A collection of mostly lyrical poems. The poems explore moments of experience and thought relating to longing and belonging, in terms of relations, memory and place. The poems are mostly short and intense. Silence and implied meanings are often as important as what is said; shadows are evoked to recall substance. Though short, the poems are not tightly closed – on the contrary, meanings proliferate in the process of exploration

A collection of mostly lyrical poems. The poems explore moments of experience and thought relating to longing and belonging, in terms of relations, memory and place. The poems are mostly short and intense. Silence and implied meanings are often as important as what is said; shadows are evoked to recall substance. Though short, the poems are not tightly closed – on the contrary, meanings proliferate in the process of exploration

This collection of poems explores the boundaries between certainty and uncertainty, between the desire for meaning and the destabilisation of meaning. The content encompasses everyday life, love and loss, and the ambiguities are reflected in the forms used, so that, for instance, the linear continuity of narrative and the musicality of the lyric may be juxtaposed with the fragmented and imagistic leaps of the associative poem.

A collection of mostly lyrical poems. The poems explore moments of experience and thought relating to longing and belonging, in terms of relations, memory and place. The poems are mostly short and intense. Silence and implied meanings are often as important as what is said; shadows are evoked to recall substance. Though short, the poems are not tightly closed – on the contrary, meanings proliferate in the process of exploration

This is a collection of village narrative poems mainly set in rural Limpopo that searches into the complexity of the past and how historical events impact on the present. Although the poems are imagined along the Marxist dialectic, they’re fresh imaginative creations featuring a strong element of surprise, spiritual mysticism, experimenting with form, delving into unknown poetic avenues, creating new music, exploring new sounds and taking risks. The long and intense poem, Ancestral wealth, which is a tribute to the poet’s father, reflects on death and its impact through the effective application of various stylistic elements and poetic devices, thus immortalising the life of a rural South African. Overall the poems, including retrospective and experimental ones, condemn the free market economic system and all that it seems to necessitate: the degradation of ecology, indifference to human suffering and the alienation of vulnerable social groups.

A collection of narrative and confessional poems. The poems are mostly short, cinematic, physical, imagistic: moments in time. They explore the poet’s own life, body, memories, and family relationships, and the tensions between power, duty, love and faith. Several poems concern the navigation of meaning and belonging in a time when international urban culture often clashes with tradition.

M.A. / In this dissertation an examination is made of the different strands of contemporary South African protest and resistance poetry. This is done by way of analysing selected poems to highlight the relationship which exists between politics and aesthetics and to illustrate that the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. A brief history of written African protest and resistance poetry is provided in an attempt to put this poetry within its historical context and to trace its influences and development. The poems are then examined with the express aim of identifying and understanding their themes and the socio-political contexts from which they emanate. These contexts are then shown to have important implications in so far as the aesthetics of protest and resistance poetry is concerned. The dissertation highlights the fact that for this poetry to be fully appreciated, there is a need to recognize the particular circumstances which surround it. This recognition is essential because these circumstances are instrumental in the shaping of the poetry and the formation of an aesthetics of protest and resistance. An examination of whether this type of poetry has any socio-political relevance and literary significance to contemporary South Africa is made.

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. / The aim of this dissertation is to offer a close, critical examination of the particular dilemmas and responses of concempocary white English-speaking South Africans as these are reflected in South African English poetry. This aim ought not to be construed as a denial of the legitimate claims of other ethnic groups for attention; nor should it in any way be interpreted as an attempt to reinforce artificial racial categories or to bolster restrictive barriers between communities. The purpose, rather is to help advance mutual understanding and awareness by focussing on the specific problems of a complex and intriguing, yet strangely neglected group of people in this country. By examining the difficulties facing the white English- speaking group as registered and articulated in the work of South African English poets, this dissertation moves beyond a purely sociological account of the group. The dissertation will include both a study of the direct critique by South African English poets of the dilemmas and responses of their white English- speaking countrymen, as well as an investigation of the ways in which the poets themselves, consciously or otherwise, have responded as white English-speaking South Africans in their poetry to these dilemmas. The understanding of the white English-speaking group to be gained in this fashion though differing from that to be derived from a sociological study, need not be any the less authentic or assiduous, In particular the ability to examfne the group from both subjective and objective points of view may enhance illumination. As such, in order to comprehend fully what the poetry reveals about the white English-speaking South Africans, it is necessary to investigate how it does so, and so this dissertation will adopt a primarily literary critical approach to the poetic texts under consideration This dissertation will isolate and examine four of the most important and characteristic dilemmas confronting contemporary white English-speaking South Africans. After an introductory chapter, the second chapter will focus upon the "crisis of identity" experienced by modern-day English-speakers, and will discuss the disturbingly incohesive and vague nature of the English-speaking group, as well as what has been seen as its uncertain and precarious position within the 'wider South African social context. The third chapter will concentrate upon English-speakers "damaged sense of place their feelings of alienation both from the land of their birth and from the European source of much of their cultural heritage, their sense of having no true home. The fourth chapter will be concerned with the feelings of profound dread which seem to have permeated the white English-speaking South African consciousness, both the fearful anticipation of violent political upheaval, as well as a less explicit anxiety about some undefined menace or force which threatens to breach the white South African "laager". Finally, the fifth chapter will examine the attitudes, conduct and political orientation of contemporary white English-speaking South Africans, and will suggest that while a large aggregate of English-speakers may be conservative and apathetic, there exists nonetheless a substantial minority within the group (including most poets) who are enlightened, progressive and activist in outlook and who thus represent a significant "tradition of dissent' in white South African thought. / Andrew Chakane 2018

