Contrast  is fifty.

Occasionally, I'm asked about my editing "rules": whether I follow Oxford or Chicago. I confess I do neither and do not conform knowingly to any other set of rules or opinions. Let me explain.

I hear poetry, and some occasional prose, every week. I read other people's new writing every day. English varies a lot.

I found, with the poet in performance, I would sometimes hear with the expectation of  "errors" . Or, when reading, that I should correct/edit the stuff that was "wrong".  Then a miracle happened that explained almost everything: a Darwinian revelation.

A Nigerian poet read, by invitation at Off-the-Wall. He was witty and wise with the language that always brings "No Woman, No Cry" to my ears. At the end he asked for questions. I asked why he read only in English and not in his home language, be it Yoruba, Ibo and so on. He replied, "My home language is English." Not that it matters, of course. But it did bring home to me, abruptly, that the varieties are many. And that is it's peculiar strength. Beyond English, it is humanity's and life's spice.

So, my "editing" is based on the idea that you and I communicate using one or more varieties of our language: there is no correct way. Or, perhaps, even common way. The English of township and suburb, east and west, differ, but the language is everybody's property.

The editor wishes only that you write well in your tongue.

New Contrast Issue 152 Contents

Michael Cope - Remembering Contrast No. 1 

 

Writing and Authors from (original) Contrast One
Jack Cope 
Anthony Eaton 
Nadine Gordimer 
Ruth Miller 
Jan Rabie 
Uys Krige 
Anthony Delius 
Etienne Leroux 
Ingrid Jonker 

Lara Kirsten
suiwerste troos 
dit is soos dit is 
afrika-dig 
kabaret-poësie 
om afrikaner te wees 
Vonani Bila
Sacred Passage 
Abdul Ali
Diving 
Bulelwa Basse
Daddy’s Got The Blues 
Dj Protest
Land of The Invincibles 
Yodeller of Painful Laughs 
Phelelani Makhanya
The concrete jungle 
Olufemi Terry
Subliminal sex 
Half a loaf 
Thandi Sliepen
post polokwane poem
Willie James King
‘Fore This Night Is Over 
It Amazed Them That No matter How Hard 

Jonty Driver
Black Boy 
Paul Wynd 
Makepeace 
Geoffrey Haresnape
Commissioned Officer 
Douglas Skinner
On Time 
Margo Wallace
The Ocean is an Artist 
Gail Dendy
The Space of Forgetting 
Ken Barris
Writer’s Block 
Cataracts 
Kelwyn Sole
Cape Town™ 
Andries Samuel
yes 
Crystal Warren
See no evil 
Rituals 
Liesl Jobson
Purification 
Chris van der Walt
The last autumn leaf 
Arja Salafranca
Winter afternoons 
Norman Morrissey
Stepping Stones 
Moony 
Silke Heiss
Master of Creation 
These tears 
The Chosen 
Paul Mason
Feast my Eyes 
Tightrope Walker 
Alan Galante
Below the slow weight of fashion 
Damian Garside
Intellectual Property 
Danie van Jaarsveld
wet summer, cold winter 
Fowl 
Consuelo Roland
The Pig Pen
Madeleine du Toit
Journey 
Absent lover
Karin Schimke
Die pad huistoe 
Morning work 
Dream knitting 
Rosemund Handler
Man contemplates wife 
Esther van der Vyver
[untitled] 
[untitled] 
The cycle of the Statue 
Fern GZ Carr
The Stain 
Kirsten Holmes
Rebirth 
Mark Swift
When I can’t sleep 
Robert Balfour
-This Mess We’re In 
Martha Evans
Lucky Number Three 
Alessio Zanelli
The Clochard 
Catherine Powell
Coda 
Rachel Paton
To Dragonfly 
Kobus Moolman
Three Trees 
Marianne Burton
The Souls Get Out 
Chris Thurman
Elegies For Living Poets 
Abigail George
Bessie Head 

 

New Contrast Issue 152 Contributors

Abdul Ali is a native New Yorker residing in the District of Columbia. He is a graduate of Howard University where he edited The Amistad. His poems have appeared in numerous journals  including The Washington Post, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Tidal Basin Review

 

Abigail George studied film and television production for a short while. She is a writer and poet. She has been published in print and online. Storytelling for her has always been a phenomenal way of communicating  with other people.

 

Alan Galante lived most of his life in the shadow of Table Mountain before moving to Norfolk, England with his family. His poems have been published in both South African and English magazines, exploring themes such as exile, death, relationships and memory.

 

Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who has long adopted English as his writing language and his work has appeared in over 100 literary magazines from 12 countries. He is the author of three collections.

Andries Samuel makes a living as an architect in Cape Town and dances and writes to keep sane. He was raised and educated in the Freestate. He is afflicted with writing in Afrikaans and English.

 

Arja Salafranca has published two collections of poetry, A Life Stripped of Illusions and The Fire in Which We Burn, and co-edited Glass Jars Among Trees with the poet Alan Finlay. She lives in Johannesburg where she edits the Sunday Life section of The Sunday Independent.

