205 quotes found
"South Africa, renowned both far and wide For politics and little else beside."
"The City of Giraffes!—a People Who live between the earth and skies, Each in his lone religious steeple, Keeping a light-house with his eyes."
"Translations (like wives) are seldom strictly faithful if they are in the least attractive."
"I love to see, when leaves depart, The clear anatomy arrive, Winter, the paragon of art, That kills all forms of life and feeling Save what is pure and will survive."
"Our spirits leaped, hosannas of destruction, Like desert lilies forked with tongues of fire."
"The frost stings sweetly with a burning kiss As intimate as love, as cold as death."
"The timeless, surly patience of the serf That moves the nearest to the naked earth And ploughs down palaces, and thrones, and towers."
"We shall not meet again: over the wave Our ways divide, and yours is straight and endless – But mine is short and crooked to the grave: Yet what of these dark crowds, amid whose flow I battle like a rock, aloof and friendless – Are not their generations, vague and endless, The waves, the strides, the feet on which I go?"
"With white tails smoking free, Long streaming manes, and arching necks, they show Their kinship to their sisters of the sea – And forward hurl their thunderbolts of snow. Still out of hardships bred, Spirits of power and beauty and delight Have ever on such frugal pastures fed And loved to course with tempests through the night."
"Of all the clever people round me here I most delight in Me – Mine is the only voice I care to hear, And mine the only face I like to see."
"You praise the firm restraint with which they write – I'm with you there, of course: They use the snaffle and the curb all right, But where's the bloody horse?"
"He made enemies. He was held up as a Fascist by the poets of the Left but since they had already decreed that Plato was a Fascist, this too was something of a compliment. I once heard this wicked Fascist calmly recall that he had to leave South Africa because of the hostility he had aroused by seriously defending the cause of the Blacks in his writings...His reactions were those of a pastoral world in opposition to the industrial capital – the Tentacular City with its literary intrigues devised by the Intellect."
"Campbell has not any regulation political bias, I think. He may incline to Franco because he is a catholic, and to the Old Spain rather than the New Spain because he likes bullfights and all the romantic things. But of politics he has none, unless they are such as go with a great antipathy for the English "gentleman" in all his clubmanesque varieties; a great attachment to the back-Veldt of his native South Africa; and a constant desire to identify himself with the roughest and simplest of his fellow-creatures in pub, farm, and bullring. Such politics as go with those predilections and antipathies he has, but it would be difficult to give them a name. He certainly is neither a communist nor a fascist."
"Roy Campbell was an altogether more robust character, full of he-man postures, bronco-busting and similar exploits; a type which I usually rather suspect, but much in him was genuine."
"Roy Campbell was one of the very few great poets of our time. His poems are of great stature, and have a giant's strength and power of movement. They have, too, an extraordinary sensuous beauty. Everything is transformed to greatness."
"Here is a scion of an Ulster prot. family resident in S. Africa, most of whom fought in both wars, who became a Catholic after sheltering the Carmelite fathers in Barcelona — in vain, they were caught & butchered, and R.C. nearly lost his life. But he got the Carmelite archives from the burning library and took them through the Red country...However it is not possible to convey an impression of such a rare character, both a soldier and a poet, and a Christian convert. How unlike the Left – the 'corduroy panzers' who fled to America..."
"Map age genes place of origin and love's lineaments.For mapped onto each body is love.Carthography of one's own country or the contours of a foreign land"
"Familiar Ground (Ravan Press, Johannesburg, 1988)"
"Transfer (Snailpress, Cape Town, 1997)"
"Terrestrial Things (Kwela/Snailpress, Cape Town, 2002)"
"Seasonal Fires: Selected and New Poems (Seven Stories Press, NYC, 2006); also published as Seasonal Fires: Selected and New Poems (Umuzi, Random House, South Africa, 2006)"
"Mappe del corpo (A cura di Paola Splendore, Donzelli Poesia, Rome, 2008)"
"We hear a great deal about sex nowadays; it is possible to overestimate its importance, because there are always people who pay it little attention or who apparently manage, like Sir Isaac Newton, to get along, without giving it a thought."
"Who strolls so late, for mugs a bait, In the mists of Maida Vale, Sauntering past a stucco gate Fallen, but hardly frail?"
"The commonplace needs no defence, Dullness is in the critic’s eyes, Without a licence life evolves From some dim phase its own surprise;Under these yellow-twinkling elms, Behind these hedges trimly shorn, As in a stable once, so here It may be born, it may be born."
"It's so utterly out of the world! So fearfully wide of the mark! A Robinson Crusoe existence will pall On that unexplored side of the Park — Not a soul will be likely to call!"
"Out of that bungled, unwise war An alp of unforgiveness grew."
"On a sofa upholstered in panther skin Mona did researches in ."
