Don Maclennan’s new poetry volume, Solstice, has won him two awards. He spoke to Denise Rack Louw
`I dislike interviews, but I enjoy conversations,” award-winning poet Don Maclennan tells me with a twinkle. I am visiting Maclennan at his Grahamstown home to find out more about the writer and his work – including Solstice (Snailpress), the collection of poems which has netted him both the Sanlam Literary Award and a Pringle prize. So, in his book-lined study, amongst the paintings he loves, we settle down for a chat. Maclennan, you see, is committed to “dialogue”.
It’s a principle that informs his teaching. For, though he officially retired from the Rhodes University English department a few years ago, he continues to teach poetry there twice a week, purely for the pleasure and fulfilment the occupation bring him. And interacting with his students is, he points out, an important part of his “continuing dialogue” with literature.
Students I have spoken to think of him as “challenging, but in an unaggressive way”, “humorous”, “relaxed, and open to discussion”. The results of this non-dogmatic approach are apparent in the title poem of Maclennan’s 1995 volume, The Poetry Lesson (Snailpress), in which he recalls asking his students what poetry is.
The tutor clearly revels in the fact that, denied facile definitions, the students begin to “sense an answer . beyond their grasp”. At that point, “Intoxication floods/ their solar plexes, bowels and genitals,/ and the poem floats free/ into the green morning …”
Born in London in 1929, Maclennan came to South Africa eight years later. He was educated at St John’s College, Johannesburg, and at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). Thereafter he went on to take a degree in philosophy at Edinburgh University.
His wife, Shirley, is an American, and Maclennan spent some years in the United States before returning to South Africa to pursue an academic career – first at Wits, then at the University of Cape Town, and finally at Rhodes. He has seven volumes of poetry to his credit, as well as seven plays, several short stories, and two academic works.
In accepting the Sanlam Award, he said: “I want to encourage all those [other] poets who submitted manuscripts not to lose heart. After all, this is the first competition I have won – and I’ve been trying for 50 years.”
He appears to have forgotten, but, in 1982, poems that were to form the nucleus of his third collection, Reckonings, won a prize in a poetry competition organised by the then Department of National Education.
Maclennan’s first major poetic sortie into print had been in 1971, when he collaborated with musician Norbert Nowotny on an avant-garde oratorio entitled In Memoriam Oskar Wolberheim. Next, in 1977, came Life Songs, of which Brian Rose said in the Rand Daily Mail: “Don Maclennan … writes polished verse … but sometimes his words get in the way of his feelings.”
Writing 15 years later in New Coin, David Mabie praised Maclennan’s development in successive volumes – from Reckonings (1983) through Collecting Darkness (1988) to Letters (1992). In Letters, Mabie observes, Maclennan “gives every impression of having moved into the deceptively effortless overdrive of a master craftsman at last sure of his task and the tools needed to complete it.”
Letters is Maclennan’s own favourite volume. He says it is a “more reflective” and a “more self-centredly strong collection” than Solstice. In contrast, Maclennan says, Solstice expresses his uncertainty, reveals his vulnerability. This is poignantly reflected in the final poem in the volume, when the poet confesses:
I have become secretive
as an old tree
with deeply hidden sap
I struggle to make fruit
but something is slowly
eating out my heart.
Or, elsewhere, he says:
I’m only an animal
who cooks his food,
makes promises, laughs,
lies, and knows
he is going to die.
But, characteristically, the poet finds temporary solace – perhaps even a form of transcendence – in the sheer joy of living, and the euphoria of the sensuous moment:
At sunset they closed
the wharf to traffic.
The tavern tables
were marched out
with clean white cloths.
From hidden kitchens
the smell of roasting fish
and chicken
drew out bottles of retsina.
Water lapped in the darkness
like suppliants chattering
before communion.
In Maclennan, the introspective and meditative qualities of the poet are balanced by a more physical side. He plays the violin, climbs, and enjoys carpentry and gardening. He has built a pergola behind his house.
Nestling in the shadow of that pergola, and half-hidden by plants, is a portrait bust of the poet, bestowed on him as a parting gift when he officially retired from the Rhodes English department.
In a poem called Iconoclast in Solstice, he explains, “I cannot live with this dead self/ displayed vaingloriously in my house./ [So] I put him in the garden …”
There, weathering and various accretions threaten eventually to render the image almost unrecognisable. Clearly, vanity is not one of Maclennan’s faults.