The State of Verse
Gabeba Baderoon

In 2006, South Africa’s poets and writers drew the attention of the rest of the African continent and the world.  The poet Lebo Mashile received the 2006 Noma Award for African Publishing for her debut collection In a Ribbon of Rhythm. South Africans also took home the Commonwealth Prize (Africa region) for a first novel, Maxine Case’s All We Have Left Unsaid and best novel, Shaun Johnson’s The Native Commissioner.  In a year full of excellent new poetry, Rustum Kozain was justly awarded the Ingrid Jonker Prize for best poetry debut of 2006, and Mary Watson received the Caine Prize for African Writing for 2006.  Also in 2006, its inaugural year, the Cape Town Book Fair drew a massive 26,000 visitors to its roster of readings and, a healthy trade among publishers.

All the evidence show that South African writing is flourishing. The year 2007 promises equally good news.  Demonstrating that South Africa has grown beyond an insular view of poetry, Kwela/Snailpress is publishing a new collection by the Nigerian poet Tanure Ojaide this year, as well as a collection in Afrikaans by Loit Sols.  With support from the government, poetry in languages other than English and Afrikaans, a rare occurrence until now, is increasingly being published. The Centre for the Book, associated with the National Library of South Africa, is helping to ensure that under-served genres such as poetry and playwriting are being published and reaching the bookshelves.  

This diverse range of languages, styles and topics is generating new writing.  At the local level, reading and writing groups, open mic sessions and reading series, competitions and literature festivals make for a vibrant poetry scene in big cities like Johannesburg and Cape Town and even in small towns.  Every arts festival in the country now has a poetry festival as well.  The 33-year old Grahamstown Arts Festival includes the well-regarded Wordfest in July.  Writers from all over the world are eager to be invited to the Spier festival in Cape Town in February, curated by Antjie Krog, and Durban’s Poetry Africa in October, run by Peter Rorvik.  Franschhoek’s new literary festival drew Mary Watson, Ingrid de Kok, Maxine Case and Rustum Kozain to its lineup in its first year.  The University of Cape Town runs a much-admired MA in Creative Writing, which has generated several prize-winning novels.  Witwatersrand University’s MA in Writing is not far behind, with preeminent poets among its graduates, including Makhosazana Xaba, about whom more below. 

What new landscape is poetry drawing?  An engaged one, a tender one, on in which race joins economics in a complicated new set of realities, a feminist one, and one which is sexually expressive in ways that subvert entrenched assumptions about men and women.  Read Makhosazana Xaba’s These Hands for love that is sensual, surprising and political. Xaba’s publisher is the heroic and multi-talented poet Vonani Bila, whose Timbila Poetry Project is a national treasure, and whose own collections and music are essential for any library of South African poetry. The pleasurable and surprising collection of Afrikaans poetry edited by Charl-Pierre Naude, My Ousie is ‘n Blom, confounds ideas of stilted verse and includes Black Afrikaans writers in its impressive lineup. The idea of a political love is one that speaks directly to South Africa’s contemporary and historical realities, because in South Africa politics is no less urgent thirteen years after the democratic transformation.  To love, to include, to forgive, to be tender toward – what more political questions can there be in post-apartheid South Africa?