Some months ago Mike Alfred and I decided to compile an anthology of new poems about Joburg. There have been many written in the past but we felt we needed to give a contemporary view (as expressed by poets) given the vast changes in the city over the past twenty-five years – some positive but many negative, reflecting the general impact of ANC rule on a post-apartheid South Africa.
“It is said that writing about music is the equivalent of dancing about architecture. Mick Raubenheimer, however, grasps in Bukowskian prose the embodied, emotional and cerebral qualities of improvisation, as well as the torsions of South African music subcultures. Writing about improvised music requires the disruption of form. Using irruptive anecdotes and in capturing interruptive moments of listening, Raubenheimer comes as close as is possible to the qualities of the music itself.
Staid histories of South African jazz inevitably regulate the music. Mick Raubenheimer captures musical events in all their disruptive singularity.”
Botsotso has long admired the work of the late Angifi Proctor Dladla, and valued him as a friend, artist and cultural activist, so we were very excited to receive a copy of his epic satirical poem, Maxwell the Gorilla and the Archbishop of Soshanguve, from Kelwyn Sole. This highly original and trenchant poem about the chaos of post-liberation (or rather ‘’half-baked’’ liberation) is a model for poets/writer in dealing with the pain and frustration of our current paralysis in terms of achieving a ‘better life for all’.
Some months ago Mike Alfred and I decided to compile an anthology of new poems about Joburg. There have been many written in the past but we felt we needed to give a contemporary view (as expressed by poets) given the vast changes in the city over the past twenty-five years – some positive but many negative, reflecting the general impact of ANC rule on a post-apartheid South Africa. 
“It is said that writing about music is the equivalent of dancing about architecture. Mick Raubenheimer, however, grasps in Bukowskian prose the embodied, emotional and cerebral qualities of improvisation, as well as the torsions of South African music subcultures. Writing about improvised music requires the disruption of form. Using irruptive anecdotes and in capturing interruptive moments of listening, Raubenheimer comes as close as is possible to the qualities of the music itself.
Staid histories of South African jazz inevitably regulate the music. Mick Raubenheimer captures musical events in all their disruptive singularity.” 
Botsotso has long admired the work of the late Angifi Proctor Dladla, and valued him as a friend, artist and cultural activist, so we were very excited to receive a copy of his epic satirical poem, Maxwell the Gorilla and the Archbishop of Soshanguve, from Kelwyn Sole. This highly original and trenchant poem about the chaos of post-liberation (or rather ‘’half-baked’’ liberation) is a model for poets/writer in dealing with the pain and frustration of our current paralysis in terms of achieving a ‘better life for all’.