Please note: creative writing works are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the lock icon and fill out the appropriate web form. / Creative writing / 2999-01-01T00:00:00Z

Borderlord Scuttle is set in an alternate version of South Africa's Eastern Cape based on the fictional papers of a thief named JB Niemand and the story follows his first adventure. After the end of a relationship with an artist named Rebekah, JB Niemand's own artistic aspirations dashed. He is uninspired and directionless with no way to sustain himself, let alone pursue a career as a painter. To solve both problems he turns to a life of crime. With his profits he plans to complete a pilgrimage to Alice to see a Walter Battiss artwork that Rebekah claimed would finally make him the artist he dreamed of becoming. However, he is no master criminal. The story begins when JB Niemand finds himself in prison. At Middledrift Corrections JB Niemand develops a dependent and ambiguous relationship with Stix, a career criminal who will end up abandoning JB in the bush shortly after their escape from prison. Stix's betrayal catalyses JB's becoming and he is propelled into a journey that sees him attempting to join a gang of hill bandits who call themselves the Ninevites, drinking in a small town bar in The Settler Flats, and eventually making good on his plans to go to Alice.

In 1990's South Africa, Danny is haunted by the tragic death of his younger brother. When he moves with his parents to a small coastal town at the bottom of the world, he finds Clara, a bright haired girl with her own painful story. Together, they learn to live and love in a world which they seldom understand. Around them forces shape their paths in ways beyond their comprehension, and they must learn to navigate the lies of adults. Their relationship, naïve and pure, plays out in the Eden of their surroundings. When their longing for comfort from their individual pain drives them apart, Danny must decide if the truth will be able to keep them together and set him free. The brooding memory of his brother threatens to pull him apart, and leads him to a startling understanding. The Light by The Sea is a novel of unseen pain, innocent love and the coming of age journey of two young people trying to find the light again.

Summary in English.|Word processed copy.

Hyphen is a selection of twenty-eight poems (lyrical, narrative and persona poems) and two prose vignettes. The pieces explore ideas of memory, identity, emptiness, loss, love and joy. They are rooted in an itinerant experience of this world and question the concepts of belonging, home, usefulness, art, god and beauty. Most of the work has been inspired by places, moods and events in Mauritius, Saudi Arabia, England, Europe and South Africa. An individual's relationship to landscape, society and self, along with their personal interactions (with humans, animals and gods) form the basis for these poetic explorations of what it means to be in between. In between spaces. In between stages. Phases. Moods. Ideas. Weather patterns. People. In between here and there. Now and then. Home and away. Between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Includes abstract in Afrikaans and English. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-96). / This study is a creative exploration of the influence of trees on my poetry. My essay investigates the large number of trees that features in Afrikaans poetry, especially in Groot Verseboek. The relationship between a scientific interest in trees and a creative reflexion on this scientific knowledge is discussed.

Also available online. / one tongue singing is a novel which unfolds in two time-frames. In the first, a young unmarried French nurse comes to South Africa with her father and her small daughter during the closing years of apartheid. The family settles amongst a small wine-growing community in the Western Cape where they become involved in the lives of victims of the System. In the second frame, the daughter, now about nineteen years old, is a talented artist who enrols at the exclusive Art School of a womanising painter. The man walks a tightrope between popular success and a deep-seated fear of failure (linked to a growing awareness of being a fake). He has started to suffer from panic attacks.

From Revolutionary France to the frontiers of a fresh-born America, from the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma to the swamps of Poland, The Dust and Other Stories is a collection of short stories that seeks to explore humanity, horror, and history alike. By examining various events of the past, this collection sheds light on the shortcomings we still face today, such as, among other things, the normalization of or outright ignorance towards past American atrocities like those committed in Vietnam; the sheer lengths some people find themselves going to survive poverty, and the blind mania of war and its effect on those (quite literally) in the trenches.

A little boy named Armaghaan grows in a fictional tribal village Kashmala along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan during the seventies and eighties. His father Roshaan Khan and mother Shandana are living together in a conflicted marriage. Their desires and needs are at odds with each other, and their children suffer at the cost. Armaghaan observes his parents and elders, explores the physical environment of Kashmala and tries to grapple with his circumstances. The story of Armaghaan's childhood and adolescence plays in the backdrop of the USSR-Afghan War. Though the war itself doesn't become the focus of the narrative, its repercussions do impact the characters in the novel. Apart from that, the story explores themes of domestic violence, sexual and physical abuse, patriarchy, and the essential human struggle to survive and make a sense of the contradictions between personal desires and social norms.

My thesis, In the Light of What They Suffer, is a collection of six short stories which examine the different ways grace can manifest in our lives, and the consequences of its absence. Each story features characters who, in one way or another, are tangling with atonement. Will the grace they so desperately need be extended? And will the grace on offer make a difference regarding their perceived mistakes and transgressions? While writing this thesis, I was challenged in particular to restrain the tensions in my stories to more adequately fit the short story medium.