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Literature & Literary StudiesLoud and Yellow Laughter
by Sindiswa Busuku-Mathese
Sindiswa Busuku-Mathese’s debut collection of poetry Loud and Yellow Laughter, published by Botsotso, was awarded the 2018 Ingrid Jonker Prize for Poetry.Busuku Mathese’s entry was described by one judge as, “completely original: the presentation of family history as a play, in which the narrator is an unreliable character”. The poet was praised for the “the mix of WW2 history, the narrator’s dilemmas about being adopted, and the way she manages to weave these together without ever losing her balance or falling into incongruity”. Another judge highlighted how Busuku-Mathese’s “memoir in the form of a collage […] offers fragments in several voices, some of them ‘reconstructed’. [The collection] movingly reflects the quest of the ‘The Girl Child,’ as intimate ‘curator’ of family memory and experience, to integrate the surprising puzzle that is her current self”. The original version of this collection was written as part of the poet’s Master’s thesis in Creative Writing at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.A collection of 39 pieces, some mystical and elliptical, some seemingly mundane snatches of prose-poetry that retain a poetic intensity, together create an atmosphere of nostalgia tinged with a subtle yet matter-of-fact sadness. Accompanied by a series of graphic images, made up of old photographic portraits and scenes of natural beauty.
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Literature & Literary StudiesOn Days Such as This
by Gail Dendy
From the unusual opening poem (conflating birth with a car crash) to its close (an abandoned suitcase representing an entire lifetime), this book weaves its stories backwards and forwards through time and place. There is insight, sensuality, reflection, surprise, and humour as discovered through various personae - be it a tender mother, a heartbroken widow, or a male poet wrestling with writer's block, as well as in objects such as an old chest of drawers, a bronze-age trumpet, or a piece of string. This compelling collection demonstrates technical and linguistic mastery and genuine philosophical depth. In language that is a joy to read, the poems illuminate the capacity for love, loss, hope, and passion which exists in each and every one of us.
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A History of Disappearance
by Sarah Lubala
Sarah Lubala’s debut collection of poetry, A History of Disappearance, centres on the experiences of those living on the margins, particularly girls and women. The opening poem, “6 Errant Thoughts on Being a Refugee,” for which Lubala was shortlisted for the prestigious Gerald Kraak Award, sets the tone for this important collection. The 56 poems span themes such as forced migration, gender-violence, xenophobia, race, mental illness, love, and belonging. The notion of disappearance runs like a thread through each of them, not only as an event, but, as Lubala describes it in an interview with OkayAfrica, also “as a structure of experience.” Lubala writes in taut, bare sentences, potent in their lyrical beauty. Every word is exact and necessary, none are superfluous. Many of her poems read like prayers, and indeed this is a word that returns again and again in the collection. In spite of the adversity her speakers face, they refuse to remain silent. Each of their voices shines through the language, loud with resistance. Her poems navigate the pain of displacement, loss, absence, and grief with empathy and care. Lublala has said of her work that she hopes to expand the “moral imagination” of her readers. She achieves just this, confronting the reader with the human face, obliging us to look and imagine beyond the margins of our own experience.
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The Alkalinity of Bottled Water
by Makhosazana Xaba
Makhosazana Xaba, with several collections and anthologies to her name, is at the forefront of a poetry that embraces penetrating socio-political insight with highly emotional responses to the love and pain that our country provides in such abundance.
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Literature & Literary StudiesThe Colours of Our Flag
by Allan Kolski Horwitz
Awarded the 2020 Olive Schreiner Award for Poetry.Kolski Horwitz’s poetry encompasses sensually charged relationships and encounters between men and women, examinations of political realities (including the lives of artists and revolutionaries) and imagistic depictions of natural phenomena. This collection, comprising 80 poems written over three years, represents a further collaboration with illustrator, James de Villiers – the collection There are Two Birds at my Window (published in 2014) being the first.