"A family portrait not too stale to record Of a pleasant old buffer, nephew to a lord, Who believed that the bank was mightier than the sword, And that an umbrella might pacify barbarians abroad: Just like an old liberal Between the wars."
"Oh, the twenties and the thirties were not otherwise designed Than other times when blind men into ditches led the blind, When the rich mouse ate the cheese and the poor mouse got the rind, And man, the self-destroyer, was not lucid in his mind."
"With first-rate sherry flowing into second-rate whores, And third-rate conversation without one single pause: Just like a young couple Between the wars."
"A pleasant old duffer, nephew to a lord, Who believed that the bank was mightier than the sword, And that an umbrella might pacify barbarians abroad: Just like an old liberal Between the wars."
"When her guests were awash with champagne and with gin She was recklessly sober, as sharp as a pin: An abstemious man would reel at her look As she rolled a bright eye and praised his last book."
"A rose-red sissy half as old as time."
"'Look who's here! Do come and help us fiddle while Rome burns!'"
"So never say to D'Arcy, 'Be your age!' — He'd shrivel up at once or turn to stone."
"Brzeska and Brooke were among those she knew And she lived long enough to meet Lawrences, too, D. H. and T. E. – she who'd known R. L. S., Talked to Hardy of Kim, and to Kipling of Tess!"
"His most celebrated poems are, of course, the historical-satirical ballads (A or even X certificate) in which a person or period is "hit off", in the sense both of being preserved and hit for six."
"His poetry may be divided into comic extravaganza on the one hand, and more personal work on the other. There is no one like him in the world in the former genre; as a "light poet" he is preferable to John Betjeman – as fluent in traditional forms, his work is never vitiated by refuge in the poetical or high sentimental, and his choice of words is subtler, funnier and altogether sharper. In his other vein Plomer is fastidious, reticent, elegant and the author of some memorable and moving lines."
"Words are such thin shavings of the fractal fruit, tiny scraping of the skin that holds these joyously determined swirls of history inside their juicy turbulence. Talking itself westward after the day's feast, each little word with its meaning strapped to its back falls down the swell of tomorrow like a hiker with hopeful new shoes."
"I'm a poet. I distrust anything that starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop because people don't think in full, clear sentences."
"And everyone wants to know: Who? Why? The victims ask the hardest of all the questions: How is it possible that the person I loved so much lit no spark of humanity in you?"
"By not dealing with past human rights violations, we are not simply protecting the perpetrators' trivial old age ; we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations."
"It's hard for me to speak, whether in English or Afrikaans. The reason I write is because I cannot speak. I feel blunt."
"I tell every 18-year old who wants to rap that if they spend just one hour understanding what music publishing is, what IP is, what royalties are, and what their rights are, they will do more for their music than the three hours they spend on YouTube figuring out how to mix a new drum pattern. The entry barrier to music is virtually nonexistent now because of technology. That makes musicians vulnerable and means they need to be IP savvy."
"These days, as an artist, you can tour and if you prove to a brand that your free download attracted thousands of eyeballs, then brand endorsements become an option. These channels open up new income streams. Then you look at streaming platforms and you realize they're not really paying anybody and won't ever be your main revenue source. Streaming is like a business card; it's a way to get people familiar with your music while you take advantage of other channels to make money."
"The problem I have with streaming it is that it doesn't take account of different audiences and markets. It doesn't distinguish between a popular musician whose (millions of) fans are willing to only pay two cents for a stream and a jazz artist whose smaller fan base is willing to pay two dollars to listen to their work. As things stand, the jazz artist can't take advantage of it."
"To write was a need; I had to write down messages, to tell apartheid's horrors."
"I always imagined poetry is supposed to be beauty, about beauty and pleasant things. Well I sat in a train one day and saw this lorry full of furniture going, coming here... and I wrote a poem about Group Areas ‘Fall tomorrow.’ In the last stanza I wrote, that the government of that time is going to fall [ ]. This was about the anger. Bringing out all the anger of moving and seeing this people moving and seeing people breaking up their wardrobes and their cupboards because it can’tfit through the doors here."
"Rooted in Salt River, Simon’s Town and Ocean View, Gladys Thomas’s narration of the struggle of a nation for freedom challenged the construct of ‘forgotten communities’. She championed the tribulations and triumphs of people who did not have the means to tell their stories in the distinctive and memorable way in which she took up their plight."
"My whole life has felt like a long deeply unsatisfying love affair with my mother. She is the beloved who doesn't love back."
"I wanted my writing to offer an account of what it was like to take care of my mother, the details of that experience, the feelings, the lived experience. Women often do work like this that is unacknowledged, unseen. So, I guess I wanted to make it visible – not just my work, but this kind of work of taking care of elderly parents, of a child."
"The challenge South Africa is having is poverty and unemployment and the biggest barrier to this is the skills gap."
