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Malume’s bones

  • Authors: Mokhele, Sizakele
  • Date: 2018
  • Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) -- South Africa , South African poetry (English) -- 21st century
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63132 , vital:28366
  • Description: My poetry is about real stories: poverty, love, politics, past pains and healing. I try to follow the example of Amiri Baraka who says his poetry is whatever he thinks he is, that he makes poetry with “what can be saved out the garbage of our lives”. My collection also preserves and embraces demotic language, which is also a part of who I am. I am influenced by Baraka’s and Ike Muila’s use of demotics, and the way that poets such as Antonio Jacinto, Costa Andrade and Mafika Gwala tackle political matters in a colourful and powerful way. I have also been inspired by ancient Chinese poets to explore love and eroticism, particularly how it plays out in the eyes of my people.
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  • Date Issued: 2018

Bird-Monk Seding

  • Authors: Rampolokeng, Lesego
  • Date: 2017
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/5049 , vital:20758
  • Description: This novella is made up of interlinked stories from a rural township in the North West province. The stories of this surface-tranquil place are told through descriptive passages, vignettes, snatches of dialogue, profiles and picture-postcards, all organically interwoven and entwined, and rendered in non-linear fashion. They are set in shebeens, shops, farmlands and the dusty empty spaces of the South African landscape, peopled by police, tourists, and prostitutes of all sorts. The pervasiveness of violence in all forms has the fictional narrator reflecting on the violence of his own past. A smattering of musicians' musings gleaned from interviews and album liner-notes helps him navigate his way through this morass, the rage and frustration that simmers beneath it all.
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  • Date Issued: 2017

bones & flesh

  • Authors: Hammerton, Kerry
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:6009 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021221
  • Description: My collection encompasses personal relationships, intimacy, and the erotic, as well as more narrative poems grounded in landscapes, including urban and internal landscapes. Some were written in conversation with other poems or pieces of prose such as the stories of Noy Holland. I use free verse forms influenced by various prose poems as well as by the musical/tonal forms of poets such as Lorca. Other styles and influences include the darkness and directness of Spanish poetry particularly Rafael Alberti (esp. his book Concerning the Angels); and the confident and reflective style of Romanian poet Nina Cassian.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Hearing things

  • Authors: Claassen, José
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:6019 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021243
  • Description: William Carlos Williams wrote: "It isn't what the poet says that counts as a work of art, it's what he makes, with such intensity of purpose that it lives with an intrinsic movement of its own to verify its authenticity." I would like to think that my poems only borrow life from my pen, taking on an identity and music of their own with the help of some ‘making’ on my part. My poems embrace a continuum of human experience from the intrapersonal to the societal. Using imagistic and cinematic forms, they preserve the vitality of their sources, from the music of cityscapes, to the texture of emotions, to the narratives of particular characters.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Hungry on arrival

  • Authors: Mofokeng, Kabelo
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:6020 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021244
  • Description: My collection embraces different kinds of poetry, I also write my own journey through my home in Pimville Soweto, the urban sounds and multilingual speech patterns as I move through it. Other poems draw on the Sesotho culture and tradition which still runs strongly in my family, and here I integrate the different kinds of sounds and associations of Sesotho and English in the same poem. I am inspired by the works and lives of artists and poets such as, Mafika Gwala, Jackson Hlungwani, and Herbie Tsoaeli amongst others. Other poems emerging are dense and self-reflective manifesting a transitional period whereby the poet experiments with form and style in the manner of Arthur Nortje and Angifi Dladla.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

I have gone away many times

  • Authors: Metileni, Moses Nzama Khaizen
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:6010 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021225
  • Description: I search for beauty and for myself amidst the debris and ruin and violence, so my poems are mainly grounded narratives that combine the lyrical and the political, celebration and lament. They reconnect with nature, the now ravaged landscapes that gave me my first impulse to make songs, poetry, and art. My poems also draw on my Xitsonga culture – its folklore, proverbs, idioms, parables, and clan praise songs. Stylistically I am influenced by Mahmoud Darwish’s and Garcia Lorca’s musical structures, while Aimé Césaire has shown me how to write a long poem in both abstract and concrete registers, and Yehuda Amichai how to write with a questioning style, dislodging accepted dogma. Local influences are Mzi Mahola and James Magaisa, with their critique and celebration of culture. I pick up fragments elsewhere, as I go.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

