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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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Carapace no. 59 is out; as the magazine has no website, Boswestblog steps into the breach (with permission from publisher & editor). Two poems:

Haiku

The poet’s wife -
when the car won’t start
she calls the neighbour.

Slakkie van der Schyffe

—–

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Today’s Sunday Independent ran a review, by the South African poet Ingrid de Kok, of The New Suffolk Hymnbook (Jacana/Snail Press, 2006), which was based on her introduction of the novel at its 19 June Cape Town Book Fair launch. The review is available online to the Independent’s subscribers only - click here for the story if you subscribe - but here is the full text of de Kok’s original speech:

The New Suffolk Hymnbook Considered
by Ingrid de Kok

It is a pleasure to be participating in the launch of The New Suffolk Hymnbook. I read Ben Oswest’s novel some years ago in manuscript form, and thought then that it was a startling and unique achievement. On a second reading, I feel even more intrigued and impressed. I can’t pretend to claim that I entirely understand this radical book - but I think one of the purposes of the book is to confront the very idea of “entire understanding” . At the same time as it engages us every step of its way, the book questions the solidity of its own surfaces and the nature of its own evidence. It dislodges expectation and leaves one half knowing, half confused, as if in a dream whose meaning is elusive but full of portents.

• Purchase a copy ofThe New Suffolk Hymnbook.

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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.