Denis Hirson – författare

South African Poetry 1996-2013 presents work by 32 poets and includes some translations from Afrikaans, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho and Xitsonga. This collection follows on from Denis Hirson’s 1997 anthology The Lava of this Land: South African Poetry 1960-1996.South African poetry today is charged with restlessness, bursting with diversity. Gone is the intense inward focus required to deal with a situation of systematic oppression, the enclosing effort of concentration on a single predicament. While politics and identity continue to be central themes, the poetry since the late 1990s reveals a richer investigation of ancestors and history, alongside more experimentation with language and translation; and enduring concern with the touchstones of love, loss, memory, and acts of witnessing.Poets include: Jim Pascual Agustin ~ Gabeba Baderoon ~ Robert Berold ~ Vonani Bila ~ Jeremy Cronin ~ Ingrid de Kok ~ Isobel Dixon ~ Finuala Dowling ~ Khadija Tracey Heeger ~ Denis Hirson ~ Ronelda Kamfer ~ Keorapetse Kgositsile ~ Katharine Kilalea ~ Rustum Kozain ~ Antjie Krog ~ David wa Maahlamela ~ Bongekile Joyce Mbanjwa ~ Joan Metelerkamp ~ Kobus Moolman ~ Isabella Motadinyane ~ Petra Müller ~ Gert Vlok Nel ~ Mxolisi Nyezwa ~ Karen Press ~ Mongane Wally Serote ~ Ari Sitas ~ Kelwyn Sole ~ Rosamund Stanford ~ Toni Stuart ~ Nathan Trantraal ~ Marlene van Niekerk ~ Bulelani Zantsi.

I remember shaving off my beard in the bathroom on the eve of the camp, with Mahalia Jackson singing rousing spirituals from the living room. Afterwards my chin was strangely smooth, and seemed to have shrunk. I remember that from the Springbok Grounds, where the army has its administrative offices, you could see a whisky ad on a billboard with a moustachioed gentleman suggesting: "Don't be vague, ask for Haig". I remember our arrival at camp, in a roaring truck with wooden plank benches that fetched s from the station. There were many trucks parked or driving along an endless esplanade with their headlights forked into the night. Dust and diesel fumes. People running. Uniforms. Hoarse orders in Afrikaans. I remember 'roer jou gat!", "jou gat", "se gat", "bakgat", "slapgat", "gates", and "don't gooi me grief, hey!" We walk straight so you better get out of the way is author's new book of personal and public memories of growing up in South Africa. Once again he delves deeply into sense memories, making the reader hum long-forgotten tunes, summoning up familiar pictures through his delicate and finely-tuned phrasing.In this title the author deals with the army years, the Grateful Dead years, the loss of his father to prison years and the losing himself to Paris years.

White Scars also explores the moments at which Hirson read the four books. They include the arrest of his anti-apartheid activist father, Baruch Hirson in the early 1960's; his own move to Paris in the 1970's; his father's death, and the end of a period of mourning for him. In weaving together these two strands in White Scars, Hirson has referred to many other texts, including other books by Breyten Breytenbach, Raymond Carver and Georges Perec. He has also explored a constellation of key words, which trace, in different ways, the political space of apartheid South Africa and the transience of one who is now looking back at that time through the prism of distance.