If I still want to breathe

  • Authors: Billie, Ayanda
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English , Xhosa
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:6012 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/1021231
  • Description: One theme of this collection is the joy and the deep seated grief of my community of Kwa-Nobuhle; the brightness of hope on the faces on children running around our streets, the strides made by their mothers, the confusion of factory workers who are lost in darkness since the dawn of new dispensation. Then there are more personal poems: my own joys as well as the difficulties that have kept me from sleep and strangled my dreams as a writer, even though like Mafika Gwala, I believe that “words are born the way mothers beget children/words are born to survive time”. My style is influenced by imagistic, mystic and soulful poetry, such as the haunting Spanish voice of Garcia Lorca who wrote “I lose myself in the heart of certain children” and the absorbing isiXhosa voice of S E K Mqhayi. In response to their poetry my offering will be words that enliven us; my style will be what I see in the mirror, through the window, the sound of rain on my zinc roof and what frightens me. , Ndixomoloze ndiboph’ amaxonya, ndisenza eli linge lokuzama ukuxhathalaza kulo msinga uzakutshayela ulwimi lwethu. Nantso ke incwadana ndiyithe qhiwu ngendebe endiyithiye ngegama elithi Umhlaba Umanzi. Umhlaba umanzi ziinyembezi zabalilayo, umanzi kukubila kwabasebenzi besombha eludakeni, ufumile ziinkathazo zeminyaka zesizukulwana sesizukulwana. Injongo endifuna ukuyifezekisa ngeli nqaku yeyokuba umntu achole ntwana ithile ngokujonga imeko esiphila kuzo gabalala, ekuhlaleni, emakhayeni ethu nakwii ndawo esixelenga kuzo. Mhlawumbi kuyakuvuseleleka iingcinga neenkumbulo zamhla-mnene, okanye ibophe nezilonda ezimanzi. Ukwanda kwaliwa ngumthakathi. . . Nangomso. , This thesis is presented in two parts: English and isiXhosa.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Ndiyoyika

  • Authors: Nyezwa, Mxolisi
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English , Xhosa
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:6021 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021245
  • Description: This thesis collection is a book of isiXhosa poems in three sections: - Poems derived and influenced by the rhythmic structure and the lyrics of Maskandi music - More introspective and personal poems derived from other influences: International poetry, South African poetry, and certain jazz and soul music - A major poem titled, “Nozala, umqolo wakho uphandle” which delves into the state of South Africa and explores the relationships that entrench poverty and powerlessness in post-apartheid South Africa. , Le thisisi yingqokelela yemibongo yesiXhosa eyohlulwe yazizigaba ezintathu: - Imibongo ephenjelelwe ziingoma nezingqi zomculo kaMaskandi - Imibongo ephenjelelwe zizimvo neemvakalelo zam njengombhali, ngakumbi iintshukumo zomzimba nezomphefumlo ezithundezwe ziimbongi zamazwe omhlaba, ezoMzantsi Afrika, kunye nemiculo efana ne-jazz, ne-soul - Umbongo ombaxa osihloko sithi, “Nozala, umqolo wakho uphandle” othetha ngelizwe lethu iMzantsi Afrika, uqwalasela indlela ekuphethwe ngayo ilizwe ziziphathamandla, nendlela abasemagunyeni abaphembelela ngayo intswela-ngqesho nentlupheko eluntwini, kwanokufiphala kobutsha-ntliziyo nobuthanda-zwe kubemi beli lizwe.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Notebook of unremembered poems

  • Authors: McKeown, Jean Wallace
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:6013 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021233
  • Description: My poems contain narrative elements and explore themes of identity, motherhood, sexuality, and fear of relinquishing control. Sharon Olds, in her book Stag’s Leap, sums up my intention: “and I saw again how blessed my life has been, / first, to have been able to love, / then, to have the parting now behind me.” My collection chronicles a path towards acceptance of self from childhood onwards, and, more than that, a pleasure and pride in self, and I have tried to find the forms which will reflect this path in the reader’s own experience. Most of the poems are written in a conversational voice and a free-form style which gives me creative licence to explore transition and transformation.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Oncoming traffic

