Dye Hard Interview: Kyle Allan: Poetry as physical intensity

Kyle Allan is a poet, performer, writer, recording artist and literary festival organiser living in Himeville in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. He released a CD of poetry, Influences, in 2013 and his debut print collection of poetry, House without walls, was published by Sibali Media in 2016. 

His poems have been published in South African literary journals such as Fidelities, New Coin, New Contrast, Carapace, Kotaz,and Botsotso, and in literary journals in India and the USA. 

He has contributed writing to a variety of publications, including the Natal Witness, LitNet, Mindmapsa and potholesandpadkos. More here

Invite to the Cape Town launch of donga

Oh BLeKSEM, I Missed (Most of) the Launch of Donga

On a night that snow fell in Johannesburg, breeding dubious new forms of life, a very respectable crowd turned out at De la Creme, the bakery and cafe next door to Bookdealers of Melville, for the launch of several indie works, including The Best of Donga, an important compilation from new imprint BLeKSEM (in association with Dye Hard Pres sand Botsotso)...Read more here

A note from Alan Finlay and Paul Wessels, editors of the donga anthology

it’s been a while… so much has happened… we’ve seen god, we’ve seen the alpha and the omega… paul beat mr death at his own game… so did stacy years later… alan holds out against the city folk… lionel and mark didn’t make it… the mud that caked our ankles has long since crumbled to sand and lies now like mementos of a long forgotten past on our unswept floors… the donga anthology edited by alan finlay and paul wessels will be launched in johannesburg tuesday 7 august 2012 5:30 for 6:00pm de la crème next to bookdealers of melville cnr 7^th street and 4^th avenue Melville… (cape town launch to be announced) we returned to the dugout a time ago, no sign of the lean-to, the ashes in the fire pit long blown away to reveal the grey earth of countless catfish braais… the wind caressed us, carrying off our tears as we turned to leave that place forever, having now gathered the words…

lionel abrahams

robert berold

lauren beukes

nadine botha

toast coetzer

gary cummiskey

jané dowd

clinton v du plessis

quen emmenes

graeme feltham

richard fox

stacy hardy

august highland

stephen hofstätter

aryan kaganof

chris kraus

bernat kruger

greg latter

arthur mafokate

dawie malan

joan metelerkamp

ike mboneni muila

pravasan pillay

leonhard praeg

lesego rampolokeng

arja salafranca

kelwyn sole

bill stobb

rayno van rooi

ivan vladislavić

paul wessels

stu woolman

apologies to those who do not appear in the anthology. no hard feelings. gary from dye hard and allan from botsotso bankrolled the project and we gratefully squeezed in as much as we could. maybe next time…

Book launch: donga, There Are Two Birds At My Window, Meditations of a Non-White White and Botsotso #16

Rene Bohnen on donga

n ʼn tyd van e-boeke, beide nuwe publikasies en bestaande boeke wat in die nuwe formaat aangebied word, het ek afgekom op ʼn publikasie wat andersom werk.

donga was ʼn aanlyn projek wat deur Alan Finlay begin is en vanaf 2000 tot 2003 op die internet verskyn het. Onlnags is sommige van die werke wat aanlyn verskyn het in gedrukte vorm gebundel en uitgegee deur Bleksem en Dye Hard Press gesamentlik ...Read more here

New title from BlekSem, in collaboration with Botsotso Publishing and Dye Hard Press: donga

donga is a selection of poetry, short fiction, interviews and essays from what was one of South Africa's first literary online journals (2000-2003).

With 32 contributors, donga  contains work by writers such as Lionel Abrahams, Robert Berold, Lauren Beukes, Nadine Botha, Toast Coetzer, Gary Cummiskey, Graeme Feltham, Richard Fox, Stacy Hardy, Stephen Hofstatter, Aryan Kaganof, Bernat Kruger, Joan Meterlerkamp, Ike Mboneni Muila, Pravasan Pillay, Lesego Rampolokeng, Arja Salafranca, Kelwyn Sole, Ivan Vladislavic and Paul Wessels.

donga is edited by Alan Finlay and Paul Wessels, and is published by BlekSem, in collaboration with Botsotso Publishing and Dye Hard Press.

320 pages.

ISBN: 978-0-620-52779-8

For more information and direct orders, contact Alan Finlay at bleksembook@gmail.com. donga will soon retail at bookstores.

Forthcoming title from BlekSem, in collaboration with Botsotso and Dye Hard Press: The Best of Donga

Due out soon: The Best of Donga, an anthology published by BlekSem, in collaboration with Botsotso and Dye Hard Press.

