Thank you, Kavish Chetty, for your insightful response to the panel on poetry at the Spier festival. I would like to add the following, slightly tangential elements to the debate. First a quote from the famous article “How do I live in this strange place”, by Samantha Vice, and then a kind of response to it in semi-poetic language in Afrikaans.

Poetry (of a certain elitist kind) would, I think, fall under what Vice calls “small gestures and utterances” that bourgeois whites should limit themselves to in our context. I looked in vain for a neo-orphic anarchist or workerist website to post it on but could not yet find one in South Africa, alas. The question of “what poetry is (ontologically)” does not get “us” anywhere, I agree. However, the question of what the function is of poetry (of whatever kind), and of debates about it, for instance in the context of Actor Network Theory is more helpful.

What human beings (unconsciously or consciously) do, or want to do, (to each other, or for themselves) with poetry, with honey, with dagga, with critique of ideology, when they select, for instance, the SLiPnet forum as their stage, is something worth contemplating, methinks. Who reads it and why? I always, in this kind of situation, remember Spinoza’s favourite pastime: after grinding his lenses and writing his daily portion of the Ethics, he used to watch a pair of spiders fighting in a glass bottle and could be heard laughing out loudly to himself all night long until one got killed. Early the next morning he would go out in the garden to get the next contender. The weak shall founder, the strong shall rule – very simple. Depends which end of history one happens to find oneself in. Sometimes one finds oneself in the hedge in one’s web waiting for prey. Having done one’s best for it. Until the philosopher gets you for his sport. Or whatever. I feel tired.

Extract from “How do I live in this strange place” by Samantha Vice:

So, recognizing their damaging presence, whites would try, in a significantly different way to the normal workings of whiteliness, to make themselves invisible and unheard, concentrating rather on those damaged selves. Making pronouncements about a situation in which one is so deeply implicated seems a moral mistake—it assumes one matters politically and morally beyond the ways in which everyone matters equally. One needs to learn that one does not. One would live as quietly and decently as possible, refraining from airing one’s view on the political situation in the public realm, realizing that it is not one’s place to offer diagnoses and analyses, that blacks must be left to remake the country in their own way. Whites have too long had influence and a public voice; now they should in humility step back from expressing their thoughts or managing others... Furthermore, one would still be compelled to make small gestures and utterances; there are demands every day for private acts, not of charity but of justice (whitely ways of thinking in this country confuse these two). But knowing how best to respond to these occasions is also difficult when whites still have economic and social power, which infects every encounter. White South Africans face daily and tenacious moral tests that show themselves up as inadequate as much as revealing the deep structural and systemic injustices of the country. However one acts, shame is never far away, for so many interactions seem charged with power or racial dynamics. It is hard to be comfortable like this and hard to resist the thought that for most white South Africans it will be almost impossible to lead a good life.

Brief aan Samantha Vice.

Beste mejuffrou Vice,

Ek besef dis ’n voorreg om gedigte te skryf,
here, die tyd tot mens se beskikking, die gerief, die woordeboeke,
die kennis van konvensies om mee te speel soos jy wil,
die kaas in jou yskas, die wyn, terwyl onder jou neus jou naaste
krepeer. En dan, jou lesers, miskien tweehonderd histories
bevoorregtes plaaslik, wat jou taal op die gewenste vlak beheers,
plus miskien dertig belangstellendes in vooruitstrewende
dele van die wêreld wat besluit of jou werk, naas intensiteit
en oorspronklikheid genoeg betrokkenheid, selfondermyning,
on/voltooidheid, stilte, stottering, etiek of die mimiek daarvan bevat
om deur diverse bendes gedagtekeurders verdra te word.

Hierdie maters weet almal hoe verwen mens is om ’n digbundel
ter hand te neem, en jouself onder ’n skemerlamp in ’n gestoffeerde kamer –
waghond en bewakingsdiens op staande voet – te vermaak met hoe die spulletjie versin is,
fyntjies aanmekaargeklink terwyl die townships nog eens op die einder brand;
dis ’n skaam, stil, skuldige genieting, en waar gegadigdes bymekaarkom,
uitgewers, mededigters, kritici, in hierdie arena, is dit, net soos by bulgevegte,
in ’n gees van oortreding, selfs al gaan dit gepaard met minder lawaai –
die geskiet en geskreeu, weet almal, gebeur, soos in my geval, veertig kilometer verder,
op die Flats, of Khayelitsha, die bloed word buite my sig vergiet.

Wat ek weet, is dat die honger kind, sy verwese moeder, sy woedende vader,
sy verkragte suster, sy verslaafde broer, deur wie se strukturele lyding,
onder drie eeue wit barbare – laat daaroor geen twyfel wees nie –
ek gekom het waar ek is, niks sal baat by ’n praatgedig soos hierdie nie.
Maar ek wed my laaste duit, Samantha, dat as ek lewendig uit die donker
by hulle vuur sou opdaag met die hiert-en snorkliedjie wat ek as kleuter geleer
het by my oppassers Miriam en Trui op my oom se plaas Spes Bona
in die Groot Karoo: hu-ieg, hu-ôg, hu-iege-iege-ôg, al in die rondte,
bif-baf soos ’n kalkoen en ’n paar keer neerslaan voor ek pokketjô met molasse kry,
hulle ten spyte van alles sal lag vir my manewales,
en my, as die tyd ons verwarm het, miskien sal vergas
op soortgelyke grappige reste uit ’n minimaal gedeelde verlede.
Dit sal min wees, maar wel ’n begin, en mens moet maar sien hoe dit afloop,
nie dat ek veel sal kan toevoeg aan my fonds van klein uitinge en gebare
as dinge dalk hande uitruk nie. Miskien sal ek dan soos ’n marionet aan toutjies
my kop vashou en koes sover ek kan, ’n universele gebaar, wat niemand
van ons sedert Biko, meer koudlaat nie.

Op jou vraag, dus “How do I live in this strange place” sal,
wat klank en hande betref, voorlopig die scat
in Ella Fitzgerald se One Note Samba as antwoord kan dien.
Tot dan, hoebáberie-bebiédiedei, bêbie.

Ns: Móénie vergeet om ’n demper op jou huisalarm te sit nie.