Poetry London reviews Musawenkosi Khanyile and C.J. Driver

As part of Poetry London’s landmark 100th issue, Canadian-Scottish poet Tarn McArthur has written a glowing review of Musawenkosi Khanyile’s All the Places and C.J. Driver’s Still Further: New Poems 2000–2020.

McArthur writes that “Musawenkosi Khanyile casts a dappled light on his country’s rural, township, and urban livelihoods to unveil how a society’s fragmented state is mirrored in the psyches of those who suffer its social and economic stratification.”

About Driver: “As with many whose personal histories have been scarred by civil strife and sacrifice, a part of what sustains the self within these poems is the solidarity found amongst friends and family, along with a sustained devotion to those who have passed away.”

The full review may be found here.

Announcing Ilifa by Athambile Masola and Unam Wena by Mthunzikazi A. Mbungwana – iincwadi zethu zokuqala ngesiXhosa!

uHlanga are proud to announce the publication of our first two books ngesiXhosa, Ilifa by Athambile Masola and Unam Wena by Mthunzikazi A. Mbungwana.

Publishing in isiXhosa is something we’ve always wanted to do, and finally we are bringing out two books of original, contemporary imibongo yesiXhosa by two fantastic young talents.

---

Athambile Masola is perhaps best known as a writer of essays, but in Ilifa, her debut collection of poems, she freely and fruitfully explores the realities of love, morality and pleasure in a dangerous world.

Unabashedly modern in style and contemporary in her outlook, Masola looks with fresh eyes at the ways in which South Africans’ freedoms are still restricted by their circumstances – particularly by poverty and widespread abuse against women. Equally, however, these poems extol the possibility of healing through allowing one to listen to oneself.

Masola gifts us with an isiXhosa that is written as it is spoken – as a language that is urban, alive, and a reflection of the time and place we live in; a society in which freedom continues to be conditional.

© Nonzuzo Gxekwa

Masola, descended from amaGcina and amaBhele, grew up in East London. A Mandela Rhodes Scholar, Masola researches the literary careers of historically ignored black women writers.

She is the founder of Asinakuthula Collective, as well as a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Cape Town. Her work has been published widely in journals, newspapers, and online. This is her first collection of poems.

(Funda le nkcazo ngesiXhosa apha.)

---

Mthunzikazi A. Mbungwana is also no stranger to South African literature, having self-published her first chapbook Umnikelo in 2015. In Unam Wena, however, she reaches new levels, developing her style with a loaded winsomeness that has no parallel in modern isiXhosa poetry. With a remarkably poised voice, Mbungwana makes poems that are as assertive when they are explicit as when they are subtle.

Here is no easy comfort about love’s lasting ramifications, nor the sometimes tender but ultimately stifling idea of home. Nevertheless, Mbungwana captures the giddy ramblings of a desirous heart, as well as delving into the weighty histories of familial love and scandal, brandishing an isiXhosa that is both deeply literary and gloriously vital.

With poems that echo out into each other, and lines insistently rooted in their imagery, Mbungwana finds a way through the eternal and internal contest between the opposing forces of glory and pain, in the process making her own mark in a long and proud poetic tradition.

© Oz

Mbungwana is a part-time teacher in the Creative Writing Department at Rhodes University, where she also received a Masters in Creative Writing in isiXhosa. Her writings focus on themes of home, dreams, and everyday black queer life.

Her work has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, such as New Contrast, Atlanta Review, Our Words, Our Worlds: Writing on Black South African Women Poets 2008–2018, and To breathe into another voice: A South African Anthology of Jazz Poetry. She was born in Upper Indwe, Cala.

(Funda le nkcazo ngesiXhosa apha.)

---

Civil disturbances and other events of national disruption aside, both books will be available from the first week of August in all good bookstores in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. They are distributed to those bookstores by Protea Boekhuis Distribution.

Outside of South Africa, all of our books are available through the African Books Collective.

Maneo Mohale wins the 2020 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry

Photo by Andile Buka

uHlanga is proud to announce that Maneo Mohale has won the 2020 Glenna Luschei Award for African Poetry for their debut collection Everything Is A Deathly Flower.

The Glenna Luschei Award, named after the U.S. American philanthopist and administered by the African Poetry Book Fund at the University of Nebraska, is a prize of US$1000 awarded annually for an outstanding book of poetry by an African writer. The 2020 award, announced on 4 June 2021, was judged by Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, who said about Mohale’s collection:

“What is poetry but a manifesto of love, an invitation and an outpouring of struggle? As we roam the pages of the collection, we witness the love of land, of nature, of humanity; one is shown pain turned into raw beauty. The collection stood out because of the author’s commitment to the image, to the story and to language itself.

A gifted poet will, in this world of distractions, compel the reader to listen deeper, to filter out the verbosity of the market and the barrage of restrictions that humans place upon language, to find the voice of memory, a sound so close to silence.”

We are very grateful to the African Poetry Book Fund for this honour, which is the second Glenna Luschei Award won for a book published by uHlanga, the first being Collective Amnesia by Koleka Putuma, who won the 2017 award. Mohale’s collection was edited by fellow uHlanga poet Francine Simon, and we also thank her for her contribution to the project.