"They stripped him of the very dignity we had spoken about in discussing Nineteen Eighty-Four, and they did it because, to them, he was 'just another kaffir', and that is what I will never forgive them for."
"We’re living in a time where changing technology challenges us to stay relevant almost on a daily basis."
"Without a doubt the power the internet gives to the average individual is challenging all sorts of gatekeepers for better or worse. People can now contribute to reporting by means of cellphone photographs/video and the secrets of politicians are now open for all to see through WikiLeaks; but at the same time, one can also read nauseating hate speak, prejudice and uninformed opinion on online fora and news page comment facilities. And, frankly, that open access is a double-edged sword."
"I was a solitary child who lived in a world of words and music, of imagination and the arts and I felt keenly the vast divide between myself and the children about me. It felt very much as if I’d been absent on the day they gave out the handbook on how to relate to other children and how to be a part of the group. It was only as an adult that I found other people who saw and experienced the world as I do."
"The first poem in my childhood notebook was written when I was eleven. It was a poem about the conflict I felt when my cat had slaughtered a bird. I don’t remember much about my writing before then, just that I always escaped into words."
"I remember being read to as a child. I read to my own son every night until he was able to read books for himself. I confess that I enjoyed it as much as he did. I did all the voices."
"My mother started her Eng Lit studies when I was nine, which continued until she got her doctorate when I was in high school, so our house was filled with literature. Literally. Piles of books and the sound of method actors intoning on vinyl. I grew up saturated in words – I remember everything from Shakespeare, Hopkins and Chaucer to Bosman, Conrad and Plath. Unisa was very tolerant. I’d sit quietly at the back of lectures and seminars and drink it all in. It was a rich childhood."
"The eighties were exciting and challenging times to work in the theatre, particularly at the Market. I worked under Mannie Manim, with John Kani and with Alan Joseph, who is greatly missed. We were pushing the envelope all the time, challenging the government. I worked with Athol Fugard on two productions. He was a very private person with a delicious laugh. I’ll never forget Janet Suzman’s Othello with John Kani and Joanna Weinberg in the lead roles—Across the colour bar, In bed together, Kaal, Sowaar! Imagine! The Market staff could swear that throughout the run, security police got to see a lot of Shakespeare. Which was a good thing."
"Festival time in Grahamstown is always reunion time—I see many of the actors I used to work with. I saw Janet Suzman this year, and I see Mannie Manim from time to time. Every year I see Mandie van der Spuy, who headed Drama at PACT when I was there and now manages Standard Bank’s jazz sponsorship. And of course, I see Lynnie Marais very often in Grahamstown—she moved from PACT to the Monument to head up the festival many years ago."
"What I really appreciate about working with homeless people is that when you get to that basic level of survival, all the human pretence is stripped away. There is no bullshit. You are who you are."
"The most important part of my ministry to homeless people was knowing their names and their stories and loving them just as they were. Counselling the homeless couple whose baby died before his first birthday. Listening to yet another long, wheedling scam story from a guy asking for money for a train trip to a new job. Laughing with him that he thought the story would actually work on me. And then helping him in ways that were better than giving him money to buy skokiaan at the shebeen on the streets amongst the corporate headquarters in Rosebank."
"Love God with everything you have and everything you are, and love those around you as you love yourself. The rest is just detail."
"Development Theology explores how God sees the poor, what the Bible has to say on the subject, and how we, as a people of God, respond to the development needs around us as an expression of the love of God for his people. I believe that the church has a vital and practical role to play in binding up the broken hearts of the poor and in rebuilding the nation. I am so passionate about this that I set my life aside for this work as an Anglican priest."
"I love Grahamstown. I wanted to move here years ago when I was a theatre publicist, but the time wasn’t right. When my son was awarded scholarships to St Andrews College three years ago I jumped at the chance to move down. My friends thought I would struggle to settle down in a small town, but I’m a very gregarious person. I love having four people hoot “Hello” as I walk down High Street. I am guaranteed to meet at least five friends or colleagues when I go to Pick ‘n Pay, which is our village marketplace."
"Some people find the goldfish bowl difficult to live in – I thrive in it. There is no peak hour traffic. The cathedral bells ring on Sunday and Thursday evenings in the mist. The sunsets are spectacular. You can find a donkey cart (with a set of donkeys) parked neatly in a bay between a BMW and a Golf, and there are often cattle in my street. Cattle have right of way."
"Someone has to do something about the pain and the poverty, and I’ve been given a good set of resources to do it. So I get stuck in and I get very motivated by watching the change take place in people’s lives."
"I married very young – to a brilliant and immensely destructive man whom I met at university. Twelve years of that marriage nearly destroyed me. I chose to end the marriage and to survive."
