The journey… Final Reflections

My journey through researching Eastern Cape writers has been a very interesting and fulfilling journey to say the least. It seems that when I began this project I did not have a real concept of what a huge undertaking it would be. This week has been a tough one in terms of deciding what would and would not make it into the final mix. I finally finished my transcribing (at last) and then it was time to decide the content of the final documentary. Originally the final outcome was supposed to be a half hour documentary but after a few sleepless nights and a lot of thinking and discussions with my lecturer we decided that we needed to do a three part series of mini documentaries. Because of the sheer volume of audio that I had collected and the varying topics that the writers spoke about I felt that if I only covered one topic I wouldn’t do justice to the people I had met along this journey.

The three parts would all be about Eastern Cape writers, using the various interviews I had conducted over the past few weeks and with the Eastern Cape itself as a connecting force between the three, but each would cover their own topic within the overall focus. The first part would be about why writers write, where they get inspiration from and the spirituality of writing. Part two would then cover publishing, the difficulties and successes of writers in terms of publishing in both English and African languages. The final part would be about education and how we can improve readership and literacy rates of the youth in South Africa, this was a topic a lot of the writers were very expressive about because as they put it – “the future of writers is linked to the future of literacy”, and a section that I though was very important and interesting to cover.

The first part has now been mixed and I am happy with how it came out. It is 20 minutes long so there is a possibility of the three parts together being an hour long or of a remix that is shorter, maybe 15 minutes for each part. Either way the three parts should be able to stand alone as individual pieces or work together as a series. He first part has the voices of 8 of the writers I interviewed and is a mix between English writers and poets and Xhosa oral poets. The other two parts will use the voices of some of the writers already used and also those that have not yet been used. The final two parts will be completed in November after all of my fourth term work is completed. In the end I hope to do justice to all of the great audio I gathered and the twelve amazing and talented writers I met along my journey.

I enjoy the medium of documentary because it provides the space to delve into a topic in a more extended way. I enjoy the interviewing process and I also love the mixing and hearing the final product after all of the prep that goes into it. I chose to do a documentary as my final project because it was a section of the course I really enjoyed and a section I think I did well in before.

This project has been a huge learning process. For the first time I have interviewed well known people, branched out of my comfort zone of Grahamstown to interview people further a field around the Eastern Cape and investigated a topic that has more national relevance then what I am usually involved in (not to mention the improvement of my typing skills through all of the transcribing).

This has been a great learning curve of realising how much information one can get out of a single interview. I have had to become a better editor to choose how to put this project together after sifting through all of the audio and overall I have been inspired by the topic. I have always loved literature and I think that when you cover a topic that you feel really connected to and that you are passionate about your work really shows it. This project has inspired me to put more effort into my own writing and each interview and part of the process has taught me something. I want to thank all of the people that made this process possible especially Crystal Warren from NELM for all of her assistance and of course the twelve writers for their time and honesty. Thank you to: Chris Mann, Robert Berold, John Forbis, Lynette Rudman, Jeanette Eve, Russell Kaschula, Monde Mothlabane, Mzi Mahola, Khaya Thonjeni, Kwanele Butana, Brian Walter and Bonisile Mqweniso, I have been blessed to meet you all and I hope I can do justice to your talent.

Keep reading and writing and inspiring yourself and others with your creativity…

The Journey Continues...

My journey through researching Eastern Cape poets has continued and expanded a little further afield this week. If I thought that the craziness would die down this week I was sorely wrong, this week was as crazy as last week or probably worse. Somehow I managed to get through another six interviews and met a range of really interesting people as I travelled around this beautiful province. This week I was in search of Xhosa Oral poets (also called Imbongis or praise singers) to balance out my white, male dominated documentary and so my search began with an interview the very first praise singer I had ever met…

Interview 7: monde mothlabane

Monde Mothlabane is a maths teacher at Archie Mbolekwa middle school in Joza. I arrived at the school and Monde was still in class so I waited for break time. I was then met by a very interesting, friendly man of 53 who walks with a severe limp, aided by a wooden walking stick. He tells me that this is because of a rugby injury he suffered when he was a young man which left him partially paralysed. After a venue change is needed to ensure good sound quality we begin the interview. I am fascinated by the man who tells me he has a gift to be able to be a praise singer, that the poetry just erupts out of him in a spontaneous way. He also tells me how he has struggled to get his poetry published for many years now. I tell him I am looking for other praise singers to interview so he whips out his phone and phones his friend Bonisile and sets up an interview for me on Thursday, what a guy. We spend a very pleasant half hour together.

