No Free Sleeping
This threesome reflects seemingly quite
different sensibilities but running underground are common sources,
primarily a genuine sense of observation and empathy.
Parenzee’s
fine delineation of detail, his ideological openness but strong sense of
justice link well with Vonani Bila’s ‘makoya poetry’ (rendered largely
in Xitsonga with English translations). This poetry that rails in its
own manner against money madness and apartheid barbarism stands apart
from Finlay’s quieter voice but both command reflection. After all, it
is a phrase in a Finlay poem that titles this anthology. Finlay’s work
in general contains images of dissolution in a search for meaning from
suffering.
£17.00 – £18.00
About the author
Donald Parenzee is an architect and a poet who was active for many years
in cultural initiatives opposed to apartheid. He lives in Cape Town,
where he has practised and taught architecture, worked as an exhibitions
curator at the District Six Museum, and collaborated on creative
interventions in the city. He has run many creative workshops, some of
which explore ways of integrating literature and visual art. Donald
hosted talks explores the role that the poet can play in the daily
existence of his/her community during his stay in Grahamstown as Mellon
Writer in Residence, working with the Rhodes MA programme in Creative
Writing.
Since the early 1990s Alan Finlay’s poems have been published in journals and anthologies in South Africa and abroad. He founded and edited two important literary magazines, Bleksem and donga (co-edited with Paul Wessels), and has been an editor of the poetry journal New Coin. He lives between Johannesburg and Pergamino, Argentina and works as a writer, researcher, editor and university teacher in the field of communications freedoms and rights. That Kind of Door is his fifth collection of poems.
VONANI BILA was born in 1972 in Shirley village, Limpopo, where he still lives. He is the author of five books of poems in English and eight story-books for newly literate adult readers in Sepedi, Xitsonga and English. Bila is a driving force in South African poetry – founding editor of the Timbila poetry journal, publisher of Timbila books and founder of Timbila Writers’ Village, a rural retreat centre for writers.