This fall, issue #4 of The Common (see yesterday’s post) will include a ninety-page anthology of contemporary Anglophone poetry from South Africa guest-edited by Kelwyn Sole, the first such collection to be printed in the U. S. since Denis Hirson’s The Lava of This Land appeared nearly twenty years ago. (A couple of years ago the excellent online magazine Big Bridge did its own feature of fiction and poetry from South Africa, I should note.) Sole has gathered 24 poets ranging in age from the first generation born after the National Party came to power (1948) to those born near the end of Apartheid (1994), from the internationally established to the absolutely emerging—at least one of whom has yet to publish a full length collection. (For a complete list leaked early, please see the end of this post.)
Kelwyn Sole’s own new collection of poems, Absent Tongues, his sixth, has just been published in South Africa by Hands-On Books. What I admire most about this excellent book is Sole’s ability to balance political content with love poetry, urban immediacy with the nearly pastoral. As Rustum Kozain cogently puts it: Sole’s “political poems refute any notion that political art can never be art. His insights draw us into the heartlessness of our new political masters, the confused brutality behind the murder of poor immigrants, and of a hovering ‘sadness at what might have been/ had we more courage/ had we searched/ further than our skins our pockets.’” Sole’s poetry, Kozain affirms, functions as South Africa’s “national conscience.”
Here are two poems from ABSENT TONGUES by Kelwyn Sole:
Not a poem on behalf of the poor
1
The poor are lighter
than a fish-head bone:
and their words, seeming
at times guttural and heavy
in their throats as stones,
blow away on a first breeze
untroubling as dandelions.
The protocols of the rich
fatten, and promise one day
to absolve them also.
It never happens. So
they endure, dazzled
by the hope of a beauty
they think others have,
their feet at the point
of an abyss with no step,
no mirror, just knowledge
of their falling.
Snagged between horizons
and billboards
spoken to
by those enormous beings
painted in two dimensions
with arms that terminate
in soap or handshakes
who point the way
in lieu of the tame human
parings of the State who
keep their gatherings
inside closed rooms
- those
who perorate, or legislate,
or write on others’ behalf -
in all the places where the poor
never themselves set down
their bums or thumbprints.
2
In a world of money
no one needs to recognise
the palm
not held out
because it keeps
its dignity and purpose:
and, bereft of the function
of pity they provide
for those with wealth,
the final task of the poor
is an expectation
to stay unnoticed:
to remain grateful,
to cause no trouble.
The poor, in fact,
are allowed to provide
no answers of their own:
because, if they do,
their answers finally
are to those questions
those who possess,
or squander life
on power, do not
want to hear.
I want what comes after
I want what comes after:
the first lifted bucket’s clang
once the rooster’s all crowed out,
a keen thirst for fresh water
as sequel to that sound
your smell drying on my skin,
your fingers brushing briefly
against my stomach as you stir
awake from dozing: or, when
you’ve gone, an empty shape
left sprawled asleep within
the blankets on my bed.
I want what comes after:
the miraculous vigil of a moth
unburnt beside us in the sheets;
toast starting to brown, the nails
of a scabby cat across the floor,
conclaves of birds upon the eaves
the rustle of trees as they begin
to post their letters to the wind -
wind that’s strong enough to blow
off a roof of morning mist, a sky
like a field that begs a plough
emerging. And the two of us
looking outside to find the dawn
to which we’ll trust our bodies.
For an interesting and detailed bio, bibliography, audio, and further work by Kelwyn Sole, please visit Badilisha Poetry and Poetry International Web.
Here is an early look at the list of contributors to The Common’s upcoming anthology of Anglophone poets from South Africa, guest-edited by Kelwyn Sole:
Robert Berold
Angifi Dladla
Ingrid de Kok
Kelwyn Sole
Ari Sitas
Yvette Christianse
Karen Press
Makhosazana Xaba
Finuala Dowling
Kobus Moolman
Lesego Rampolokeng
Liesl Jobson
Rustum Kozain
Mxolisi Nyezwa
Gabeba Baderoon
Fiona Zerbst
Alan Finlay
Khulile Nxumalo
Vonani Bila
Malika Ndlovu
Nadine Botha
Katharine Kilalea
Haidee Kruger
Genna Gardini
