Thomas Olver
THE MOMENT by Stefanus Stephanus Nel (Mortem Post)
The realm of “experimental writing” is littered with the burnt-out corpses of many a poor volume of poetry or stories. So it is gratifying to discover new colour (albeit it black and white) in the local literary landscape.
Stefanus Stephanus Nel’s booklet is such a work.his material is commonplace: love, sex, deception. It is the innovative perspective (verbal and visual) he brings to this material that confounds at first and later pleases the reader. For one thing, the text of what might be called a prose- poem is handwritten, a sentence or two per page, with unfilled spaces for illustrations.
The Moment is at once a child’s story and an adult novel; it is picturesque and pornographic. “May you only take the trouble to practise poetry,” wrote Andr Breton, and perhaps that is the success of this little book – its practice of poetry.