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David Mann, author of Once Removed, interviews award-winning Scottish-South African poet, Basil du Toit about his latest collection of poetry Studies in Khoisan Verbs.
The Colours of Our Flag was published in 2016, but it feels as timely and relevant now as ever. Would you like to say something about what this title meant to you when you chose it, and what it means to you today? What kind of response have you had to the anthology since it was published?
An audio-drama commissioned by ILRIG (International Labour Research and Information Group) and
produced by the BOTSOTSO arts collective with a cast drawn from CASAWU (the Commercial
Stevedoring and Agricultural Workers Union) and RECLAIM THE CITY (a working-class inner city
residents organization based in Cape Town).
In the shadow of Israel’s genocide of the people of Gaza (almost all refugees from the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Jewish settlers in 1948), this collection, drawn from poems written over several years and culminating in the fire of the current onslaught, captures the agony and suffering of a defenceless people attacked with high precision weapons and a propaganda machine dedicated to advancing US/NATO control over the ‘non-white’ world.
In this, his ninth poetry collection, Kelwyn Sole gives voice to a wide range of concerns, characteristically interweaving the personal with a wider social and political focus. What Is Owed? explores many topics: questions of youth and aging; the complex and illuminating experience of living in contemporary South Africa; commentary on the literary world and on love and other relationships; and the eco-political. In these poems Sole explores themes familiar to readers of his work and also extends them; adding to his already considerable reputation as a poet unafraid to ask difficult questions and wrestle with issues of form and content.