Later that day I am supposed to interview poet Dudu Saki but he is not where we arrange to meet, I wait 20 minutes and decide to cut my losses, I mean I have already got 7 interviews and three more planned. He phones me the next day to say that he was there and couldn’t find me, too much confusion and I decide to just let this one go, apologies Dudu.

The next day is a really big one, I head off to Port Elizabeth in the morning to interview poets Brian Walter and Mzi Mahola and it turns out to be a pretty epic day…

Interview 8: brian walter

Brian has given me superb directions to his house in Port Elizabeth and my arrival causes much excitement to his three friendly dogs. We sit down in his office, a converted garage which is almost wall to wall with bookcases overflowing with books. We have a very interesting chat about alternative ways of publishing your work (like his small publishing company Seaberg), about his friendships with other poets and about his own work. His poetry is very connected to the Eastern Cape and its landscape and his real job (the one that pays unlike poetry) is as an educator working to improve education in schools across South Africa. He scratches his grey beard as he thinks and almost an hour passes before we wrap up the very interesting interview. He is a kind man who gives me three of his books as I leave and as I drive away he is speaking intently to a man who has come to ask for money at his gate, it truly was lovely to meet him

Interview 9: mzi mahola

I head off from Brian’s house with directions of how to find Mzi Mahola at his spaza shop in Zwide but somehow the exit I am meant to take does not have the street name it is meant to and an hour and a half later, after seven phone calls back and forth between me and Mzi I finally drive up to his front door where a meet a smiling man who looks very relieved that this poor girl has finally arrived. We go into the house and begin the interview which turns out to be one of my most enjoyable. Mzi is a lovely man who shares his experiences during Apartheid and how his first manuscript of poetry was confiscated by the Security police which led him to stop writing for 14 years. I expect this to be a memory that anger’s him or upset’s him but he says with sincerity that they probably saved his career by taking his poems because if he had received criticism about those poems, the young version of himself might have given up. 14 years later he was more mature and more ready to be a poet, one who has now published four books of poetry and who has just finished the biography of his life which he plans to publish. He speaks with fondness of the small village he grew up in and why the Eastern Cape is such a special place. When I finally head back to Grahamstown that afternoon I have a real sense of achievement of the day I have had, but it’s not over yet…

Poetic Tuesdays…

I get back to Grahamstown just in time to meet Khaya Thonjeni at Grocotts Mail and head off for the weekly poetry meeting at the Duna Public Library in Joza. I’m hoping to find some up and coming slam poets who are going to share their work at the weekly gathering to talk to. We meet up with one of the founders of the group, Kwanele Butana, who is a reporter for Grocotts and find out that the group will be a half hour later because of a Art’s council meeting going on in the hall.

Interview 10: khaya thonjeni

Khaya and I have some time to kill so we decide to do his interview before we go. We drive to his house on Raglan Road and he goes inside to ‘change his shoes’ while I wait in the car. What he really mean’s is take off his shoes and set his long mane of dreadlocks free after being constricted in a beanie all day. Khaya is one of the tallest people I have ever met and the sight of him squished into my little car is a sight that will entertain me for a while to come. We talk about slam poetry and the problems with oral poetry which as he puts it: ‘once the poem ends it is gone forever’. He has some very liberal ideas about publishing and believes that the first set of ears that hear a poem make it published in a sense. He does however believe in writing your poetry down to make sure it survives. He takes his poetry as a kind of social activism. As we stand outside the library, looking at the vibrant orange sunset we cause a few people on the road to double take or hoot and call out to us. We must make a strange pair leaning against my car, him at least six foot six, barefoot and dreadlocked with a small, blonde white girl in a car with Free State number plates. We talk about topics ranging from the plight of women in South Africa and why people haven’t gotten over their race issue to why Grahamstown has so many donkeys. Typically the poetry meeting gets cancelled but it was an afternoon well spent talking to a very liberal and interesting man.