"As I grew in my spiritual journey and I came to know what true and unconditional love was, I came to see that what I had was not what marriage should be. I chose life. I staggered/crawled away from the devastation and it took years for me slowly to become the person I was meant to be. And life has been deeply rich and rewarding in every possible way since then."
"God is a great recycler – he took a broken, shattered woman and slowly breathed life into her again. I began to trust people enough to make some wonderful friends. I began to believe in myself again."
"The most important thing I’ve learned from motherhood is to love your family and your friends as much as you can and let them know as often as you can. Parenting keeps you humble and grounded."
"As a poet, I am as I am in every other sphere of life. I’m real and flesh and blood. I don’t write to impress people or use clever allusions or references. I did all that when I was still at university, and it was rubbish poetry. Now I write only because the poem needs to be written. And it has its own life and its own personality—with its whimsical little in-jokes and its musicality. And if someone else likes the poem, then it’s probably because, at the bottom of it all, we have a shared human experience."
"When I was a child I used to say, “I am going to write a poem”, and my mother would ask me what it would be about, and I wouldn’t know until it was done. I’d just have a welling-up pregnant feeling inside me. That still happens."
"It is a first collection, and there are no South African publishing houses that can afford to take risks on poetry collections anymore, let alone new poets. I believed in the work and wanted to put it out there."
"There were times during my marriage that I wanted it all to end. I wrote a poem in one of my most tortured moments about the peace I would find if I walked into the sea and breathed. It was years later that I realised how close my life story was to Ingrid Jonker’s. I had been born just after she died. Somehow, I survived, against all odds. I felt connected with her, and wrote about it. I like to think that she knows that I wrote about it."
"I feel injustice deeply. I thought I would get over that as I grew up. I never have. That’s how “Nam” was written. Both of those incidents happened to me just as they are written, and I was unable to forget them. And when I saw the facile comments on the travel show, I had to put my anger down on paper. It just never ends. We don’t learn. As a mother I am now even more outraged by senseless slaughter ordered by men who are never themselves in danger. And whose motives are based on greed and power-seeking."
"People have responded that the collection chronicles a journey through suffering into new life, and that it was thought-provoking. And that is what I wanted to express. That there is hope for new growth, for freedom, for change. For so many people who have suffered. And especially for our country. I really believe that."
"What excites me? Now that I am beloved, I am a joyful and irrepressible woman, I do not laugh quietly and I’m always the last person on the dance floor at one in the morning at university functions. And I am not waiting to be old to wear purple. What inspires me? Humble people who just get on with helping to make a difference in this world. And who do it out of love, not self. So often people help others for reasons that have everything to do with themselves and nothing to do with those they are helping."
"To go back to Venice. My son Michael and I backpacked for three weeks across Italy four years ago, staying in youth hostels. Italy was rewarding beyond description, but Venice was a moving and intense experience. It was fading and old and beautiful and I loved it. I would go back there given half a chance."
"Two years ago, I began to speak to friends who were editors of poetry journals, to get an idea of what was involved. I made the financial decision to go online with a simple, quality website. I do the html coding myself, so it costs me two weekends a year, with no overheads other than the cost of bandwidth. The benefit of online is that I can use images as well, and allow them to interact with the poetry – which has fascinating results."
"It’s exciting and not even something I ever imagined, but it seems like a green light for me to proceed and achieve bigger things in my career"
"I do not think I was ready for it [going solo], but if you are someone on a journey to success you need to do something in order to move forward"
"I was scared at first, but I am just fortunate that I have positive people surrounding me who have always assured me that although I was leaving my comfort zone, I would still make it."
"I went through a lot since Kgosi came onto this earth. I know a lot of people have been saying that I'm quiet... I haven't been feeling like making happy music. I have been making music and thank God that I can do that all the time,"
"But now I'm happier, I'm thinner, I'm sexier. When my son was born, I was at my heaviest, and I wasn't happy, I was performing because my songs were popping. The only thing that kept me going was because...my baby boy. Being a mom has just elevated me ... I want to be fit for myself."
"“I am the happiest I have ever been,” she tells me when I ask how she is."
"“I feel like life is good, I am truly blessed. I can’t complain.”"
