We sat expectantly on the floor, skinny elbows on knobbly knees. It was far too late for a school night. Jeremy Cronin recited his poem Death Row. He gave an astonishing performance — “the words thrumming in your / Throats, brothers / About which / Some Wednesday morning / Three nooses will go”. It left an indelible impression. This was an underground meeting of the Social Issues Group, a camouflage for the United Democratic Front. I was turning 15. One of the teachers who organised the event would face the bitter consequences — detention without trial for arranging poetic activities. Thanks to Cronin, poetry collections have been with me within arm’s reach ever since.
That was in the mid-1980s. Cronin, now in his 14th year as a member of Parliament, sprightly and still in a mischievous mood, reads poems such as Clarification, about Aids denialism, and The Tide has Turned, about the stranded poor. The occasion is this year’s Cape Town Book Fair and the panel chat has the hapless title “Is Poetry The New Black?“
The entertaining discussion, chaired by Gus Ferguson, quickly boils down to how several local poets, each with a distinct voice, approach their work either to be performed or read.
All eyes are on Lebo Mashile, introduced as a performance poet, something she “never” refers to herself as being. She is suspicious of the legitimacy conferred by print as opposed to oral rendition. “When I stand on the stage I see you as the page, I write on you, I write on your heart, on your spirit, on your ear.” As she speaks, her extraordinary belief in herself proves her point. But all her work, she says, starts on the page, pain-stakingly crafted. Mashile took to performance partly out of oral tradition, but also because she couldn’t get published. It was her way of reaching an audience.
Writing his poems in prison, Cronin never knew for sure if they’d ever see the light. He points out that different audiences may require different approaches. How do you read an intimate love poem in the noisy bustle of the convention centre hall?
In response, Gabeba Baderoon, who has the striking looks of a Modigliani model and a disarming vulnerability, recites her love poem Old Photographs, ending “Was this the beginning of leaving?” It is clear that the way the poet sees performance is a crucial factor. Readings, she says, teach her about her own poems, a quest for an intimate and “naked” exchange. After a poem is published, Baderoon says, “I learn it for the first time by how it feels reflected in someone else’s eyes.”
Performance can inherently force a poet in certain directions. Finuala Dowling, presented to us as a “page poet”, laughs: “Gus has put me at the non-performing far end of the continuum.” Poets today are expected to give readings and go on book-selling tours. This expectation prompted Dowling to write humorous poems specifically for performance.
Occasionally, Cronin quips impishly, poems are used as an “anaesthetic rather than an aesthetic” to “lull us into accepting things”. Before Trevor Manuel quotes “the third poem in his budget speech he should put a lot more money into public libraries”. Hearty applause followed.
Lebogang Mashile, In a Ribbon of Rhythm (Oshun, 2005)
Finuala Dowling, Doo-Wop Girls of the Universe (Penguin, 2006)
Gabeba Baderoon, A hundred silences (Kwela Books, 2006)
Jeremy Cronin, More than a Casual Contact (Umuzi, 2006)
Reading matters
We might know what South Africans read most (newspapers), thanks to the South African Book Development Council’s national survey, but what books they buy to read is less clear.
Two recent events at the Cape Town Book Fair offered some clues. One was the bonus points offered to Exclusive Books’ Fanatics members on purchases from the chain’s stand at the fair. Such was the buying frenzy that it resembled a books world version of cage diving in False Bay — a chumming of book-buyers.
The second was another Exclusive event, the launch of its 101 Books to Read Before You Die. Compiled from customers’ votes, it was headed by The Lord of the Rings, dominated by very recent popular titles, and had South African and African novels distressingly lowly placed and under-represented.
At times, the list is surreal, bizarre and comical. Chinua Achebe’s world literature classic Things Fall Apart just squeezes in at 100, wedged between Enid Blyton and AA Milne. Disgrace manages 23rd spot, some distance behind the top-finishing South African piece of writing, Spud (12th).
It’s evident from this list that Exclusive respects what its market buys and reads. No surprises then that its annual Winter Sale — which began on June 28 and will run until the reported stock of 337Â 000 books runs out — is crammed with coffee table books, discounted fiction, biography, lifestyle and travel.
Do buy a copy of underappreciated novelist MG Vassanji’s The In-between World of Vikram Lal. Other titles to seek out are Michael Wood’s In Search of Myths and Heroes and China Illustrated: Western Views of the Middle Kingdom. — Darryl Accone