i lost a poem
Mzwandile Matiwana
i lost a poem is a book of deeply felt lyrics, expressed in straightforward language. The poems describe the violence and bleakness of prison life, but also explore love, sexuality and religious feeling.
*
The simplicity of the language that he uses and his ability to draw deeply from his everyday life is enviable. […] There is hardly a misspent word in any of the poems. Writing with such economy is an accomplishment for a first volume.
– Andrew Martin, Wordstock
Date of publication: 2004
ISBN 0-9584542-9-9
58 pages
200 x 130mm
R120.00
Mzwandile Matiwana
|
Mzwandile Matiwana (1967–2009) was born in Port Elizabeth/Gqeberha. From an early age he was surviving on the street, and by the age of 10 he was arrested for the first time, for theft. His whole life was spent in and out of prison. He started writing poetry as a teenager and began publishing his poems in Kotaz, and then in New Coin, Botsotso, Fidelities and other literary magazines. Books published
|
Additional information
| Weight | 0.5 kg |
|---|
Reviews of this book
Review by Andrew Martin of i lost a poem by Mzwandile Matiwana Wordstock, 2005 text PDF
Other Deep South Books
Related products
-
Complete Poems
R120.00Isabella Motadinyane
Complete Poems is Isabella Motadinyane’s collected work: just over 30 poems. It was first published as Bella in 2007 by Botsotso Publishing in an illustrated edition, and was republished by Deep South without illustrations. The six Sesotho poems and the Sesotho phrases scattered in other poems were newly translated by Lesego Rampolokeng.
*
Reading Isabella Motadinyane’s collected poems feels like more than holding a gem in your hands. It feels like tasting the vibrant-wounded-hopeful, s’camtho mesh of Jo’burg in the 90s […] They introduce the reader to the many voices that are Isabella: a fiery funny woman from Soweto who could hold her own in male-dominated spaces, and a fragile feminine woman who refused to allow her own physical ailments to break her […] This book of collected poems is a beautiful tribute to an otherwise forgotten South African voice. And to an important vibrant time in the history of South African literature, before the wave of Def Poetry and slam Americanism influences.
– Vangile Gantsho, New Coin
-
geruisloos, ongemerk
R180.00Henali Kuit
geruisloos, ongemerk is ’n aangrypende kortverhaalbundel wat stilisties tussen voorstedelike-realisme en surrealisme wissel. Kuit ondersoek die alledaagse lewe met onverwagte ompaaie, woede en humor.
*
Henali Kuit se kortverhaalbundel word op verskeie platforms beskryf as ’n uitlokkende versameling van kortverhale wat wissel tussen realisme en surrealisme. [… Sy] het in ’n onderhoud met LitNet in 2012 vertel dat haar gunstelingtipe stories die “skynbare banale stories” is. Alledaagse stories oor wat iemand alleen in ’n kantoor aanvang of oor hoe iemand per ongeluk hulle hare met conditioner in plaas van sjampoe was. Kuit het egter gebieg dat sy nie genoeg vaardigheid het om hierdie stories te vertel nie – en tog het sy dit reggekry om hierdie tipe stories in haar kortverhaalbundels te bemeester.
– Irene Schoonwinkel, LitNet
-
A Naked Bone
R120.00Mangaliso Buzani
In simple vocabulary a naked bone describes complex states of beauty and suffering, often at the borderline where life meets death. In their dreamlike rhythms and images, the poems draw strength from Xhosa culture, Christianity and elements of nature. They are love poems in the widest sense, embracing the interface between daily life and the spiritual, enacting joy and caring in the face of deprivation and mourning.
-
Call it a difficult night
R220.00Mishka Hoosen
Call it a difficult night is a story about madness. Using anecdotes, poems, dialogue, and fragments of historical research, it follows a nonlinear path in tracing the life of its narrator/protagonist. Institutionalised after a ‘final break’, a young woman remembers in sharp detail disturbing childhood visions, which had become overwhelming by the time she was at school and university. When she finally gets a diagnosis – temporal lobe epilepsy – a doctor explains that she is likely to be either demented or brain dead by the time she is 30.
Set mainly during her short spell in the mental hospital, the story proceeds through encounters with nurses, doctors, other patients and also the friends who visit her – many of them frightened by her state of mind. These encounters, painful but quite often funny, take us deeper into the feelings of the narrator and further into the workings of a mental health system which generates definitions of madness. She is defiant in her noncompliance and deeply suspicious of her treatment. She is sure that her hallucinations, dangerous and terrifying as they are, are preferable to the dulling effects of her medication and its theft of her creativity.
Call it a difficult night is a novel brimming with empathy, observation and lyricism, by an author who has the capacity to describe great joy and great suffering.