Requiem
Joan Metelerkamp
Requiem is a book-length poem written after the suicide of the poet’s mother, and against the current of catholic masculine authority – it loosely follows the structure of a requiem mass, not allowed by the Catholic church for suicides. The poem attempts to answer fundamental questions: What impels a person to live or die, and how free are we to decide? How are the threads of love, mothering and family woven into and through belief or faith in the present moment? How do survivors find sufficient solace to carry on?
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A daughter somehow has to pick up the pieces of her own life and come to terms with her mother’s legacy. How does a poet do this? She writes. And this poet doesn’t write floridly or introspectively; she writes as if life and death depended on it. […] She cries. She protests. She remembers. She acknowledges the pain of unfinished conversations and regrets. And she holds on for dear life.
– John Forbis
Date of publication: 2003
ISBN 0-9584542-1-3
67 pages
200 x 130mm
R120.00
Joan Metelerkamp 2013
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Joan Metelerkamp grew up in KwaZulu-Natal. After university studies in English and Drama she worked in educational theatre and taught English at the universities of the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. For 20 years she lived with her husband and two children outside Knysna on a family farm. In 2016 she moved to Devon, England, where she trained to be a teacher of the Alexander Technique. She now lives with her daughter and family in Maynard, Massachusetts. Metelerkamp was editor of New Coin poetry journal from 2000 to 2003, and was later a teacher in the Rhodes University MA in Creative Writing programme. She is the author of ten books of poetry, and has won the Sanlam and Sydney Clouts prizes. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, both in South Africa and internationally, and have been translated into several languages. She has taken part in literary festivals in South Africa, Switzerland, France, Portugal and Brazil. Books published Towing the Line (Carrefour, 1992)
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Additional information
| Weight | 0.5 kg |
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Reviews of this book
Review by John Forbis of Requiem by Joan Metelerkamp Sunday Independent, 2004 text PDF
Interviews & Articles
Joan Metelerkamp interviews Don Maclennan New Coin, 2002 text PDF
Interview with Joan Metelerkamp by Alan Finlay Dye Hard Interviews, 2015
Interview with Joan Metelerkamp by Colleen Crawford Cousins New Coin, 1992 text PDF
Other Links
Reviews of other books
Review by Kelwyn Sole of Now the World takes These Breaths by Joan Metelerkamp New Coin (Sabinet), 2014 (open access review at Modjaji Books) text PDF
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