 

Bulelwa Basse is the Founder of Lyrical Base Project, an arts and culture organisation which seeks to elevate the profiles of writers from marginalised communities through community-publishing projects, performance poetry, cultural and corporate events.

 

Catherine Powell grew up in Boston, Massachusetts and loves New England writers—Melville, Hawthorne, and Stevens especially. She fell in love with Cape Town in 2008 and has been there ever since. Having recently finished her MA in English at UCT, she is now writing a book of ghost stories.

 

Chris Thurman is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English Literature at Wits University. He is an author, editor and occasional freelance journalist. Books include Guy Butler: Reassessing A South African Literary Life and Sport Versus Art: A South African Contest.

 

Chris van der Walt has had careers in financial management property.  He's been an angler for most of his life and holds SA Masters colours for shore angling. His other interests are endurance sports. Chris started writing again after retirement.

 

Consuelo Roland has published a novel called  The Good Cemetery Guide, which was short-listed for the Sunday Times Fiction Award 2006, and several short stories, the latest included in Twist, an anthology based on tabloid headlines. After leaving her career in the IT industry, she completed a Creative Writing Masters degree at the UCT and is now a full-time writer.

 

Crystal Warren lives in Grahamstown as a literary researcher at the National English Literary Museum. She teaches a creative writing course and edits New Coin magazine. Her poems have appeared in various journals and books, including her collection Bodies of Glass.

 

Damian Garside has been published in New Contrast since 1977. Since the early 1980s he has had a considerable number of poems published in literary magazines here in South Africa and the United States. He is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the Mafikeng Campus of North-West University.

 

Danie van Jaarsveld is a motor sport photographer who spends most of his life traipsing around the country after race, rally and off road racing cars. He lives on a plot outside Johannesburg with his wife, the younger two of his four children, dogs, guinea fowl, plovers, horses, a large free-range mole snake and other dependents.

 

Denise Clur (Barker) attended the Johan Carinus Art Centre, Grahamstown for Senior Certificate Art. She has a B.Sc (Maths. and Physics) from Rhodes, and Hons in Chemistry from Wits. She attended classes in painting, sculpture, etching and ceramics, and completed first year of BA (Fine Arts) at Wits. in 1967. Two of her short stories appeared in Contrast in 1974.

 

DJ Protest is a dreamer masquerading as a writer of all things poetic. Music and literature feature prominently: he crawls, walks, hops and dances on the tarred (not dusty!) streets of eBhayi (Port Elizabeth) rummaging for wandering voices, canned wisdom and kindred spirits in the pages of magazines and newspapers.

 

Douglas Skinner founded and directed The Carrefour Press, which specialised in South African English poetry and non-fiction. Since 1992, he has lived in the south-west corner of London. He has published four collections of poems and one collection of translations.

 

Esther van der Vyver was born and raised in the Eastern Cape, but after studies and travel, she settled in Stellenbosch. She studied English Literature, but works now in an  unrelated field. Esther writes in her spare time.

Fern G. Z. Carr is a member of The League of Canadian Poets, lawyer and teacher.  She composes poetry in five languages and has been published extensively world-wide from Finland to New Zealand.  The Parliamentary Poet Laureate has recently selected her poem, “I Am”, as Poem of the Month for Canada.  For further information, please visit Carr’s website at www.ferngzcarr.com.

Gail Dendy has published six collections of poetry. She believes in literary experimentation and agrees with Stravinsky's assertion that a work of art means nothing other than itself. Some of her great regrets in life are that the Marx Brothers are no longer giving live performances, and that she never studied ballet technique under Alexander Pushkin.

 

Geoffrey Haresnape has published four collections of  poetry, the most recent being The Living and the Dead: Selected and New Poems [2005].  Also a novel Testimony [1992] and short 'stories', African Tales from Shakespeare [1999]. Geoff has been a compulsive writer for many years.

 

HA Hodge is a poet and editor. He hosts the Off-the-Wall poetry gigs in Kommetjie and Kalk Bay. Hugh runs creative writing courses. 

 

CJ ‘Jonty’ Driver was born in Cape Town in 1939. President of NUSAS in 1963 and 1964, he became stateless in 1966, and was refused a visa to re-visit South Africa until after 1991. He has published five novels, six books of poetry, and a biography. His latest book is So Far, Selected Poems 1960 - 2004. 

 

Karin Schimke is a journalist. Her articles, columns and essays have been published in most of South Africa’s top newspapers and many of its oldest and best-known magazines. She acted as commissioning editor on a collection of literary erotic short stories, Open, published by Oshun Books in 2008. She lives in Cape Town with her two children.

 

Kelwyn Sole is a Professor in the English Department at UCT. Author of numerous critical articles and five collections of poetry. Kelwyn was born in Johannesburg, and was educated at the University of the Witwatersrand and at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

 

Ken Barris has published four novels, a collection of short stories, and two collections of poetry. He has won various literary awards, the most recent being the 2006 Thomas Pringle Award, for a short story published in New Contrast. He lives in Cape Town, and works at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.