In addition, this accolade caps off a year of great success for uHlanga, completing a clean sweep of the three most prominent poetry awards that our books were eligible for during the last calendar year. Mohale joins fellow award-winners Saaleha Idrees Bamjee, winner of the 2020 Ingrid Jonker Prize for Zikr, and Musawenkosi Khanyile, winner of the 2020 South African Literary Award for Poetry for All the Places. Khanyile and Mohale were the two other finalists, in addition to Bamjee, for the Ingrid Jonker Prize.

Everything Is A Deathly Flower is available in all good bookstores in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, and everywhere else through the African Books Collective.

And – lastly – congratulations to Maneo!

Announcing Still Further: New Poems, 2000–2020 by C.J. Driver

uHlanga’s first book for 2021 – and C.J. Driver’s first full collection of poems since 2005 – is cause for celebration.

Selected from the many poems Driver has written and published in magazines, booklets, and anthologies since his professional retirement in 2000, Still Further manages to take in the international scope of his many careers: as anti-apartheid activist, teacher, headmaster, and – of course – as writer and poet.

While showing an impressive range of formal poetics, weighty philosophy, and Driver’s trademark political forthrightness, this is a book bound by love, replete with reflections on family, companionship, and old friends remembered. Imbued with a sense of history – not to mention an ample wit and sharp eye for irony – this collection does not just portray one of South Africa’s great living poets; Still Further is a testament to the value of people – no matter how great or humble – whose shared lives and histories make one’s own life worth living.

Affirming, immersive, and generously conceived, this is a must for any serious reader of English poetry.

Author photo by Douglas Reid Skinner

C.J. Driver, always known as Jonty, was born in Cape Town in 1939. He was President of the anti-apartheid National Union of South African Students in 1963–4, and during that time was detained in solitary confinement by the security police. The renewal of his passport was refused when he was at Oxford in 1967. He became stateless for five years. His first two novels were banned in South Africa and, even after becoming a British citizen, he was refused permission to visit his home country until after the end of apartheid.

Driver has been a productive and increasingly celebrated writer, publishing five novels, two biographies, two memoirs and twelve collections or booklets of poems. He was a teacher for many years, in Africa, Hong Kong, India and England, latterly a headmaster. Since his retirement from teaching in 2000, he has been a full-time writer. He lives with his wife in East Sussex, England.

This book will be available mid-April in all good bookstores in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. They are distributed to those bookstores by Protea Boekhuis Distribution.

Outside of South Africa, all of our books are available through the African Books Collective.

Cancellation of 2021 open submissions period

This is a very difficult post for me to write, but I have decided to cancel uHlanga's 2021 open submissions period, which was planned for February. As this will undoubtedly cause frustration and disappointment, I have decided to be open about the reasons for making this decision, especially as I am aware that some poets are already planning to send in work.

If you are upset by this decision, I can only apologise – but I would ask you please to read the rest of this letter.

When I started uHlanga in 2014, I had no idea that it would be a successful publisher of poetry. Part of uHlanga's success has been the open submissions periods, which I try to schedule every two years, both as a service to South Africa's poets and because some of our best books have come from these open submissions. For just one example, Saaleha Idrees Bamjee's 2020 Ingrid Jonker Prize-winning book, Zikr, came from our 2017 reading period. As such, I was looking forward to reading new work from new and established poets, but the reading period simply cannot go ahead this year.

There are two main reasons for this. We are all aware of the context of the first: in addition to other unexpected things that happened to uHlanga in 2020, the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has more or less halved our sales income. This means we cannot publish as many books as we would like to. We can only afford – and just barely – to publish the books we already have planned. Of course, I could open submissions and reject every manuscript without reading them, but – having been on the receiving end of such practices by (surprisingly large) publishing houses myself – I know how callous and unfair this would be, and possibly fatal to the hopes of promising new writers.

The second reason is personal. With the notable exceptions of a distribution and sales contractor, as well as help from two excellent interns a few years ago, I have run uHlanga almost entirely by myself. That also means that, come submissions time, I – or, in the minority of cases, someone I trust very much – must read every single of the 200-plus manuscripts sent in to uHlanga. Previously I have relished this challenge – I find it illuminating and often inspiring, even if only one per cent of all submitted manuscripts end up published.

But over the past year, my health has been significantly worse than what it needs to be. In order to recover, and to keep uHlanga running for any amount of time beyond this year, I must relieve myself of some weight. uHlanga – as many poetry presses around the world are – is a part-time project for me. It makes me no money, and sometimes I'm not sure if it brings me much else other than the satisfaction of producing books that make their writers and readers happy, and that, in addition to their artistic and literary merit, embody to different degrees a shared politics of visibility, expression, collaboration, historical redress, love, and justice.

So, however disappointing this news may be, rest assured that I am probably just as disappointed. I am very sorry to have announced a reading period only now to cancel it, especially in the midst of a terribly dispiriting time in South Africa and most of the rest of the world. I hope to have another reading period as soon as I can handle it. Other presses will have open reading periods this year, and I wish you the best of luck in placing your work with them.

Until then, keep safe,

Nick Mulgrew
Director, uHlanga