"“Working with Beyoncé really did change my entire mindset. I realised that she’s in her late 30s and she is still in the game,”"
"“I wanted to be active with him, I want to take walks with him, I want to ride a bike, I wanted him to watch less TV,”"
"“I don’t know if other mothers can relate but after pregnancy and giving birth, everything felt mushy. Everything was soft. It was like I couldn’t walk or move like the way I used to before,”"
"“I felt that I could eat whatever I want, however I wanted and whenever I wanted and it was fine because I just had a baby,”"
"“I try to speak with my friends and my family, I went into therapy, and I use the gym also as a way to listen to my own thoughts. I spend a lot of time talking to my son as well. He surprises me when he talks about me or when we are sharing thoughts, he also gives me a lot of enlightenment,”"
"She would fulfil her obligations as she understood them and provide for them. The only way she could be a mother to her children, she saw, would be to leave them"
"Instead of being kind and buying this and that for the maid, just translate the kindness to this woman’s wages […]"
"once the white child reaches the age of five and has to start school, the black child becomes an embarrassment, a visible reminder of the inequalities endemic in the society"
"the morning paper, the Cape Times, carried the story of the child murdered on the beach. Front page, the story made"
"Today, no one knows the name of the little girl found in a rubbish drum at the back of the butcher’s shop. They don’t know it today, for they never knew it then"
"Now that the pass has gone"
"There are not enough mothers during the day to force the children to go to school and stay there for the whole day. The mothers are at work. Or they are drunk. Defeated by life. Dead. We die young, these days."
"Yet, even today we still laugh sad laughs, remembering our innocent incredulity. Our inability to imagine certain forms of evil, the scope and depth of some strains of ruthlessness. We laugh, to hide the gaping hole where our hearts used to be. Guguletu killed us . . . killed the thing that held us together . . . made us human. Yet, we still laugh."
"Mxolisi turned one year. A part of me hated him. Not him . . . but what he was . . . had been . . . the effect he seemed to have on my life. Always negative, always cheating me of something I desperately wanted. I shrunk; because he was."
"Unganyebelezeli, kuza kudlalwa!’ piped Mxolisi’s little voice, calling for daring and defiance. To look at him do the war cry of the Comrades, poised in a defiant stance, his tiny fist up in the air, couldn’t but send all those who heard him into paroxysms of laughter."
"There was nothing unusual about this. Mxolisi, now four years old, could already tell the difference between the bang! of a gun firing and the Gooph! of a burning skull cracking, the brain exploding."
"No,’ the girl’s mother said quietly. ‘There were many people there. Looking. Some were even laughing. None stopped the crime, none. Until your son arrived on the scene."
"Yes, Mzukulwana,’ he sighed, ‘the biggest storm is still here. It is in our hearts — the hearts of the people of this land. ‘For, let me tell you something, deep run the roots of hatred here. Deep. Deep. Deep."
"The sun went and died in the west."
"Tatomkhulu was a fund of facts that, although seemingly different, made a whole lot of sense of some of the things we learned at school. He explained what had seemed stupid decisions, and acts that had seemed indefensible became not only understandable but highly honourable."
"But now, my Sister-Mother, do I help him hide? Deliver him to the police? Get him a lawyer? Will that mean I do not feel your sorrow for your slain daughter? Am I your enemy? Are you mine? What wrong have I done you . . . or you me?"
"Your daughter. The imperfect atonement of her race. My son. The perfect host of the demons of his."
"She was not robbed. She was not raped. There was no quarrel. Only the eruption of a slow, simmering, seething rage. Bitterness burst and spilled her tender blood on the green autumn grass of a far-away land. Irredeemable blood. Irretrievable loss."
"One boy. Lost. Hopelessly lost. One girl, far away from home. The enactment of the deep, dark, private yearnings of a subjugated race. The consummation of inevitable senseless catastrophe."
"It is that wind it is that voice buzzing it is whispering and whistling in the wires miles upon miles upon miles on the wires in the wind in the subway track in the rolling road in the not silent bush it is the voice of the noise here it comes the Third World Express they must say, here we go again."
"O, go away, you steely monster! Why must you arrive so soon When I, at the moment, am lost in thought And wish that I could hide myself At home among the mielie-stalks, Covered with cobs, surrounded by pumpkins; For there I should never be disturbed By bustling crowds of chattering people Passing noisily on their way: I see them at dawn, I see them at dusk – At sunrise and sunset they pass me by."
"It is not different, really, here in the city. Just like back in the village, we live our lives together as one. We know everything about everybody. We even know things that happen when we are not there; things that happen behind people’s closed doors deep in the middle of the night. We are the all-seeing eye of the village gossip. When in our orature the storyteller begins the story, ‘They say it once happened…’ we are the ‘they’. No individual owns any story. The community is the owner of the story, and it can tell it the way it deems it fit."
"We go for what we call a joll. All it means is that we engage in an orgy of drinking, raping, and stabbing one another with knives and shooting one another with guns."
"You have always been good at creating beautiful things with your hands."
"We are like two hands that wash each other."
"By the time he has finished, every inch of the walls is covered with bright pictures – a wallpaper of sheer luxury."
"In those days, they did not allow people of his colour onto any of the beaches of the city, so he could not carry out his ablutions there, as he does today."
"Funerals were held only on Saturday and Sunday mornings those days, because death was not as prevalent then as it is at present."
"Hymns flow into one another in unplanned but pleasant segues."
