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- Volume 50, Issue 2, 2014
New Coin Poetry - Volume 50, Issue 2, December 2014
Volumes & issues
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Volume 53 (2017)
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Volume 52 (2016)
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Volume 51 (2015)
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Volume 50 (2014)
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Volume 49 (2013)
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Volume 48 (2012)
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Volume 47 (2011)
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Volume 46 (2010)
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Volume 45 (2009)
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Volume 44 (2008)
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Volume 43 (2007)
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Volume 42 (2006)
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Volume 41 (2005)
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Volume 40 (2004)
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Volume 39 (2003)
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Volume 38 (2002)
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Volume 37 (2001)
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Volume 36 (2000)
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Volume 35 (1999)
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Volume 34 (1998)
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Volume 33 (1997)
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Volume 32 (1996)
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Volume 31 (1995)
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Volume 30 (1994)
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Volume 29 (1993)
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Volume 28 (1992)
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Volume 26 (1990)
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Volume 25 (1989)
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Volume 24 (1988)
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Volume 23 (1987)
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Volume 22 (1986)
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Volume 21 (1985)
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Volume 20 (1984)
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Volume 19 (1983)
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Volume 18 (1982)
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Volume 17 (1981)
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Volume 16 (1980)
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Volume 15 (1979)
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Volume 14 ([1977, 1978])
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Volume 14 ([1977, 1978])
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Volume 13 (1977)
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Volume 12 (1976)
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Volume 11 (1975)
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Volume 10 (1974)
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Volume 1973 (1973)
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Volume 9 (1973)
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Volume 8 (1972)
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Volume 7 ([1971, 1970])
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Volume 7 ([1971, 1970])
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Volume 6 ([1970, 1969])
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Volume 6 ([1970, 1969])
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Volume 5 (1969)
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Volume 4 (1968)
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Volume 3 (1967)
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Volume 2 (1966)
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Volume 1 (1965)
Volume 50, Issue 2, December 2014
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Editor's notes
Author Gary CummiskeySource: New Coin Poetry 50, pp I –II (2014)More LessWelcome to this bumper, 210-page, 50th anniversary edition of New Coin. By bringing together over 100 poems by 57 poets, we hope to showcase the wide range of voices at work in South African poetry. One of South African society's strengths is its diversity, which is reflected in its culture, and most certainly in its poetry. This special edition also includes a symposium on the state of South African poetry today.
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Poetry
Source: New Coin Poetry 50, pp 13 –185 (2014)More LessAlan Finlay : accept this; Untitled; Poem to a future wife
Moira Lovell : Road
Arja Salafranca : You wake softly; Sunday night breath
Mxolisi Nyezwa : I want the dead men to see the flying birds; It does not rest; White death in winter
Abigail George : The arrival of the paper tiger empress; Haiku for Ann Quin
Rethabile Masilo : Cape Town; Blue
Khulile Nxumalo : RSA 2014
Bernard Levinson : Meeting; I see you
Kobus Moolman : Dear Letter; There is a spider
Angifi Dladla : A short man; Seven soldiers laughed on Christmas Day
Genna Gardini : Whale watching; The Narcissist's Guide to Electronics; Bleed Us Not Into Temptation
Medzani Musandiwa : War of attrition; And the Nigerian Man is praying
Kyle Allan : W.H. Auden; Sonata
Kelwyn Sole : Tourists; Ocean; Platteland
David Wa Maahlamela : the last ecuadorian salsa; Borotho; the distance of the dead
Natalia Molebatsi : Jozburg we want to fly; Dance with me; After the shelling
Dashen Naicker : Mtunzini; Bushbuck Avenue
Nazlee Arbee : The 7 o'clock news; The walls of a tin-roofed shack
Joop Bersee : A day; Shore
Diana Bloem : Clatter
Dawn Garisch : Flake