  • Authors: Manaka, Maakomele R
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:6008 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/1021220
  • Description: The poems in my collection Oncoming Traffic mainly look at the silence in my personal conflicts. Fusing different styles and tones of writing from the lyrical to the surreal, these poems grapple with issues I struggle with on a daily basis. First as a man, second as a man with a physical disability, and lastly as a black man dealing with the reality of living in a dysfunctional/disabled society. The silence in my personal conflicts means, writing what I cannot say, stripping myself bare and vulnerable. My inspiration has come from poets who articulate such silences.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

The beat

  • Authors: Masheane, Napo
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:6014 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021234
  • Description: My play script is a docu-drama inspired by the 1950s Drum journalists: Can Themba, Bloke Modisane, Nat Nakasa, Henry Nxumalo, Lewis Nkosi, Peter Magubane, Casey Motsitsi and Todd Matshikiza. The setting is a Sophiatown shebeen through which the characters move in and out. The central dramatic exploration hinges on female characters’ experiences rather than the perspectives of the male journalists connected to them. I dramatise documented events such as Modisane’s wife leaving him and taking their daughter with her, or a woman who buried her lover’s body after he was beaten and stabbed to death. There are other twists and turns based on the Drum journalists writings. I play with the seriousness of politics, love affairs, and the comedy of their daily lives. My influences come from plays such as Nongogo (1959) and Sophiatown (1986). The Beat is dedicated to all the women who have been silenced and as a result became products of their consequences. Their voices remind me as a theatre maker that my poems and plays might arrive in me as pure SONGS (Dipina) or a CRY (Kodiyamalla). Sometimes their inspiration will spring from my traditional family rituals, as a PRAISE song/s (Dithoko/ Thoko), or from a simple memory of a childhood church song, a HYMN (Difela/ Sefela). At times these words will present themselves as a source of where one comes from, CLAN NAMES (Seboko/ Poko). These stories will find me in the dusty streets of my village and township HERSTORY… they will touch, move, provoke, push and force me to vomit on page words that are subjects of that which we are even when silence seems inevitable. , My poetry collection fuses Sesotho and English, often within the same poem, as a way of showing how I live within and between two cultures. I write to celebrate these two tongues without compromising either language and allow each poem, to express its own musical component, tone, rhythm, and pace as it moves between stage and page. My poems converse about difficult subjects from a feminine voice. They look at family structures and dynamics, using everyday household things as metaphors. They take on deep family narratives of generational curses, births, deaths and love. There are also some more political poems about community outrage, the exploitation caused by outmoded culture and tradition, and about the nightmare that constantly wants to come out of the township.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

The smell hits you first

  • Authors: Ndoro, Tariro
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:6016 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021236
  • Description: This collection of poems and prose poems is a record of my life, from growing up in the small town of Bindura in Zimbabwe to landing in the small town of Grahamstown in South Africa. It is a story of dislocation: physical, emotional, and political. It is a story about borders and boundaries; although not rich, I was raised among the rich; although not white, I spent a considerable part of my childhood in white spaces. These fragments are told through the voice of my younger self and also retrospectively by my adult self. Two important influences on my style and my struggle to write about my identity have been Woman Hollering Creek by Latino American author Sandra Cisneros and Citizen: An American Lyric by US poet Claudia Rankine.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Love in a cold war

  • Authors: Christenson, Anna
  • Date: 2015
  • Subjects: South African fiction (English) -- 21st century
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:5988
  • Description: A collection of short stories in two parts written in realist and fabulist styles. The first part looks at the post-war generation of baby boomers growing up in the American Midwest. The second half follows an American abroad and explores themes of disintegration, the shifting power balance in relationships and the terrible hole at the core of expatriate identity.
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  • Date Issued: 2015