"It is strange how things don’t change in these shanty towns or squatter camps or informal settlements or whatever you choose to call them."
"You see, they say they are fighting for freedom, yet they are no different from the tribal chief and his followers. They commit atrocities as well."
"Men, on the other hand, tend to cloud their heads with pettiness and vain pride. They sit all day and dispense wide-ranging philosophies on how things should be. With great authority in their voices, they come up with wise theories on how to put the world right. Then at night they demand to be given food, as if the food just walked into the house on its own. *When they believe all the children are asleep, they want to be pleasured. The next day they wake up and continue with their empty theories."
"When they believe all the children are asleep, they want to be pleasured. The next day they wake up and continue with their empty theories."
"Bhonco is different from the other Unbelievers in his family, for Unbelievers are reputed to be such somber people that they do not believe even in those things that can bring happiness to their lives. They spend most of their time moaning about past injustices and bleeding for the world that would have been had the folly of belief not seized the nation a century and a half ago and spun it around until it was in a woozy stupor that is felt to this day.”"
"The Cult of the Unbelievers began with Twin-Twin. Bhonco Ximiya’s ancestor, in the days of the Prophetess Nongqawuse almost one hundred and fifty years ago. The revered Twin-Twin had elevated unbelieving to the heights of religion.”"
"Yes, Bhonco carries the scars that were inflicted on his great-grandfather, Twin-Twin, by men who flogged him after he had been identified as a wizard by Prophet Mlanjeni, the Man of the River. Every first boy-child in subsequent generations of Twin-Twin’s tree is born with the scars.”"
"Camagu has no heart to tell her that Athens is a college town that is even smaller than the nearby town of Butterworth*."
"The villagers will actually lose more than they will gain from the few jobs that will be created. Very little of the money that is made here will circulate in the village."
"The boats are now restored to their former glory as a reminder of a bygone era and bygone manual practices so that present and future generations can see how fishermen of the old endured the stormy seas in small open boats powered by their own muscles."
"Conversely, Noria’s memory of the village is the pale herd boys, with mucus hang- ing from the nostrils, looking after cattle whose ribs you could count, on barren hills with sparse grass and shrups. The lean cattle and barren hills are partly result of overgrazing, which is in turn due to shortage of land for black people."
"They do not like to be called squatters. How can we be squatters on our land, in our own country? Squatters are those who came from across the sea to steal our land"
"For instance, when the Whale Caller wants to consummate relationship with his wife, images of whale interfere at the moment of ex- citement and he goes limp"
"He has neither touched a whale nor even Sharisha, except with his spirit - with his horn. He knows absolutely that this boat-based whale watching will be abused"
"They rig Sharisha with dynamite. [...] the emergency workers place more than five hundred kilograms of dynamite in all the strategie places, especially close to Sharisha's head. Like a high priest in a ritual sacrifice a man stands over a contraption that is connected to the whale with a long red cable. With all due solemnity he triggers the explosives. Sharisha goes up in a gigantic baU of smoke and flame. [...] [The Whale Caller] is looking intently at the red, yellow and white flames as Sharisha rises in the sky. It is like Guy Fawkes fireworks"
"Yet there is nothing that rises, phoenix-like, out of the ashes. All the Whale Caller can do at the scene of the explosion is sit "silent and still as blubber rains on him. Until he is completely larded with it""
"Lunga Tubu's voice coming from the waves, singing a Pavarotti song," he muses wistfully that "maybe one day Pavarotti will adopt him""
"...flotsam from the fatherland."
"Specific silences imposed by certain historical conjunctions."
"[t]hrough perceiving the world as a story to be told and endlessly reshaped, I would argue, the reader is actually encouraged to act upon the world (..) literature becomes more, not less, potent"
"History provides one of the most fertile silences to be revisited by South African writers because the dominant discourse of white historiography (...) has inevitably silenced, for so long,so many other possibilities."
"Address two silences simultaneously: that created by the marginalization of women,and that effected by a (white-dominated) master-narrative of history."
"Attempt to grasp, with the creative imagination, the past and its silences."
"She did what no one had thought possible."
"Uncovers the dark places into which we may fear to look."
"Even during the days and nights when she was dazed and only half awake the stories must have insinuated themselves into her torn and bruised body like draughts and ointments with healing powers beyond all explanation. (There is no pain and no badness,) she still hears the dry voice of old Taras in her ear, that a story cannot cure."
"Attempt new strategies which will convert previous defeats into victory."
"How curious, this urge they have, all of them, to leave their mark on a woman's body. As if despair lies behind it, and fear, (..) In each theneed, the terrifying urge, to scar and leave his mark. And only her body available for their inscription."
"I believe more and more that as a man I owe it to herat least to try to understand what makes her a person, an individual,what defines her as a woman."
