Journal
Fieldnotes + fragments
missives from the studio + collective:
notes on literature, art, culture, projects in progress and the work of making meaning.
Poet Interview: Helen Moffett
“So, to put it mildly, Strange Fruit changed my life. And this is why we should write poetry, why we must keep publishing it. I have a poem in progress about how years, decades after writing a poem, it can still bring someone to your door, following the silk rope of your words. Write that poem.”
Poet Interview: Manti Moila
“I sometimes have trouble contending with the natural world in all its glorious terror. Houseplants are a manicured, clamped down version of nature that affords people some of the benefits of nature – beauty, calm etc. – without having to deal with the threatening aspects. The word ‘bound’ makes up half of the title for a reason: I love my houseplants, and my plant poems, but there’s something to be said about how we are incapable of reigning over nature, even in language; or especially in language.”
Poet Interview: Sihle Ntuli
“I believe in craft insofar as working towards the mastery of it. I understand the importance of each chapbook and collection I have written, and how they have each contributed to my journey. So to say ‘departure’ would be to premeditate that Owele would be on a road of its own; while this may indeed be the case, it's still very much part of the same legacy.”
Poet Interview: Kobus Moolman
“Phew! I love all your questions, Megan. But they are exhausting. Exhausting because they take me to the real deep centre, the challenges I struggle through on a daily basis… Literature and art is one of the fundamental ways of doing this.”
Poet Interview: Pieter Madibuseng Odendaal
“The process of self-translation felt like a homecoming via a detour. Finding myself in another language helped me to rediscover the feelings and memories that inspired my poems in the first place, and the process became an interlinguistic meditation on what and why I write.”
Poet Interview: Nondwe Mpuma
“I think in most of the poems I am moving between myself, my imagined self, other characters and other people’s perspectives.”
