Dear Amitabh
Sorry for the delay in replying to your message. I've
been busy writing a piece on poems of the political transition published in 1995
by Peter Horn. Peter turns 80 later this year and a festschrift is being
planned to celebrate the occasion. Anyway, that is off and out now and I
breathe again.
You ask about my impressions of SPLINTERS OF A MIRAGE
DAWN. I really like the general feel of the book, its size, the bright unusual
cover portraying the man in transit with his load on his head and back, and also
the decorative motifs that surround the poems in most of the book. Arpana
Caur's graphic work is certainly arresting. Among the poets I was moved by
Adebole Fawole, Rodwell Makombe and Tendai Mwanaka. The Zimbabwean story,
which finds so powerful expression in NoViolet Bulawayo's WE NEED NEW NAMES,
can be sensed in the work of these Zim poets. Your own scenes of Hillbrow
present an image so different from the place I remember when I first went to a
job in Joburg in the 1960s. Being moved, being in transit is so much at the
heart of South African experience.
Congratulations on your book.
Kind regards,
Geoffrey Haresnape
Geoffrey Haresnape is a South African born poet and scholar, currently
an Emeritus Professor of the University of Cape Town. He has published
four books of poetry: Drive of the Tide (1976), New-Born Images (1991),
Mulberries in Autumn (1996) and The Living and The Dead: Selected and
New Poems (2000).
