A pretty book, launched at a pretty venue. Birds Cafe on Bree St. is one of Cape Town’s most popular lunch spots, the apogee of rustic chic in the city. The usual milk crate seats and door-and-sawhorses tables were cleared away for poets on Saturday morning, but the birdsong - supplied by a turntable spinning behind a curtain - twittered right along throughout.

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These recorded chirpings weren’t indigenous, as birdwatching enthusiast and [2] Birds in Words co-editor Tony Morphet muttered - but the live ones certainly were. Over two dozen poets are represented in the compliation, and five showed up to read, Peter E. Clarke (above) most memorably. Clarke, who grew up in Simonstown when it was a British naval base, related the story of how English sailors would “link up with local prostitutes, and go off into the bushes together”. He only discovered later, he said, that it wasn’t for birdwatching.

Clarke read his poem “Witogies”. Others who read:

Ingrid de Kok (”Wattle-eyes”)

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Brian Warner (”Three Haiku”) -

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Ken Barris (”The Imagists”) -

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and PR Anderson (”Birds at White River”) -

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The book is billed as the “Twitchers guide to South African poetry”, and comprises local poems (mostly) that mention local avian life (again, mostly). Illustrations are by Willem Jordaan. Here’s a preview:

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Also spotted at the launch (and dutifully ticked off in my big [8] Roberts Writers of Southern Africa): Henrietta Rose-Innes, William Dicey, Helen Moffett, Mike Nicol, Annari van der Merwe, Gus Ferguson.