Interview 11: kwanele butana

There is not going to be a poetry group so Kwanele and I head back into town to find some guy he has to give a set of keys to and to do his interview. We sit in the car and talk about his poetry and why he started the poetry group, which him and Khaya call a public gathering rather than a group. You would never know that this guy with his beanie, big jacket and scruffy beard is really a journalist and poet and an important social activist in his community so it’s good that I don’t easily judge a book by its cover. It has been a really interesting day of meeting people but now it’s after 7pm and time for me to head home.

Dining with monks

On Wednesday evening I head back to the monastery to attend the 5:30 vespers service and record the beautiful signing of the Psalms by the five monks during the service. The weather could not be more different to my first visit, the mist is so thick as my car crawls slowly up the dirt road to the monastery that I cannot see more then 5 meters in front of me. The large window that had such a beautiful view of the rolling hills last week now just shows white, as if we are in the middle of a huge cloud. John wants a chance to record some alternative answers to the questions I asked him last week because they got him thinking. He has kindly invited me to come have dinner with him and the other monks and after a beautifully spiritual service. We sit down to our soup and salad with homemade bread in their modern dining hall and I chat with the other monks about life and religion. It is a lovely evening and I feel very privileged to have been included in their secluded world.

Interview 12: Bonisile Mqweniso

On Thursday morning I venture into Joza to find the Ikhutlliso Daniels Secondary School, after some vague directions from third year radio student MC and help from a few people on the road I find the school and the teacher I am looking for Bonisile Mqweniso. He teaches maths and technology and is also a praise singer. He tells me about the Xhosa oral tradition and why it needs to be maintained and besides talk about how difficult it is to publish we speak a lot about the state of our schools and what we need to do to improve matriculation results in the Eastern Cape. He is one of the most inspiring teachers I have met who is really committed to his students and I only truly understand his frustrations and difficulties when someone later that day tells me that Ikhutlliso Daniels is one of the schools with the worst results in Grahamstown.

Reflections

This week I have spent a lot of time in my car driving around the Eastern Cape after driving both to Port Elizabeth and East London and I have really been struck by the beauty of the Eastern Cape landscape. I can understand why so many poets have a strong connection to the rolling hills and beautiful coastline. I am mesmerised by its beauty and as I continue on this journey I appreciate this province more and more, this project has opened up a different world to me and changed the way I think about things like publishing and inspiration and really about what good writing is. I hope that what I put together next week will do justice to the amazing people who have been involved.

A Journey Through Local Literature

A radio documentary about Eastern Cape writers…sounds simple enough doesn’t it? Oh wow, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

When I decided that the topic of my half hour radio documentary would be a look into the lives of Eastern Cape writers I never anticipated the sheer volume of writers that there are in Grahamstown and the surrounding areas or how much writers like to speak about themselves and their writing. One of my biggest challenges has been deciding who to interview, I thought people would be wary to do interviews with me but I got an overwhelming response of people willing to help me. I have ended up doing six interviews in the last three weeks with a wide range of writers and plan to do more in the week to come.

At this point I’m looking at the process of writing, why people write and what inspires them? What they want others to get out of their work etc. There is also the publishing aspect, what the process is, how easy or hard it is to get published. Because of the nature of the documentary I decided I wanted a wide range of people involved, those that have been successfully published and those that are struggling to get their work out there and also different writers in terms of their background and work. I have found myself speaking to a lot of poets simply because there are so many in Grahamstown. I will chat about each interview in detail but have found that I need to look more at poetry in African languages and possibly oral poetry. But most importantly I think it is important to show the specific connection of these writers to the land of the Eastern Cape and its people.

Ok let’s not get bogged down by the semantics of where the documentary is going, let me begin the journey, come along with me…

Interview 1: Jeanette Eve

I drive into one of Grahamstown’s nicer retirement villages in search of Jeannette Eve, retired author of A Literary Guide to the Eastern Cape. She is a lovely friendly woman who welcomes me into her home to talk about the book that was her labour of love for nearly 10 years. This book is not a guide to the literature of the Eastern Cape but rather a guide of the Eastern Cape through the eyes of its authors and poets. We have a lovely interview and she explains her work for the National English Literature Museum (NELM) before her retirement and how this book came to be. She gives some insight into why she thinks the Eastern Cape doesn’t get enough attention as a travel destination, referring to it as the “Cinderella province of South Africa”. Jeanette gives me a lot to think about in terms of who I will be speaking to and the kinds of things I will talk to people about. Her book seems to be a good guide for me as well on my journey.