Aggrey Klaaste : the relentless community-builder

  • Authors: Mbonambi, Phakama
  • Date: 2014
  • Subjects: Klaaste, Aggrey , Sowetan (Johannesburg, South Africa) , Newspaper editors -- South Africa -- Biography , Nation-building -- South Africa , South Africa -- Politics and government -- 20th century
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:5999 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020882
  • Description: This thesis looks at the life and times of Aggrey Klaaste, the larger-than-life late editor of Sowetan who shot to fame by championing a novel idea of nation building. His initiative started in 1988 as flames of violence engulfed South Africa and it seemed as if an apocalypse was on the cards. Sickened by what the frustrated black community was doing to itself, for example the use of the dreadful practice of necklacing against the so-called collaborators, he called for moral regeneration. He wanted his compatriots to look into the future and take their destiny in their own hands. Through nation building he tirelessly launched into crusading journalism that sought to heal the scars of the black community after decades of apartheid. It was grassroots community building. He rewarded ordinary men and women who made a difference in their communities. He actively sought peace to end the violence of the 1980s and 1990s. He spoke his mind without wearing any ideological blinkers, even as some thought his initiative would disturb the march to freedom. He was the ultimate newspaperman. This thesis argues that by calling for reconciliation and rebuilding of battered black communities even before freedom came, Klaaste was ahead of his time and even predated Nelson Mandela. Klaaste preferred to do what was right and not be shackled to any ideology. In doing so, he angered many people who felt his thinking was derailing the struggle for freedom. But Klaaste stressed that nation building was ideologically neutral and was meant for everyone. By contradicting prevailing political orthodoxy, he very likely risked his own life. But, like a true leader, he stuck to his convictions. Klaaste was exemplary in calling for reconciliation and building when others called for breaking. Ten years after he died, as the country still grapples with issues he raised in his popular weekly column On The Line, it is worth appraising his thinking and actions. The thesis also looks at the environment that influenced his thinking. His life is interwoven with South African history. That he began his adult life shakily, spending his days in a drunken stupor at Johannesburg shebeens to being awarded the Order for Meritorious Service for his outstanding community work, makes him an interesting subject to look at. It’s a story of a man who vanquished his demons and, through his compassionate community engagement, became an asset to the country. It’s a story of redemption. As his private life attests, he was man with flaws – like anyone else. But Aggrey Klaaste strived to do what was right for his community at all times. He was a restless community builder.
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  • Date Issued: 2014

Grieving forests

  • Authors: Bila, Freddy Vonani
  • Date: 2014
  • Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) -- Research -- South Africa , Creative writing -- Poetry , South African poetry (English) -- Study and teaching (Higher) , South African poetry (English) -- 21st century , English language -- Writing
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:5997 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020880
  • Description: This is a collection of village narrative poems mainly set in rural Limpopo that searches into the complexity of the past and how historical events impact on the present. Although the poems are imagined along the Marxist dialectic, they’re fresh imaginative creations featuring a strong element of surprise, spiritual mysticism, experimenting with form, delving into unknown poetic avenues, creating new music, exploring new sounds and taking risks. The long and intense poem, Ancestral wealth, which is a tribute to the poet’s father, reflects on death and its impact through the effective application of various stylistic elements and poetic devices, thus immortalising the life of a rural South African. Overall the poems, including retrospective and experimental ones, condemn the free market economic system and all that it seems to necessitate: the degradation of ecology, indifference to human suffering and the alienation of vulnerable social groups.
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  • Date Issued: 2014

Inside the river

  • Authors: Buzani, Mangaliso Welcome
  • Date: 2014
  • Subjects: South African poetry (English) , Xhosa poetry
  • Language: English , Xhosa
  • Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:5971
  • Description: My collection is of imagistic associative poetry, influenced by Spanish and other kinds of modernism, and written in my two languages, isiXhosa and English. My approach to producing these poems is first via the mastery of sound, not on the actual meaning of a poem; working on the meaning would be the last stage. The language of each poem will be encountered as it comes down on the paper, leading me to the words meaningful for that particular poem.
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  • Date Issued: 2014

Kedibone

My grandmother breaks her hip

Saligia

The hoof-printed rock

  • Authors: Maahlamela, David wa
  • Date: 2014
  • Subjects: South African poetry (English) -- 21st century.
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:5978 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013076
  • Description: Many of these poems, although written in English, are inspired by Sepedi idioms and proverbs. Some invoke township and village life, others the observations and questions that come from writing poetry and experiences of travelling to different countries to read my poems. Others dwell on the political transformation in South Africa, or its absence, and on my own spiritual transformation.
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  • Date Issued: 2014
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