Donga was one of SA's first online literary journals, published between 2000 and 2003. Edited by Alan Finlay and Paul Wessels, the anthology includes poetry and prose by Aryan Kaganof, Robert Berold, Nadine Botha, Toast Coetzer, Richard Fox, Bernat Kruger,Joan Metelerkamp,Ike Mboneni Muila, Arja Salafranca, Kelwyn Sole, Pravasan Pillay, Ivan Vladislavic, Lesego Rampolokeng, Stacy Hardy, Lauren Beukes, Lionel Abrahams, Gary Cummiskey and others.

320 pages

ISBN: 978-0-620-52779-8

A poetic odyssey on wings

It was late 1994 when Alan Finlay told me he’d found a venue for us to read our poems. It was at a monthly event called Odyssey Theatre, at the students’ spot called Wings, in Braamfontein, diagonally across from Wits University and opposite Liberty Life head office.

For our first night there, Alan had told me we would be reading about 6.30, so I had got out there about six, to find the place deserted except for the organisers, Alex and Martin, who told me the evening’s proceedings were starting only at eight – something which bugged me, because I was in the middle of writing exams and had wanted to finish the reading and be home by about 7.30 and start swotting. When Alan arrived he also seemed put out by this news, but what the hell, we were there, so we might as well go with the flow.

Before Alan had pitched up there was another young guy hanging around, with a guitar, a rather quiet, shy type; for some reason he had also pitched up too early. We smoked a cigarette together and got chatting. His name was Matthew van der Want and it was his first gig, as I recall. It was my first reading and I was a nervous wreck but as Matthew pointed out, it was good to be nervous because it built up adrenalin.

By about 7.30 the crowds – mainly students, of course – were beginning to pile in and the empty beer bottles on our table were beginning to pile up. There had been a poster advertising the event, highlighting the appearance of “Four Poets On A Mission”, naming Alan Finlay, Robert Homem, Robert Berold and myself, though actually neither Homem nor Berold were there. Allan Kolski Horwitz and Anna Varney also read that night, and it was the first that I met them.

Odyssey Theatre was a mixture of music, poetry and performance – but mainly music. The first act that night was some hectic band, I can’t remember what their name was but they were damn loud – Allan and Anna sat with their fingers in their ears. While the band played some guy at the back of the stage was doing a painting, and at the end of the act he handed to the painting to someone in the audience.

One of the highlights of the evening though was Matthew and that first night he sang The Ville Blues, which was later to be published in the poetry anthology The Heart in Exile. I loved the lines:

But if I hear another pinball machine
If I hear another schoolgirl scream
If I hear another cafe owner’s dream
I think I’m gonna crack
In Rosettenville.

By the time I got onstage, about 9ish, I was almost staggering but at least all the beers had helped my hands from shaking. It was weird getting up on stage and staring into the darkness, you just couldn’t see anyone, only hear cheers or laughter – and of course the applause. It was encouraging and what was even better was that we got a bit of payment for our performance.

It was an exciting time. The first democratic elections had happened in April and a much-feared civil war did not occur. Nelson Mandela was president and there was a sense of relief and euphoria. South Africa was going forward and there was a tremendous amount of creative energy. There was a burst of small presses on the scene – Roy Blumenthal’s Barefoot Press, Botsotso, Bleksem, Something Quarterly and I had started up Dye Hard Press. The audiences at Wings were interested in what we had to read and publish; there was a receptiveness to a poetry that was different from what people had been taught at school and they welcomed our voices.

The Odyssey Theatre carried on for about eight months, I think, though I did not attend all the events. There was a lot of poetry being read, much of which found its way into the pages of Bleksem. There were poets such as John Cumming, a tall guy, who read hilarious poems such as this one about cocaine:

Diamonds are forever
Like de Beers in Angola
But the coke we love to import
Isn’t: ALWAYS COCA-COLA

There was a very quiet guy named John Raubenheimer, He had been a journalist and had resigned in order to try to live full time by his creative writing; and now I wonder what became of him. Then there was Brett Locke, who read his nakedly honest gay poems about desire and loneliness – poems he later collected into a small chapbook called 13 Poems for The Superstitious.

Looking back, there seemed to be a definite lack of black poets and performers at the venue. I think it was mainly a white line-up. Even though Botsotso Jesters Allan and Anna performed, I don’t think I ever saw the other members of the group – IkeMboneni Muila, Siphiwe Ka Ngwenya and Isabella Motadinyane - perform there.