Interview 2: Chris Mann

I find my way to the St Peter’s building on campus. I guess I was always aware that it was there but had never been inside. I find the office for the Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA) and am directed up to the top floor to the office of Professor Chris Mann. He is a quirky interesting man who offers me tea before we begin the interview and is suddenly inspired to sketch a drawing on his white board that is some kind of literary joke (‘many poets in search of a reader’). We struggle to get his ridiculously loud computer to switch off before we begin the interview. It turns out to be a rather interesting one, not always positive but he has lived an interesting life and has great ideas about how to improve literacy rates in the Eastern Cape and SA in general, because “the future of writers is linked to the future of literacy”. I’m still finding my feet in this interview and trying to find out as much as possible on this literary journey. This is a very deep interview, philosophical and wise in many ways but also rather strange and unsettling on some level.

Interview 3: Russell Kaschula

Next I meet Professor of African Languages, Russell Kaschula in his office in the Rhodes University School of Languages. This is one of the most enjoyable interviews I have conducted; Professor Kaschula is an open and interesting man. He grew up on a farm in the Eastern Cape and spoke isiXhosa before he spoke English and he has such a profound connection to this land that it is hard not to be in awe of him, we speak about his work as a writer of short stories, teenage novellas and poetry. He is very interested in oral poetry especially the spontaneous Xhosa poetry of Imbongi’s (isiXhosa oral poets) and has documented a great deal of the history of oral Xhosa poetry. I feel rather inspired after this interview to find a writer so interested in the interests of the youth and the fact that he wants his writing to make people think. I ask the dreaded question of where he gets his inspiration and he replies that he is “inspired by relationships between people from different cultures, that’s what really gets me going, exploring those dynamics”. His writing speaks to the complexities of identity that exist “within people from extensively different cultures within a contemporary South African existence” so far the journey is leading me up some interesting paths.

After a little break from the documentary hunt to finish work on my participatory project, this week my work on the documentary has gone into high gear and I spoke to some more interesting people.

I’m in search of a children’s author to speak to and I’m directed to a local woman who is doing a very different kind of children’s writing.

Interview 4: Lynette rudman

Lynette makes handmade tactile books for blind preschool children and I head off to her workshop and home in Somerset Heights to see these interesting books. She is a lovely welcoming woman who explains how she began making the books for a little blind girl at the preschool she used to run and how since then the success of the books has just snowballed. She now has orders from all over the world because it seems that these kinds of books are a rather unique creation. Lynette is an interesting success story, an entrepreneur who has found a great niche market but who is also doing a valuable public service with her work. It’s a rather enjoyable afternoon

Interview 5: Robert berold

My next interview was probably the one I was the most nervous for. Robert Berold is a pretty well know poet and a generally well respected creative writing teacher and editor. I have done research, read interviews he has done and a lot of his poetry in preparation, my preparation pays off and I end up getting a great, very long interview with this interesting man. We speak philosophically about what it means to be a poet about how he fell in love with poetry in Matric and how poetry became like a narcotic to him and why he gave up editing other people’s work. This interview leaves me with a lot of things to think about

Finally my last interview of the week was with a rather different kind of poet

Interview 6: john forbis

Brother John is an American Monk who was one of the founding brothers of the Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery just outside of Grahamstown, and has lived here for the past 10 years. As I wind my way up the dirt road I can see the monastery across the valley, I am welcomed by poet Br. John Forbis and we sit and chat for a while about both why he became a poet and why he became a monk. His accent seems to wax and wane between American and South African as he speaks of how these rolling hills outside of the window inspire him to write. He shows me around the grounds and the chapel in particular grab’s my attention, it is perched on the edge of a cliff with a huge window looking out onto the rolling Eastern Cape hills. It is so beautiful and John says to me in jest “who needs stained glass when we have that”. I feel a real spiritual charge in the place and long after I have left I am still thinking about what we spoke about, it seems that our meeting was equally memorable for him when he email’s me later in the day to say he thought more about my questions and thinks he might have thought of better answers. I plan to go back next week and record some of the singing from one of their 4 daily church services.

This project has got me really thinking about the power of literature in people’s lives. It seems that for many poets’ art and spirituality weave together into their work but on different levels for each one of them. I guess my job is now to weave this story together and give a true and accurate depiction of what it is to be an Eastern Cape writer. My journey continues…