Wordsmith: Sarah Frost was the winner in the English category of this year’s Avbob Poetry Competition. Photo: Anthony Lavoipierre
This year’s 11 winners of the annual Avbob Poetry Competition, representing each of South Africa’s official written languages, were announced at a gala event in Pretoria last week.
“Poetry offers individuals and communities the freedom to express their innermost thoughts, bypassing logic and inviting us to listen with our hearts,” Avbob CEO Carl van der Riet said, paying tribute to the rich and diverse local poetry scene.
The themes for this seventh year of the competition were Birth, Hope, Death, Love and New Beginnings.
The winner in each language category received a R10 000 cash prize and a R2 500 book voucher.
The top six poems in each language appear in the annual anthology, I Wish I’d Said … Vol. 7, which was launched at the event.
The winners, in alphabetical order of language category, are: Salvia Ockhuis (Afrikaans), Sarah Frost (English), Nosipho Noxolo Nxumalo (isiNdebele), Athi Simamkele Dyantyi (isiXhosa), Siyabonga Nxumalo (isiZulu), Moses Seletisha (Sepedi), Moeketsi Golden Mokotjo (Sesotho), Othusitse Moses Lobelo (Setswana), Junior Gcina Nkomo (Siswati), Humbulani Julia Tharaga (Tshivenda) and Amukelani Deborah Mashele (Xitsonga).
Frost, a prolific poet from Durban, has had poems appear in South African and international journals. Her debut poetry collection Conduit was published in 2011 and her second, River Fugue, is due from Karavan Press later this year. We spoke to her.
Mail & Guardian: How long did it take to write your winning poem, Opacity?
Sarah Frost: I wrote Opacity in under an hour — having just come back from a visit to my friends Janine and Connor at the conservancy where they are restoring a mistbelt forest (ferncliffe.org).
The poem is about the shining quality of their love — made all the more poignant by the fact that Janine is sick.
Did you know that it was going to become a poem?
I did know there and then that it was going to become a poem.
I’d sat down with the intention to crystallise the special feeling we’d all three shared in the dark-floored house with sunlight shining in through the windows — consciously making a record of the interaction to celebrate it.
How did you feel when you heard that you had won?
To be honest, I’d thought I might have won, and then during the course of the gala dinner convinced myself that I hadn’t.
I even ordered a glass of merlot to drown my sorrows.
So, when my name was called out, I felt a mixture of relief and elation. Also a strong sense of kinship with the other 10 prize winners.
You are prolific — have you since written a poem about winning the prize?
Yes, I have — Poetry Award.
“My face, when I saw it on the Insta, looked round as the supermoon/ looming white with surprise, and tiredness;/ having spent the day in transit to reach the prizegiving —/ not knowing where I’d been ranked, and trying not to care./ The next day, a bus shuttled us all back to the airport;/ past burnt veld viridian with new grass./A glass tree lay inscribed in a box on my lap —/ precise as a pen these roots that feed us./ For a while we drove alongside a battered Hilux,/ dozing passengers jammed like cattle under the canopy;/our Joburg itinerant as its spreading warehouses,/ or frost on winter ground, before the sun.”
You’re working as an editor for e-news service Juta Legalbrief. Does the world of law ever inspire you to write poetry?
Yes, I have been working at Legalbrief since my son was two — he is 20 now.
Law has not directly inspired me, although I did write a poem about a flight in from an environmental law conference in Port Elizabeth — back to Durban — which was inspired by the very different landscapes of the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
What was your colleagues’ reaction to you winning the prize?
I am also doing a locum, teaching English at Eden College (a local high school). They kindly gave me time off to go and receive my award in Pretoria and the principal requested to read the poem. My senior editor at Legalbrief wrote to congratulate me. I felt very seen.
When did you write your first poem?
As a child, my first poem was a ditty really, about collecting blackberries.
My first serious poem was after I lost my virginity, called For the First Time — very much a rite of passage.
I am still shy about that poem — it leaves me vulnerable — which, however, is the mark of authentic poetry.
What do you prefer reading, poetry or novels?
I like reading poetry but find it much more difficult than novels — it takes longer to feel my way into the images.
Have you ever considered writing novels rather than poems?
I would quite like to write a novel. I completed a course in short-story writing with Finuala Dowling earlier this year which I found quite healing. I was writing about a poet and her family, so drawing my inspiration from real life!
Tell us more about your upcoming collection, River Fugue.
River Fugue originated with a Wits online poetry course I completed some years ago.
I’d written a set of poems in response to prompts. I sent that to Robert Berold at Deep South to see if maybe he would publish the manuscript. He said he would work with me until it was ready for publication and became my mentor.
When we’d edited and re-edited and sequenced the poems, I sent them to Karina Szurzek at Karavan Press, who will be publishing the book.
In a nutshell, the poems are confessional, trying to clarify difficult emotions and map new directions.
Why doesn’t poetry get the attention it deserves in the local media?
Our post-capitalist world’s tentacles reach far. Poetry is not a money-spinner — and good poetry is not a commodity. But we are going to need it as we head into an environmental crisis and fractured identity politics.
Avbob is doing a great job putting poetry on the map, they are totally admirable.
Opacity
From the sapling on the sideboard, Buddleia blossoms
branch nubbed as coral, potent in their waiting.
Plump doves in a dovecote, any moment they will lift up
and fly: through the house’s parqueted dark of sun and shadow,
through the window, just ajar, to the bird bath
becalmed amongst hydrangeas, like an island in a dappled sea.
Your lover holds his cake fork as if it were a rake
and the cake plate a Zen garden.
He has patterned the crumbs in a line that points straight to you,
like the avenue of planes down in the valley,
their leaves giant hands applauding the golden air.
You pour tea from a pot the China blue of sky,
liquid flowing tannin around our roots,
like the stream outside that feeds the algae-clotted dam.
A pair of crested barbets thrills our blooming silence
almost enough to disperse it; their low, shrill,
opaque-as-light notes stroking beloved slanting trees.
— Sarah Frost