Sindiswa Busuku-Mathese : Mother's Lyric; Mother's Lyric (ii); Mother's Lyric (iii)
Raphael D'abdon : the night i and my lady shared an apple; at night we still remember you; at the madnouse
Gerard Rudolf : Joburg Lullaby; 14th Avenue, Tshawne (née Pretoria)
Mick Raubenheimer : Her toes; Purr
Saaleha Idrees Bamjee : After the miscarriage; By Heart
Unathi Slasha : Nobody weeps for Brutus; Value
Vonani Bila : Why I am not a teacher
Lesego Rampolokeng : Word to Serote
Gail Dendy :Jimmy; An unusual proposal of marriage
Jim Pascual Agustin : Light and the consequences of seeing; Someday someone will say this against me
Jeannie Wallace Mckeown : Jeffrey's Bay wind farm triptych; In sickness and divorce; In everything
Brett Beiles : Haiku; Before the Fall; Love's Labour's Lost; Lost in Translation; In the Beginning ...; Reverse Haiku
Hans Pienaar : God of cheating; Goddess of love
Colleen Higgs : Practising; The limited attractions of Australia; for the elderly and the dead
Mphutlane Wa Bofelo : He & she
Erica Glyn Schofield : Hole
Robert Berold : Blind ear
Lionel Murcott : Mortal; Naked
Marike Beyers : nothing looked back; why he went to the army
Denis Hirson : Camera obscura; Three things warthogs know; If I were paper
Lee-Mari Gower : Strings of attachment; Solitary
Elmé Vivier : In between it all; After your chemo; Slowly
John Simon : Dire warning
Maruping Phepheng : Clouds darken as they clear; The journey of a quarry
Justine Joseph : New shoes
Leslie Howard : Vagrant lover
Damain Garside : Newton
Haidee Kruger : Bookshelf; Smock; 7/2014
Julian De Wette Albert Kamimbi : open season; The Cape of Good Hope, 1960s
Linda Ndlovu : Skhothane *Fashion cult*; Legend would have it; We go back to the mountains
Tim Van Niekerk : Waving
Tony Ullyat : Into the gaping maw: on moving house
Mbongeni Khumalo : Childbirth; Facebook frenzy; House of Fools
Allan Kolski Horwitz : The back of the head of the guitar; Voice of a homeless woman
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Poets must be everywhere : the state of South African poetry - a symposium
Author Mxolisi NyezwaSource: New Coin Poetry 50, pp 22 –25 (2014)More LessSouth African poetry is in a perennial state of war. Poets, like mercenaries, huddle inside the walls of the falling buildings, the country's barracks. Poetry which must reach out like leaves beyond our souls' borders is ensnared by a colonial language, English.
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Keeping new : South African poetry today : the state of South African poetry - a symposium
Author Kobus MoolmanSource: New Coin Poetry 50, pp 38 –41 (2014)More LessDear Kobus
Thank you for your letter. I am glad you are well, and writing. I look forward to your new collection. I am sorry I could not have been there to celebrate your fiftieth birthday.
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Poetry - a journey just begun : the state of South African poetry - a symposium
Author Kelwyn SoleSource: New Coin Poetry 50, pp 56 –59 (2014)More LessThe suggestion that South African poetry of the millennium has lost some of the excitement generated by the passionate urges of the immediately post-liberation period is a challenging statement. While spoken word poetry is flourishing, the relative doldrums that have becalmed published poetry can be seen in the decline of anthologies and individual collections produced, as well as the crimped space now given to discussion about poetry issues in the popular cultural media, at book fairs and in university curricula. Moreover, the generation of poets who instigated the excitement of the 1990s are now older, and their favoured themes more familiar.
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To unravel the unjust : the state of South African poetry - a symposium
Author Dashen NaickerSource: New Coin Poetry 50, pp 69 –71 (2014)More LessThe wind is warm, in the evening air, under the stars. Five South Africans sit at a fire sharing poems. Their work is sophisticated considering the paltry state of poetry elsewhere in the globe. With advanced literary techniques like anaphora and anthropomorphism their words weave into the night sky. The year is 10 000 BCE. The four are |Xam people, ravelling poetic tales and 'tradition' before TS Eliot's language invented the word. Before Homer's, before Valmiki's. You'd think some 12 000 years later, the land of the eland would have one of the leading poetic traditions in the world. Buried strings aren't easily unravelled. What can be said of poetry then, 12 000 years later, in a country suffused with the only elements essential for the artform, blood and beauty? How can it be said?
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Locating spoken word in today's South African poetry scene : the state of South African poetry - a symposium
Author Raphael D'AbdonSource: New Coin Poetry 50, pp 86 –90 (2014)More LessIn a commentary on the state-of-the-art of contemporary South African poetry titled "Remembering Stephen Watson: A Legacy at Risk" (1), poet and scholar David Tyfield maintains that the latter is in trouble because Watson's lesson has been forgotten (unlearned? ignored?), and the few surviving Watsonian versifiers of the country (category to which he, presumably, belongs) are an endangered species under attack by the pervasive and corrosive exuberance of ideologically-blind scribblers.
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Decline to participate : the state of South African poetry - a symposium
Author Lesego RampolokengSource: New Coin Poetry 50 (2014)More LessBelow are three poems published in the 70s. they are examples of, for me, writing that does not go with how, in the brief, poetry before 94 is said to have been. And they are not freak-exceptions. Experimentation has for a long time been a part of S.A. lit. I could provide more such, Wopko Jensma would feature prominently in that set-up.
