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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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Snail Press’ latest title, the Afrikaans poetry collection edited by Charl-Pierre Naudé, My Ousie is ‘n Blom, was launched at the Irma Stern Museum last night. A slightly bemused Valiant Swart - a rock artist who rarely, one suspects, plays sedate poetry gigs - and a deadly serious David Ferguson provided musical entertainment (on the acoustic guitar and harmonica/electro-modulator, respectively).

Yabadaka Shamah

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Ingrid de Kok’s book Seasonal Fires was launched this evening in Kalk Bay, inside the high-ceilinged bakery of the famed Olympia Cafe, as a kind of coda to the Cape Town Book Fair. The poet Karen Press introduced her: “Ingrid’s gaze is steady but also tender.”

Spotted in the crowd (in no particular order): Jeremy Cronin, John Samuel, Sue Clark, Amina Mama, Dominique le Roux, Mike Cope, Julia Martin, Helen Moffett, Annari van der Merwe, Hugh Hodge, Finuala Dowling, Ignatius Ticha, Tony Morphet, John Higgins, Neville Alexander and Gus Ferguson.

The first poem Ingrid read was in honor of someone absent, Luke Fiske: “When Children Leave” (p. 139).

Karen Press
…at the Olympia Cafe’s bakery, introducing Ingrid de Kok.