with hundreds of Reggae Music lovers, but all I can think about is Tess and the characters in WHIPLASH.
Inside the main tent, hundreds of people gather to watch the live bands entertain and I smile coz I feel like I know a secret.
I disappear out of the crowd and make my way into our personal tent armed with my book, a torch and a slowboat and I spend the rest of the night with Tess. I have a baby growing in my belly so I’m all too happy to be out of the crowd and on my own for a while.
Last Thursday, 12th March, saw The Citizen give Whiplash its umpteenth bright orange review. Thanks to Isabella Morris for putting us in touch with the right person at The Citizen to send the book to. The interview also has an interview dimension. Hlengiwe Mnguni writes:
At one point, author Tracey Farren asked herself what she was doing in such a dark place.
But the death of one of the women she had interviewed as part of her research spurred her on to dig deep and finish her debut novel Whiplash, a book about redemption in the world of prostitution.
“There was this one woman I was really fond of. She was the sweetest person… had an open personality. She was picked up by a client carved, mutilated, killed and buried at the beach,” says Farren from her Cape Town home.
And brutal scenes like these do make appearances in the pages of Whiplash, particularly in the first half.
Whiplash was mentioned as a Book of 2008 in Lagos based NEXT.
Wherever will Whiplash travel next?
Here is my fantasy: I see the movie, Whiplash, I see Charlize Theron in the lead role, starring as Tess. I see the movie made using clever animation and a judicious combination of realistic and surreal filming. I see Charlize walking up onto the stage to receive her Oscar for best actress in the movie, Whiplash.
Who knows how I can get a copy of Whiplash into Charlize’s hands to get the ball rollling?
Whiplash got a great big completely fresh carrot in the February 2009 True Love magazine, review by Melinda Ferguson, the Books Editor.
“Published by the fast-growing, independent publishing house, Modjaji Books, Whiplash is a raw and emotionally honest novel about Tess, a 26-year-old prostitute in Cape Town. Addicted to painkillers, Tess sells her body to support herself. Tess is likeable, funny and creeps under one’s skin almost immediately. It’s a wonderful book and just another example of how South African writing is getting better and better.”
A Joburg Modjaji supporter sent me the “heads-up” that Whiplash was reviewed on the Jenny Crwys Williams show on 702 (can you hear the mounting hysteria in my voice)! To which you can all listen if you want, as there is a podcast…
First came David O’ Sullivan reviewing Shepherds and Butchers - a brilliant review and interview (I sort of wish David would have been the reviewer of Whiplash) and then a piece about the 50th birthday of Tape Aids for the Blind – they do very good work and then — a review of Whiplash. The reviewer loved Whiplash, although she didn’t read it in quite the same way I did. But hey, that is what reading is. She suggested you could read it on the beach or at your pool (a giveaway about the demographics of the 702 Book Show listenership) although she suggested it might not be quite your normal beach or poolside read.
Not sure how this carrot would be described, carrot salad? Carrot and celery juice with a bit of apple thrown in for good measure?
Three Modjaji poets, Helen Moffett, Sindiwe Magona and Megan Hall have all had carrotty reviews in the past couple of weeks on Litnet. The Strange Fruit review was posted by Sophy last week over here on BOOK SA. But if you want to see what Karlien van der Schyff has to say about Magona’s Please, Take Photographsclick here or what Grace Kim’s thoughts on Hall’s Fourth Child are, click here.