 

Kirsten Holmes found poetry at 21. She attended Lionel Abrahams workshops for several years. Her poetry has appeared in Carapace. She has freelanced as a features writer and is working on her first screenplay.

 

Kobus Moolman teaches creative writing at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban. He has published  Time like Stone (which received the Ingrid Jonker Prize for 2001), Feet of the Sky, and Separating the Seas. His play, Full Circle (Dye Hard Press), won the 2004 PANSA award. He has also published a collection of radio plays, Blind Voices (Botsotso Publishers).

 

Lara Kirsten is a travelling pianist and poet. As poet, she performs in venues such as the Baxter (Cape Town), the Voortrekker Monument (Pretoria) and Die Zuid Afrika Huis (Amsterdam).  She is part of the Eastern Cape poet-group, Ecca, who presents readings and publishes collectively each year.

 

Liesl Jobson is the author of a collection of prose poems and flash fiction, 100 Papers (Botsotso, 2008), which received the 2006 Ernst van Heerden Creative Writing Award, and View from an Escalator (Botsotso, 2008).

 

Madeleine du Toit is an engineer and academic with a love for poetry.  She lives in Centurion with her two children.

Marianne Burton is an award-winning poet based in London. She was awarded a year's mentorship by the poetry magazine, Smiths Knoll, and her resulting collection, The Devil's Cut, was a Poetry Book Society Choice. She is widely published in the UK and US, and is a poetry mentor for the prison arts charity, the Koestler Trust.

 

Margo Wallace is a poet.

 

Mark Swift’s poems, prose and criticism have been widely published. His first collection, Treading Water, won the Ingrid Jonker Prize. His second book, Gentlewoman, had a history of banning and unbanning in South Africa and was published in New York. A third volume, Seconds Out, appeared in 1983. In 1987 he was awarded the Thomas Pringle Prize. A fourth volume, Testing the Edge, was published in 1996.

 

Martha Evans is currently completing her PhD in media studies at UCT. She has an MA in Creative Writing. She is a freelance fiction editor.

 

Michael Cope was born in Cape Town, in 1952. He has published two novels, two volumes of poems, a memoir, several chapbooks of poetry, and extensively on the Internet. He has made a CD of jazz and poetry with Chris Wildman. He lives in Cape Town and is a designer and jeweller. He is married to Julia Martin, and has three children.

 

Norman Morrissey taught Eng. Lit. at a few universities, and has published poetry in journals in the UK, the USA and in South Africa. He has four books of poems in print. He lives in Hogsback, sharing a 5 acre plot with 72 species of birds, a troop of Samango monkeys, the odd bushbuck and duiker, and a few thousand trees.

 

Olufemi Terry is a Sierra Leonean writer. He won the 2010 Caine Prize for African Writing for his short story "Stickfighting Days." The judges said he was "a talent with an enormous future". He received an MA in Creative Writing at the UCT in 2008.

 

Paul Mason, born in 1963, is a writerly gypsy and provocateur who recently taught English at a high school until he was expelled for misbehaviour. For many years he has run Creative Writing courses, and continues to do so.

 

Phelelani Makhanya was born in 1977 at Stanger, KwaZulu-Natal. He is co-founder of Bare Thoughts, a campus poetry journal at the University of Zululand.

 

Rachel Paton was born in Port Elizabeth but spent most of her childhood in Somerset West. She is currently a matriculant at Fish Hoek High School. She takes Drama, Art and Biology. She lives in Kalk Bay. One of her teachers, Jennifer Lean, has encouraged her  writing.

 

Robert Balfour holds degrees from the University of Rhodes, Natal, and Cambridge. He is a published poet, writer, and a painter.

 

Rosemund J Handler lives in Cape Town.  She has written short stories and poems which have been published here and in the United States.  Her first novel, Madlands(2006), was written during her MA in Creative Writing at UCT.  Her second novel, Katy's Kid (2007) and her third novel, Tsamma Season (2009), were also both published  by Penguin.

 

Silke Heiss has an M.A. in Creative Writing from UCT for a novel, which won 2nd prize in the Ernst van Heerden Creative Writing Competition  2003.

 

Thandi Sliepen was born in Cape Town, left South Africa when she was six and raised in New Zealand. She returned at eighteen and has been loosely based in the eastern Free State ever since. Thandi says she is primarily a visual artist.

Vonani Bila is the founder of the Timbila Poetry Project. He has been instrumental in getting the works of marginalised poets into circulation and has been a nurturing inspiration for aspiring poets, holding workshops and actively encouraging new voices. In 2005, he was nominated for the Daimler Chrysler 2005 South Africa Poetry Award.

 

Willie James King resides and writes in Montgomery, AL. His third and only book still in print is The House in the heart, 2007, by Tebot Bach Press. He has been nominated for four Push-cart Prize awards.

 

 

 

 

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