I also remember a hectic performance group who did weird pieces with hecticl music and flicker lights. Alex reminded me just last week that they were called Breinskade. I remember asking one of the performers what inspired their pieces and he replied:” Lotsa drugs, man, lotsa drugs!”

There was also the MC, Cito, who used to talk with what seemed like a put-on American accent – this being a time when there were quite a few imitation Jim Morrisons running around Johannesburg. Cito, however came from Pretoria.

I recall the names of Battery 9 and Chris Chameleon being passed around at the Theatre, but I am not sure if they ever performed there, or if they did, maybe it was one of the nights when I did not attend.

Whom I do remember very clearly was a blues player called Black Paul, who would have difficulty getting off the stage. "Just one last song!” he’d say after hogging the stage for about half an hour, then just carry on playing more and more songs. It was annoying as it threw the whole schedule out, and some people - I think myself on one occasion – who were scheduled to read at 9 only got on stage at 11. I heard that once it was so bad they pulled the lights on him.

So the Theatre rolled on for months but eventually I felt there was a drop in energy becoming evident. At the last reading I gave at the Theatre there was a definite change in vibe. The audience was bad; they talked all the way through the first performance, a woman singing softly and playing on keyboards. When I got up to read it was the same thing – I could just hear talking and I at one point I was tempted to just stop and give it a miss, but I carried on to the end. There was clearly no interest in what I was saying.

It was probably also around this time that the initial euphoria of the elections began to wear off. Violent crime was rearing its head and a huge sense of fear was settling in. At work almost every day someone told of themselves or a family member or of a friend being robbed, hijacked, raped, assaulted or even murdered. The economy was going to pieces, interest rates rising and job creation not occurring. Emigration was becoming a hot topic.

By the end of the 1990s there was also a decrease in the number of literary journals appearing, and of those small presses that started up in Johannesburg during the period of the Odyssey Theatre only Dye Hard Press and Botsotso remain – and even I axed Dye Hard temporarily in 1999. There was also a drop in poetry reading venues in the area, although Pretoria’s Up The Creek took up the mantle for a while. I don’t think that in the past 10 years or so Johannesburg has had anything to replace what was happening back then at Wings.

For me, the Odyssey Theatre was an inspiring experience at a time when poetic and innovative creativity was welcomed more easily and audiences were more receptive, interested and engaging. But perhaps the time was also more innocent – it was certainly more hopeful - and in various ways I was naive about what was happening and what could be achieved.

No flash in the pan, this fiction

Review of 100 Papers, Liesl Jobson, Botsotso Publishing, Out of the Wreckage, Allan Kolski Horwitz, Botsotso Publishing, Botsotso 15: Jozi Spoken Word Special Edition

Flash fiction — essentially a very short story, which can range from about 10 lines to four pages — might be regarded as the ideal kind of genre for our rushed, fast-paced times. But it is as ancient as Aesop, and was practised by writers such as Anton Chekhov and Ernest Hemingway.

South African Liesl Jobson has just published her debut volume, 100 Papers, which consists of 100 prose poems and flash fiction pieces. The opening piece in her collection, Shopping List, sets the tone for many of the other stories with its strong sense of the understated, of what is not being said, of unspoken and unresolved tensions.

It also introduces the theme of relationships, motherhood and loneliness, although some of the stories are fairly lighthearted, such as How the Oreo Stole Christmas and Bridgework.

And, not surprisingly, considering Jobson’s career as a bassoonist, many of them feature orchestral musicians, such as Bassoon Lesson, Perfect Timing, Zebra Breath, and She Cannot Love Her Own Air.

Notable flash fiction pieces in the collection are Litter-Bugs, Spider Salad, Bump, Saviour, Cell, My Mother’s Diary, Vessel and Green Socks, White Lies.

But the strongest items are the prose poems, such as Naysayers, A Hundred Times a Day, In the Biscuits, Sun-Dried Tomatoes, The Corner of My Eye, and Under My SAPS Star, though sometimes the distinction between the very short flash fictions and the prose poems are not so clear, such as with Cell — a mere 17 lines and clearly a narrative — and Vessel, which is one-and-a-half pages but reads like a prose poem.

This is a welcomed debut volume. A slight problem is the fact that the strongest pieces are mainly in the second half.

Botsotso editor Allan Kolski Horwitz’s Out of the Wreckage is also a collection of very short fiction, predominantly a series of “dream parables” involving a male character named Abel.
They are surreal tales which the blurb says consist of “the dream-like; the waking fantasy; the reverie; the parable that instructs; the story that informs … the dream that saves the dreamer”.

