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Thabiso Tshowa’s debut book of short stories, Mrova, is a striking collection of sketch-like tales that bring to life the rhythm, voice, movement, and activity of daily life in the small town of Bethal, Mpumalanga.
A thread that binds the ten stories in What the Trumpeter Said is their locations, exotic for some, routine for others – like life itself.
“A daily writing practice over the past two years has led to my writing on a wide range of themes. I suspect that someone pours a little poetry dust into my ear each night as I sleep because I wake up with a few lines of rhyme from the dream world to tinker with from the first moment of the day.”
Written in an intensely lyrical mode with very strong elements of African narrative poetry, this collection is imbued with the spirit of the imbongi, in that its language is lush and overwhelming, incantatory and rhythmic in its power, Nelson Ratau incorporates social happenings with the larger than life, the heroic.
volcanoed/ηφαιστειωθής is a poetry collection that attempts to capture a contemplative journey undertaken through the simultaneous use of English and Greek languages. Each double poem is not a translation of one another but rather the product of a process in which one version informs the other, and the two poems intertwine and evolve alongside each other. The collection weaves together themes of grief and loss, experiences of otherness, and the exploration of place and location, including the complexities of migration and self-exile.
