boswestblog.com

Boswestblog will be on sabbatical for the rest of the month, while urgent literary and other matters are attended to.

In the interim, we present this special compilation of the “Boswestblog Top Ten” - as chosen by YT (no, not Air Togo, the Yukon Territory, or yellowTab) - for your perusal.

Peruse, peruse!

• The New Suffolk Hymnbook My novel, of course.
• The Laddy Jones Story Part One Short fiction involving Arsenal FC.
• Mandela’s Ego Reviewed by YT.
• Gasping Fish The B-blog logo.
• Notes from the Cape Town Book Fair Haiku by Gus Ferguson.
• Here Comes the Coda: Green Man & Silver Jews Prose paen by YT.
• Eid-ul-Fitr 1427, Rylands, Cape Town As reported by YT.
• Memories of the Ford Administration (Discontinued) Pertaining to YT’s youth.
• My Near West A photo-mosaic of sorts.
• Against Poets & Writers A rant of sorts.

Today’s Sunday Times published a short review of mine (slightly edited) of Birds in Words, the quirky poetry compilation by Gus Ferguson and Tony Morphet. Here’s the link:

• Short review: Birds in Words

And here’s the review in full:

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Santa Fe’s Lannan Foundation - unspoken motto: “watering minds in the high desert” - brought five members of the black poetry collective Cave Canem to the Lensic Theater last evening for an extended reading. The locals (who don’t get too much in-the-flesh exposure to black American culture, one would hazard) were treated to an undrawing of the curtains in one wing of the house, very much under expansion at present, that is African-American literature.

Toi Dericotte

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by Gus Ferguson

Just like New Zealand -
it’s so nice to see the odd
black face now and then

— Editor’s note: This haiku was composed apropos the Neighbour Goods Market at the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock, run by the what if the world artists’ collective. The market re-creates Shangri-La as a movie set every Saturday. Photo:

Market Reflections

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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