"Violence our language. A land hostile, empty, strange: it does not talk back, remains inaccessible. Which forces this violence from us,its motive achingly pure. On and one we move through the evermore arid landscape, sowing destruction as we go (....) An orgy of blood (...) with the single purpose of leaving on that virgin barren place the scrawl of our progress. We were here to acquire, to conquer, to have, to possess: I have therefore I am. Land, you are woman. Woman, you are mine."
"I do not not own life, you often said when you tried to laugh your difficulties away."
"You have watched God and Devil, gods and Ancestors, wondering whether *they* owned it, this thing called life. As far as you could see no one seemed to own it, judging by the way they too cast their eyes in the directions of our Hillbrow, Alexandra, and Tiragalong, clicking their tongues in deep sadness or grim amusement as people devoured one another. You were right there with them, still on your way to finding out whether any of them owned life."
"And while we’re so busy blaming [the Makwerekwere] for all our sins, hadn’t we better also admit that quite a large percentage of our home relatives who get killed in Hillbrow are in fact killed by other relatives who bring their home grudges with them to Jo’burg. That’s what makes Hillbrow so corrupt…"
"...people should remain in their own countries and try to sort out the problems of those respective countries, rather than fleeing them; South Africa had too many problems of its own."
"Dear Apartheid Apologists, your time is over. You will not rule again. We do not fear you. Finally #TheLandIsOurs”."
"From a very early age I learnt to internalise, to project a very confident persona and be strong."
"I had to believe one day we would be free. The struggle became my motivation – that’s all I could hang on to."
"I like to define myself not according to what I have suffered but according to how much I have overcome, and I am very grateful to my mother for instilling that in both me and my sister… I never see a glass half empty but I see it half full."
"After our liberation she became an icon of the task we began of transforming our society and stepping into spaces and opportunities that had been denied to generations of South Africans."
"What she did, the sacrifices, the hardships she went through, the difficult life she led, we will forever be grateful because it was done so our people can be free."
"She carved her own path in life, and did things on her own terms."
"It is a summer of songs composed in blood, tuned with guns and arranged in conversations. It is a summer of songs I sing in swelling volumes."
"I write poetry from my personal space, in my personal voice. I say “I am here”. I address women in the world."
"I first encountered your 2019 debut collection Agringada: Like a Gringa, Like a Foreigner (Modjaji Books) at the Rosebank branch of Exclusive Books. I spent so much time trying to read the two words on the cover, the ones in a small black font. After numerous failed attempts I decided I would use my magnifying glass when I got back home. It was in that moment that I realised: Oh, they are using the very cover to give me the visceral experience of what I am about to read! Then I thought: Effective! Smart! I love it! I am buying this book!"
"I was still in the queue at the bookshop when I read the contents page, and I began to smile, because Tongues of their Mothers—my second poetry collection—is also divided into four sections using the names of seasons. In your book, there are eleven poems in Winter, fifteen in Summer, three in Spring and thirteen in Autumn."
"These hands have Moulded monuments, created crafts, healed hearts."
"To have lost even the why or the what for - to dream and to wake with the weight of even the mechanical why even the mechanical wherefore -"
"As coming upon a puff-adder coiled on the carpet under the desk"
"In August 1996, while I was a Research Fellow at the University of Cape Town, I was struck by a series of news stories in South African newspapers in which the visual and verbal imagery seemed to me highly distinctive. I kept a collection of clippings and eventually these became the basis for my PhD on images of Islam. In the course of my studies, I conducted archival research into colonial-era paintings, newspapers and popular cultures in South Africa, and read these in juxtaposition with contemporary literary representations of Islam. This trajectory of images across two centuries became the material for a theory about representations of slavery and Islam in South Africa."
"I enjoy the reading and thinking as well as the discussion and exchange that an academic life involves. I love the smell of old books and newspapers in libraries and archives, and the possibility of original ideas that emerge from long hours in a quiet place."
"I love the creativity that emerges from a university community. Working at Penn State with my colleagues and students feels like being exposed to a constant series of illuminating ideas and opportunities for creative collaborations."
"I love reading and visiting museums and galleries, which is also part of my work. Talking with friends over a home-cooked meal is my favorite way to spend an evening."
"I hope we will have developed partnerships and cooperative relations with scholars in other parts of the world, especially in the Global South. For me, such pooling of intellectual and material resources will generate new and necessary ways of engaging with the world's challenges."
"They say God laughs when we make plans: He's watched me trace my path away from war-scarred foreign lands, Where AIDS cases and unmarked graves are common as grains of desert sand, Where solemn bargains for slaves are made each day by neighbouring clans; Where I grew up. Soon as I left the womb, I was running; There was always something to escape, be it Ebola Or just that drunkard driving that Range Rover, Racing over potholes, ten shots from being sober... That was me; ever escaping, Hoping, praying and close-shaving, Evading nature's worst and Mankind at its most perverse; No helping hand to rescue me, I was the perfect refugee - See, Ive been arrested, beaten, Seized by police for no reason, Always fleeing by my teeth's skin, Till leaving, Coming to Heathrow, And finding work, and peace, and love With running no longer in my blood."
