WELCOME TO NEW CONTRAST MAGAZINE
New Contrast is one of the first South African literary journals and it is devoted to publishing the best of poetry and prose, art, reviews and interviews from both local and international authors.
OUT NOW! NEW CONTRAST Issue 205
New Contrast issue 205 is out today! You can buy it as a printed edition and receive it through the post. Or you can buy a digital edition and download it immediately. In this issue you can look forward to reading the poetry and prose by authors such as Sue Nyamnjoh, Kobus Moolman, Yewande Omotoso, Karen Jennings and many more.
Winners of the National Poetry Prize 2023:
First prize: Keith Oliver Lewis — “the sum of absence”
Second prize: Phelelani Makhanya — “A hanging dream”
Third prize: Kerry Hammerton — “Dancing”
Announcement of the poetry prize winners
Join us on Monday 1 April 2024 via Off the Wall online session for the announcements of the national Poetry Prize Winners of 2023. We will announce the top three poems and poets, and who won.
The link to the meeting will be shared by Off the Wall poetry via their mailing lists and social media.
National poetry prize 2023
Congratulations to all the short-listed poets:
Jim Pascual Agustin – “How Far from Golgotha is July 2023?”; Sarah Godsell – “Loving At The End of the World or How to make an omelette without breaking”; Kerry Hammerton – “Dancing”; Keith Oliver Lewis – “The sum of absence”; Keith Oliver Lewis – “We moved to house twenty-three on rocky mafikeng street”; Erica Livingston – “Shack Fires in Lwandle”; Sean MacGinty – “Garden”; Phelelani Makhanya – “A hanging dream”; Anne Pretorius – “Next”; Deborah Seddon – “History Will Break Your Heart”.
APPEAL FOR DONATIONS
New Contrast has, not for the first time in its sixty-two years history, once again hit a financial squeeze: loss of institutional donations, sharp increases in printing costs, and declining subscriptions. To avoid the possible discontinuation of New Contrast we are urgently appealing to you for help by buying a subscription or by making a donation.
Ameva
Mthunzikazi A. Mbungwana
ndogquma ubuze bukaMama
UMama wogquma ubuze bukaMakhulu
bandithwesa ubugqi bokuchopha phezu kwameva angcuthayo
uMakhulu akophi naye wafundiswa nguMakhulu kaMakhulu
UTata usenkcochoyini
uxhathise ngebhayibhile
UTamkhulu zange abekho
naleyo ayithethwa.
(New Contrast issue 195)
Anxiety
Zeenit Jacobs
Resting on heaps of countless
paperwork like unsteady skyscrapers,
hidden deep in the thick repositories
of a compressed and dense mind…
Like a jumper straddling the boundary
of an infinitely high point that descends
into a void of blackened eyeholes
and fissures of pale cerebral folds…
A voice from inside a queer mind,
where gears shaped like ticking clocks
are split over a stretched psyche…
It pings through placidity like a
cold rusty knife, it moves faster
than a pulsing and red-hot vessel.
(New Contrast issue 196)
’n Wind
Breyten Breytenbach
’n wind ruk oor die see
bote pluk aan hul tome
en runnik verskrik
(die see se nekhare rys)
die eerste druppels loop verby
soos ’n skelm kat in die gang
en pis in die hoekie
(Issue 2, Autumn 1961)