Like Jobson’s volume, most of the pieces are not longer than three to four pages, and one piece, Excursion, is only 19 lines. Some are more conventional short-story narratives, two of which — Blue and Ashford — appeared in a previous Botsotso anthology of short fiction, Unity in Flight.

The collection starts off promisingly with The President, a powerful, all-too-familiar story of a despot determined to hold onto power while his country goes to ruin.

Despite the dream-like atmosphere throughout the volume, the realities of a contemporary violent society are sometimes not too far away — one of the pieces is called War Time.

While some of the other dream parables are strong — such as Discover, The Dog, Accidents, Out of the Wreckage, The Festival and She Was Taken Captive — the most rewarding pieces are the more conventional stories, such as The Tap Plant, A Faraway Shopping Centre, Four Seasons, Gerhard, Blue, Ashford, Mystery in the Cottage and She Whom I Love.

The concept of the dream narrative is fascinating, but the overall feeling with Out of the Wreckage is that of overkill. If the number of dream parables had been reduced, or if there were more conventional stories to create a balance, the book might have been more effective.

The 15th issue of literary journal Botsotso is a special edition, with about half of its 200 pages selections of material presented at the first Jozi Spoken Word festival, which took place over four days at Wits University last year.

There is commentary from critics such as Anthea Buys and Darryl Accone and papers on Who Makes or Breaks the Canon? by James Ogude and Rosemary Gray, which were originally part of a panel discussion at the festival.

There are poems by Angifi Dladla, Hugh Lewin, Mak Manaka, Ike Mboneni Muila, Siphiwe ka Ngwenya, Peter Horn, Mphutlane wa Bofelo and Dennis Brutus, as well as short fiction by Achmat Dangor, Horwitz and Jobson.

The second section contains new work ranging from short fiction by Zukiswa Wanner, Jean-Francois Kouadio, Hlengiwe Mnguni and Arja Salafranca, to poetry from Alan Finlay, Brent Meersman, Elizabeth Trew and Dave Stevens.

The volume is illustrated throughout with a powerful graphics series called Xnau by Garth Erasmus, which are the result of flame on paper and show mysterious black and white shapes suggesting figures or skeleton-like bones.

In SA, where literary journals are scarce and constantly struggling for survival, it is encouraging to see Botsotso not only still publishing, but also growing stronger and publishing such rewarding, innovative and imaginative work.

(First published in The Weekender September 20, 2008)

No brand-puppet poet

Producing poetry that is infused with a sense of social and political commitment may seem like a throw-back to the apartheid era for some, but for poet, editor, publisher and community activist Vonani Bila, the urgent need for poets — and all writers — to address social injustice remains as strong as ever.

Bila, whose fourth poetry collection, Handsome Jita, was recently published by University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, was born in 1972 at Shirley Village in the Elim area of Limpopo, into a family of eight children.

He says his parents instilled in him an appreciation of music and narrative.

“My father was a gifted singer and composer,” says Bila. “He even used to play the timbila (a finger harp that is associated with the Vatsonga, Vacopi and Machangani of Mozambique, where the Bilas originally come from).

“My mother didn’t attend any formal schooling, but she’s indisputably a living historian with an astute and impeccable memory of family and social history. My mother tells intelligent and humorous tales to her grandchildren with great passion. It is from her that I inherited the narrative command evident in my poetry.”

But he is deeply aware of the conditions of poverty and injustice into which he was born. His great-grandfather fought in the Second World War but, “like most blacks who served in the army, he got virtually nothing, except that his name got engraved on the walls of Elim Hospital”.
“My father died after working at Elim Hospital for almost 30 years, earning a paltry R300 a month at the time of his death.”

Bila went to Lemana High School, one of the reputable public schools in Elim, he says, but he had to walk 14km to get there.

He was 21 when his first poem was published. At the time, Bila was a student at Tivumbeni College of Education, where he earned the reputation of being a public poet. His involvement at the time with nongovernmental organisations such as the Akanani Rural Development Association sharpened his political views.

“It motivated me to want to join Umkhonto weSizwe in 1989. I took my passport, but when my father died, I couldn’t proceed with my plans. I guess a certain anger that is in my poetry is that of a guerrilla who fires with poetry rather than with an AK47.”

His first collection of poems, No Free Sleeping, with Donald Parenzee and Alan Finlay, was published in 1998 by Botsotso. He was impressed with the way in which Botsotso got him involved in the production, and this inspired him to start up his own poetry publishing venture, the Timbila Poetry Project, which has published collections by poets such as Goodenough Mashego, Makhosazana Xaba and Mbongeni Khumalo.