"I became Phillippa Yaa when I found my biological father, who told me that if he had been there when I was born, the first name I'd have been given would be a day name like all Ghanaian babies, and all Thursday girls are Yaa, Yawo, or Yaya. So by changing my name I intended to inscribe a feeling of belonging and also one of pride on my African side."
"After growing up black in white South Africa, internalising so many negative 'truths' of what black people are like, I needed to reclaim my humanity and myself from the toxic dance of objectification."
"Because I wasn't told that I was adopted until I was twenty, I lacked a vocabulary to describe who I am and where I come from, so performing and writing became ways to make myself up."
""I started writing poetry when I was a child, my first published poem was when I was 11. I was brought up in a home that loved poetry and literature, especially the English language. But it was only when I was older that I realised that writing is so much more than words playing on a page."
"Writing contains the writer, their concerns, their social context and their history. My own history became a block to my creativity as I started to explore my identity as a black woman adopted by a white family in apartheid South Africa."
"I felt like the colonised and the coloniser were fighting each other inside my brain. Writing continued to be important to me but I was convinced that it was simply a therapeutic process, of no value to anyone else."
"As a mixed-race African and adoptee I feel, paradoxically, oppressed and completely free....My adult life has been largely devoted to healing this rift. The freedom of my paradoxical position, is in fact that I don't have the constraints of a traditional role and I have access to the world."
"Life cannot be scooped up like a fish."
"With the demise of apartheid, it not only became possible for writers of all races to express themselves freely for the first time, there were also many stories by talented authors waiting to be told."
"The Cape Town-born poet and fiction writer, Finuala Dowling, published her New and Selected Poems, Pretend You Don’t Know Me, with Bloodaxe last year. Her work, already highly acclaimed in South Africa, has proved a rewarding new discovery for British readers."
"Her technique may appear effortless, and suggest the audience-friendly colloquialism of spoken word poetry, but there is crafted precision in her writing. Her monologues avoid the performance poet’s frequent over-reliance on cliches and catchphrases, and there’s always an edge of sharp self-awareness to the humour."
"I wasn't five years old yet and she drowned in the Vaal River at the age of eight, on the same day that King Edward VII died, because I still remember well how all the flags were hanging half-mast when we went to fetch the little coffin in town the following day with the hooded cart – the day my late father came to wake us at four o'clock to see Halley's Comet that was clearly visible in the sky. We all felt so awful, because my late sister's little body was still lying in the house."
"Those days the Strand was little more than a fishing village. Now I had to go to church and to Sunday school. It didn't take me long to learn the nicest hymns by heart. For me these songs contained the structure, rhythm, and mystery of poetry. Inspired by this and by my grandmother's loving care, I started writing verses. My first 'poetry' appeared in the school magazine."
"I was six then. Ouma recited them to the Coloured community that lived on the outskirts of the Strand, where she used to go and teach them Bible lessons after Sunday school. I still remember how hard it was for me to walk down that long dirt road, holding Ouma's hand, her jokes along the way and the glimmer in her deep green eyes when she looked down at me. She could not have been more than five feet tall herself."
"I would stand to one side of her pulpit in front of the Coloured community, and Ouma and I and the entire congregation would end up in tears as hymn after heart-stirring hymn was sung."
"I grew up in court. I knew the justice system. Boys will be boys was the judgement and I knew the judgement before it was even given."
"Being arrested was a blessing in disguise."
"I think there is a need for people in the public eye to take a stand against crime, violence, gangsterism and other sensitive issues that affect us as black people, especially the youth."
"I’m an actor with a purpose. My intention is to open the eyes of young boys who want to travel down the road of gangsterism."
"My message in my art is crime does not pay. I like roles that emphasise the gospel that prison is not paradise and crime does not pay."
"During those days, we survived on the principles of ubuntu. Money was not as important as it is today."
"I draw a line between acting and real life."
"These activities are important for young people because if they are doing nothing they will get involved in drugs and crime."
"I always tell them [youth] that take whatever you do and your life serious. I tell them that success does not go hand in hand with drugs. Stealing or going to jail in order to be successful is wrong. I give them this information so that when they decide to take a decision they take an informed one."
"I spend most of my time happy, I struggle to be an angry person, I think it’s because I know that when I feel upset I close myself indoors to be alone."
"I know what heals me when I am troubled, I learn to calm myself, I have my own ways of keeping myself together, if I need to cry I will."
"People always expect you to be happy, they think just because you on TV your life is better, but truth is we all go through the same life issues."
"I don’t take advantage that I am a star."