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Poetry and Modjaji Books : the state of South African poetry - a symposium
Author Colleen HiggsSource: New Coin Poetry 50, pp 131 –132 (2014)More LessAs the publisher of Modjaji Books I don't want to discuss the state of South African poetry at a macro level. What I want to do is to invite you to look at the Modjaji Books and Hands-On Books poetry lists. As of the 30 June 2014 we had published 27 new collections of poetry. All of these titles can be seen on our website www.modjajibooks.co.za where you will see the range, depth and variety of voices that we have published since 2007. Our very first title was a poetry collection, Megan Hall's Fourth Child; it went on to win the Ingrid Jonker prize in 2008. Since then Beverly Rycroft was also awarded the Ingrid Jonker prize in 2012 for her collection, missing. We have had our poets receive other prizes and honours. Phillippa Yaa de Villiers won the 2011 SALA poetry prize and she is the Commonwealth Poet for 2014.
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Some aspects of contemporary South African poetry : the state of South African poetry - a symposium
Author Denis HirsonSource: New Coin Poetry 50, pp 144 –147 (2014)More LessWriting a few years before the end of apartheid, Chris van Wyk sets out to explain to his readers how to vote, soaking his words in irony: "The ballot./ This means voting./ There's this big box./ It has a slot./ Ja, like a money box [ . . .]" Today, after twenty years of democracy, David wa Maahlamela feels free to write in his poem "Autobiography" that he will not go to the polls, adding "I refuse to be anyone's spanner or hammer; I enjoy biting the hand that feeds me/ especially when it feeds me poison."
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"The most delicate instrument we possess for finding out who and where we are" : Space, identity and language in South African poetry : the state of South African poetry - a symposium
Author Haidee KrugerSource: New Coin Poetry 50, pp 163 –168 (2014)More LessIn the first editorial statement of New Coin in 1965, under the editorship of Guy Butler, the new journal characterised itself as follows: "We still believe that the art of poetry, as it is the oldest, is still the most delicate instrument we possess for finding out who and where we are." Here, poetry is viewed as a delicate instrument of discovery - the poem as compass, or scalpel, or microscope - to explore the meshwork of identity and place. But whose instrument is it? Who wields it? And whose self, and place, is the instrument meant to discover?
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Are we 'happening' or are we a back(side)water? : the state of South African poetry - a symposium
Author Allan Kolski HorwitzSource: New Coin Poetry 50, pp 186 –188 (2014)More LessLike so much in South African literature (and in every other sphere of our lives), poetry is conditioned as much by class, colour and language as by imagination, intellect, love of word play and a desire to explore new forms. And this being the case, our fragmented history - a narrative of settlement, conquest, domination and now post-colonial disenchantment - is reflected in every poetry platform, magazine, anthology and website. This is with regard to which poets are presented and/or published, the predominant themes and styles they choose, as well as the politics, identity and predispositions of the editors.
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A tribute to Mafika Gwala : tribute
Author Robert BeroldSource: New Coin Poetry 50, pp 189 –190 (2014)More LessOn 7 July 2014 at Wordfest, in the National Arts Festival, a reading was held to honour the poet Mafika Gwala. Gwala, who wrote in English and Zulu, was an important activist in the Black Consciousness period of the 1970s-80s, and he remained radical in his views long after the momentum of the BC movement had faded.
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Now the world takes these breaths, Joan Metelerkamp : review
Author Kelwyn SoleSource: New Coin Poetry 50, pp 191 –201 (2014)More LessIn an article published a number of years ago ('The paper city: women, writing and experience'), poet and critic Helen Kidd speaks about a variety of feminist poetics "based on observations of how women interact together and how, in conversation, threads are dropped, picked up again, sentences unfinished and then reformulated later on", which are derived from those "creatively used moments which women find for themselves feeding babies at dawn, between flights of stairs at dusk .... or all the other varieties of making that accompany domestic moments... ." This is, in my opinion, a useful prism through which to begin viewing to the poetry of Joan Metelerkamp. Even as her style does shift and evolve between collections, such a constant weaving of themes and shuttling between connections can be seen in the shifting patterns and reiterations in her poems. These interweavings are sometimes fraught, sometime radiant, but always ineluctable. The subject matter of individual poems may sometimes make this more obvious, as in the poem 'Giving away' in this collection; where the actual task of sewing is described in minute particulars.
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In the Heat of Shadows: South African Poetry 1996-2013, Denis Hirson (Ed.) : review
Author Tlhalo Sam RaditlhaloSource: New Coin Poetry 50, pp 202 –209 (2014)More LessDenis Hirson, the South African poet now living in France, has once again edited an anthology of poetry, this one spanning the years 1996-2013. Prior to this anthology, Hirson edited The Lava of This Land: South African Poetry 1960-1996 (Northwestern University, 1997). This present anthology, with 135 poems from 32 poets, arose as a result of the Festival international de poètes en Val de Marne held between 24 May and 2 June 2013. The organisers, impressed by the readings of the South African contingent who had attended the festival, proposed a French anthology devoted to South African poetry, which Hirson offered to edit. This resulted in the anthology Pas des blessure, pas d'histoire (November 2013), a special issue of the literary journal Bachannales, whose editors, as Hirson says in his Introduction, gave him 'a free hand in constituting the French anthology which was made in tandem with this one.'