Cover Art: Sarah Beath

Extract from 'Bird-Monk Seding' (Deep South, 2017) by Lesego Rampolokeng

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Mutabaruka came and said revolutionary poets have become entertainers.

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“Today poems are like flags/ flying on liquor store roof/ poems are like baboons/ waiting to be fed by tourists,” said Jayne Cortez.

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Why you worship cannibals? Gimme the magic in the ancient Ethiopian scrolls. There’s no greater Afro-futurism than that.”

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Along came Lee Scratch Perry saying: “This old man came with a homemade bomb, this old man came with a bass, came with a drum, came with a strum in the bum bum bum. This old man shot down Satan’s spaceship.

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Sun Ra said: “Black people, they’re back there, in the past; a past somebody manufactured for them. It is not their past. It is not their history.”

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Kodwo Eshun said: “Ancient Africans are alien gods from a despotic future and people responded:
the time has come for the war of the gods.”

1
I want to start off with a few quotations here, from something I wrote a while ago.

Lesego Rampolokeng 2019 © Shepi Mati

Cover Art: Dolla Sapeta, 'Mahoti'

Cover Art: Sarah Beath

Cover Art: Dumile Feni, 'Man Singing'

From the article by Lesego Rampolokeng: “Outside the Classroom/Off the Page" for 'The Fertile Ground of Misfortune: Teaching Practices in Creative Writing', edited by Stacy Hardy & Robert Berold (ISEA, Makhanda, 2017)

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Cover Art: by Quinten Edward Williams, 'Crossing Over'

"Global Village Idiot" from 'otherwise you well?' (Deep South, 2021) by Richard Fox

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Rather, poets such as Press give voice to powerfully political themes in a manner which does not preclude the private, the dissonant, and the bewildered space of individual life and consciousness.

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With such an approach, the personal and the political cease to be viewed as opposite and antagonistic poles.

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In other words, several of these poets undertake a spiritual orientation which includes, rather than negates, politics.

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A general tendency, again, is to wish to explore political experiences and predicaments as they are filtered through the human psyche.

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The Cape Town poet Karen Press gives voice to this growing preoccupation when she speaks of her attraction for "powerfully imagistic poetry because it provokes energies in me that I find really exciting."

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[...]
Among some poets, there has been a willingness to explore new usages of description and imagery.

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"much of the imperial drawing room, dressed up in African motifs & blurred with accidental obscurities"; arguing instead for a poetry which could reach the ordinary men & women of S. Africa while avoiding the "charlatan, the purveyor under the guise of 'people's art' of the slogan & the cliche."

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Thus, in a letter to the literary journal Contrast in 1989, John Charlton, a poet who writes under the pseudonym of Tatamkhulu Afrika, criticized previous South African poetry for still containing

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Moreover, they sought simultaneously to work on technical aspects of poetic craft and search for an aesthetic and a viewpoint more personally adequate to the fragmented and fragmenting world in which South Africans find themselves.

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Such poets first gave an example, in their poems, of how private and intimate experience is ineluctably tinged by the wider political struggles taking place.

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but also attempted to juxtapose these with, and often filter them through, a delineation of the contradictory, paradoxical, bitter, and even amusing ways in which people experienced their everyday lives in the midst of political strife.

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This emancipatory example coexisted with a number of other poets - such as Donald Parenzee, Ingrid de Kok, Achmat Dangor, and Robert Berold - who not only demonstrated a concern for the political issues of the day,

Kelwyn Sole 2017 © Poetry Africa

Cover Art: Mongezi Ncaphayi, 'Come on, now - 2013'

From the article by Kelwyn Sole: “Bird Hearts Taking Wing: Trends in Contemporary South African Poetry Written in English" for 'World Literature Today', 1996

For the full article, see Kelwyn Sole's 'Walking, Falling' book page on the Deep South website:
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Cover Art: Rosamund Stanford

Two extracts from 'Under dark under branches' by Joan Metelerkamp (Deep South, 2024)

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One of them was my own madness in attempting to be a “good enough mother” to the writers Modjaji published (all of them women) who were not seen by the “father” – the literary establishment, which is largely controlled by men and animus-driven women. How on earth did I think I could do that?

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In thinking about why I have had several difficult interactions with writers I have published, I came to have many insights.

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I’d originally thought of making the book both about my mother and Modjaji, but in the end this seemed too big and complicated. Interestingly though, these two themes had quite a lot in common.

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Another difference was that while the blog was available for anyone to read, my name was not attached to it. These factors influenced the writing in subtle ways.
[...]

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My new book, 'my mother, my madness' arose from a secret blog I started in the early days of taking care of my mother. Reflecting on it now, writing in a notebook or journal is different from writing a blog. In a blog, there is an assumed reader.

Colleen Higgs 2023 © Kate Olivier

Cover Art: Carla Kreuser

From the article by Colleen Higgs: “Writing: Colleen Higgs – My Mother, My Madness, Or Processed Via Publishing” for Bruce Dennill's 'pARTicipate' blog, 2020

For the full article, see Colleen Higgs's 'my mother, my madness' book page on the Deep South website:
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