Bila has also published two of his own titles — In the Name of Amandla and Magicstan Fires — as well as an annual poetry journal, Timbila. He has also released a CD of his poetry, Dahl Street, Pietersburg.

Bila emphasises the value of the spoken word, and of the benefits of being able to listen to poetry. “If a poet can project their poetry well through their voice on CD and on stage, then they can easily communicate the feeling of the poem to a large number of people who wouldn’t necessarily have access to the book, given that poetry books are not widely distributed in shops.

“But SA needs books as much as we need CDs, printed T-shirts and posters bearing poems. When we explore new technology such as the internet, we must always remember there are millions of South Africans who don’t have access to that medium.

“SA’s illiteracy levels are shocking and for that reason, we will always need books.”

But despite this emphasis on the need to reach a wide audience, Bila does not see himself as a public poet.

“I am a poet who comments on life around and about me,” he says. “Yes, I confront the reader with stories of shame, degradation, retrenched workers, prostitutes in substandard conditions, the unemployed and beggars — these are stories few dare to tell with honesty, love and compassion. Instead they sensationalise them and further dehumanise these people.

“This sordid reality I feel nobody, especially poets, should be ignoring. Of course, there is a price one can pay heavily for raising such embarrassing questions of the government’s failure to take care of the poor.

“Where I come from, poverty hits you straight in the face and you wonder what changes (Jacob) Zuma or (Thabo) Mbeki or the African National Congress (ANC) will effect to improve the lives of the poor. All I see is politicians accumulating wealth, buying farms, sitting on several companies as directors, fixing tenders for their relatives.

“I comment on all these matters, not because it’s sexy to do so, nor because every angry young poet feels the ANC has sold out. I do so because I am a patriot. I care about finding the roots of social and political problems we are facing.

“Poetry is not a hobby for me. It’s a lifelong commitment, and I can only be true to myself when I express that which I believe in, without being a propagandist.”

Apart from disappointment over the government’s lack of service delivery, Bila is also troubled by the fact that the spectre of apartheid has not yet disappeared and that incidents of racist attacks are rife in SA’s rural areas.

“I am antiracist,” he says. “I come from a province rife with racism. White farmers chop off a farm worker’s head, throw him into a river, and say he was bitten by a crocodile. They mistake black people for dogs and baboons.”

His poetry has won him recognition overseas and he has been invited to countries such as Belgium, Sweden, Holland and Brazil. But one particular overseas trip was harrowing: last year, when arriving at Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Kenya to attend the World Economic Summit, he was detained for three hours for allegedly travelling on an out-of-date passport.

“It was a nasty experience,” he says, but also points to a lack of solidarity among writers in SA.

“If poets were organised, they would have spoken out against the Kenyan government’s trampling on my rights. But a writer could die in prison without other writers saying a word.”

Bila is encouraged that Keorapetse “Willie” Kgositsile is now SA’s poet laureate and hopes there will now be some dynamism in the country’s literary development.

He also says poetry would be better known if schools were studying local poets.

“Most schools exclude poetry. What is commonplace in the school and varsity arena are proponents of British and American modernism such as TS Eliot.

“With the exception of black consciousness-inspired poetry of the ’70s, those who teach poetry
pretend there’s a desert between 1980 and now.”

Bila, however, takes a critical view of work being produced by younger South African poets.

“They slam, and in their slam jam there’s little poetry. They mimic some of the worst US thugs and choose to ignore rich and unusual voices. To generalise is not fair, but those who appear to have become celebrities, whether (that status is) self-constructed or acquired, are worshipped by the youth because their faces are visible on TV and from time to time they are invited to perform at government and corporate functions.

“Some poets are happy to be commissioned to write about brands and labels; I’m not such a clown. They demand to perform at government functions, and they are paid good money. You’ll hear so and so was in Cuba, attending a writers’ conference. How they get there is through connections.”

But thankfully for South African poetry, Bila is no performing puppet and nobody’s clown.

First published in The Weekender 12 January, 2008

Botsotso 14

Botsotso 14 has just been published and includes poetry and prose by writers such as Mike Alfred, Vonani Bila, Motjidibane Bapela, Ike Mboneni Muila, Joop Bersee, Anton Kruger, Allan Kolski Horwitz, Liesl Jobson, Lionel Murcott, Mark Espin, Arja Salafranca, Anna Varney, Muthal Naidoo, Kobus Moolman and Haidee Kruger.

Botsotso is published by Botsotso Publishing.