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), […]
Metro fm’s new station manager, Romeo Khumalo, is broadcasting’s most eligible bachelor. Janet Smith met him at The Museum Store The Museum Store in Raedene, Johannesburg, is a sinful place. It inspires one to break at least three of the 10 commandments. Lying, stealing and taking the Lord’s name in vain are irresistible in this […]
Brenda Atkinson Excuse me, I’m about to gush. The object of this critical affirmation is a 500-page directory that will raise the excluded and chronically confused cultural majority in South Africa to the minority ranks (such as they are) of the cognoscenti. A big welcome to the South African Handbook on Arts and Culture for […]
THURSDAY, 5.15PM: FORMER state president PW Botha was itching for his trial to continue on Thursday afternoon, but it has been postponed to June 1 to allow his lawyers time to examine additional documents presented by the prosecution. Botha said: “This case was set for four days. Come let’s go on.” He told advocate Piet […]
A paediatrician’s love of orchids led to the discovery that big doses of garlic could triumph over infection, writes Michael Nurok The Roman statesman Cicero advised that one should eat to live, not live to eat. Little did he know that more than 2 000 years later, gravely ill patients at Cape Town hospitals might […]
Janine Stephen Is clearing alien vegetation pouring money into a bottomless pit? Not if it is done correctly. But if no follow-up work is done, you can be back at where you began within a year. South African National Parks (SANP) was given R5-million in January on behalf of Working for Water, to clear areas […]
As the dust of an almost bewildering media storm finally begins to settle around Breyten Breytenbach’s Boklied, Charl Blignaut asks what the reaction to the play means One should have smelled it from a mile off, really, the faint whiff of scandal rising from the Boklied posters mingling with the cloying fragrance of potpourri and […]
FRIDAY, 4.00PM: FORMER Sarfu vice-president Brian van Rooyen, author of the dossier that spurred a commission of inquiry into the South African Rugby Football Association’s affairs, said he will urge the government to appeal the Pretoria High Court’s decision to set the commission aside. “This decision doesn’t vindicate Sarfu by any means,” he said, and […]
Malcolm Hacksley SOLSTICE by Don Maclennan (Snailpress/Scottish Cultural Press, R49) Don Maclennan is intensely respectful towards words, his own and those of others, and uses them remarkably sparingly. The subjects and ideas in these poems call forth a spontaneous response, but the Maclennan response is rigorous in its self-control. Perhaps it is true that “songs […]
Jarvis Cocker is a latter-day folk hero in Britain. He talks to Caroline Sullivan about his and Pulp’s new album Jarvis Cocker is one of rock’s great kitchen-sink lyricists, so it was fitting that our first meeting took place in a kitchen. It was late 1992, at a party in a south London council flat. […]