Cover Art: Lyn Gilbert

Poetry99

Robert Berold (ed.)

Poetry 99: Twenty South African Poets in Performance
Edited by Robert Berold
Co-published by Deep South and Timbila

In 1996, 1998 and 1999 Robert Berold, then editor of New Coin, organised readings and performance festivals at the National Arts Festival held in July. The 1996 readings were recorded and issued on cassette tape as New Coin Live. The 1998 performances were issued on VHS tape as Jikaleza Train, with the text of the performances published in the New Coin June 1999 issue.

The 1999 performances were more professionally filmed. The twenty poets who participated were:
Robert Berold ~ Vonani Bila ~ Ingrid De Kok ~ Alan Finlay ~ Richard Fox ~ Louise Green ~ Colleen Higgs ~ Allan Kolski Horwitz ~ Nosipho Kota ~ Jethro Louw ~ Joan Metelerkamp ~ Isabella Motadinyane ~ Ike Muila ~ Siphiwe ka Ngwenya ~ Mxolisi Nyezwa ~ Donald Parenzee ~ Lesego Rampolokeng ~ Dudu Saki ~ Kelwyn Sole ~ Anna Varney.

Financial constraints delayed the film editing, and the edited DVD and book was only issued 14 years later, in 2013. The urgency of the 1999 event was still there, as vital as ever. Mxolisi Nyezwa wrote in his introduction to the book: “There’s little of the earlier hunger and urgency in our poetry now. Today’s poets are not angry enough. They are as disconnected as the rest of our pliable society.”

Click on ‘Read Excerpts’ for a list of Contents and Introduction

 

Date of publication: Nov-13

ISBN 978-0-9870282-1-1
120 pages
200 x 130mm

R160.00

Biography

Robert Berold 2009 

Robert Berold has published four collections of poetry and nine other books, which include a memoir, a biography, and (as editor) a rural skills handbook, a book of interviews with poets, and an anthology of South African poetry. From 1989 to 1999 he edited the poetry journal New Coin. He coordinated the MA in Creative Writing at Rhodes University from its inception in 2011 until 2015. He has edited over 50 collections by South African poets, many of them published by his Deep South press.

Books published

Poetry
The Door to the River (Bateleur, 1984)
The Fires of the Dead (Carrefour, 1989)
Rain Across a Paper Field (Gecko, 1999)
All the Days (Deep South, 2008)

Anthologies edited
It All Begins: poems from postliberation South Africa (Gecko, 2002)
South African Poets on Poetry : Interviews from New Coin 1992-2001 (Gecko, 2003)
Seven variations on a poem by Du Fu (Aerial Publishing, 2010)
Poetry99: Twenty South African poets in performance (Deep South, 2013)

Biography
Drive Out Hunger: The Story of JJ Machobane of Lesotho (co-written with J J Machobane) (Jacana, 2003)

Memoir
Meanwhile Don’t Push and Squeeze: A year of life in China (Jacana, 2007)

Community development
Editor: People’s Workbook (EDA, 1981)
Editor and co-author (with Tally Palmer) Some, for all, forever: Water ecosystems and people (Water Research Commission, 2002)

On teaching writing
The Fertile Ground of Misfortune: Teaching Practices in Creative Writing (co-editor with Stacy Hardy) (ISEA, 2017)

 

Additional information

Weight 0.5 kg
Shopping Basket0
There are no products in the cart!
Continue shopping
0