This thesis is a monograph of South African poet and artist, Wopko Jensma. Jensma's published anthologies, Sing/or Our Execution (1973), Where White is the Colour, Where Black is the Number (1974) and Have You Seen My Clippings (1977) together with the relatively unknown and unpublished, Blood and More Blood deal with issues of identity relating to race and class within the context of apartheid South Africa in the nineteen seventies. These four anthologies represent a poetics of resistance conceived as an antidote to personal and social suffering as a result of the racist oppression of blacks in South Africa. Jensma's experimental poetry harnesses the signatures of jazz lyrics, concrete poetry, the avantgarde as well as African dance forms in bizarre cameos of underclass misery and racial oppression. In lieu of metrical regularity and rhyme the aesthetic experience is simulated by asemantic qualities of speech, sound and rhythmic undulations in a poetry characterised by what Samuel Beckett has called "the withdrawal of semantic crutches" (Schwab 1994:6). Jensma's schizoid discourse manifests itself as an asocial dialect with highly personal idioms, approximate phrases and substitutes which make his language extremely difficult to follow at times. Jensma's diction of private idiomatic language, mixing of dialects, the use of syncopation, ellipsis and experimental topography have no doubt contributed to the cryptic and arcane aberrations associated with schizophrenia. This schizoid versification is a paradoxical wish to protect the core of oneself from communication whilst simultaneously expressing the need to be discovered and acknowledged. This private idiomatic language reveal ordinary people driven into interior psychological spaces, as well as psychotic and surreal extremes in order to survive an overwhelming and implosive reality. Jensma's textual strategies deconstruct modernist assumptions about rationality, domination and meaning as a tyranny of power. The socially constructed self is exposed as a subject disempowered and alienated by ideologies which demand acquiescence and which offer false assurances in return. Likewise, the schizoid scrambling of the signifier is an attempt to repel the subjection implicit in rationalist discourse and to encourage an awareness of the world ideologically sanctioned by its dominant discourses. This study begins with a detailed biography of Jensma. The next chapter establishes the theoretical assumptions which inform the interface between Jensma's poetry and schizophrenia. Jensma's poetry is then systematically appraised in terms of themes, form and subjectivity. The last chapter is a study of the intertextual relations which provide insight into the context and milieii in which Jensma wrote and which permit a reading of Jensma's poetry as a discursive space in which different literary histories co-exist and respond to one another. The thesis concludes with an evaluation of Jensma's poetry as a pathological yet incisive response to the reductive politics ofracial essence, cultural crisis and the vagaries of consumer culture. / Thesis (Ph.D)-University of Durban-Westville, 2002.

Shadow Sounds: an Original Collection of Poetry and an Essay on Questions of Femaleness and Diaspora in Meena Alexander’s Illiterate Heart. The thesis comprises two parts: an original collection of poetry entitled Shadow Sounds, and a critical essay exploring the issues of diaspora and femaleness in Meena Alexander‟s Illiterate Heart. Shadow Sounds is a compilation of poems which examines the interrelations of a South African Indian familial structure, the emergence of a strong female sexual identity, and the open, even experimentally processual approach which influences the exploration of lyric voicing. The critical essay on Alexander investigates two major thematic concerns in the collection Illiterate Heart, namely, diaspora and gender. I postulate that the diasporic experiences of the writer have inflected all aspects of her identity, occasioning both rhizomatic compositions and the ongoing composition of a dispersed subjectivity. Alexander‟s hypothesised „selves‟ are observed and identified as constantly shifting and changing throughout Illiterate Heart, and effectively recast the popular conceptualisation of identity as singular and coherent. / M.A. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2013.