Photo of Jacques Coetzee: https://www.meganross.co.za/news/jacques-coetzee-poetry-rewiew-in-new-frame-news
An illuminated darkness
Jacques Coetzee
Publisher: uHlanga Press
Date of Publication: 2020
ISBN: 9781990968662
Jacques Coetzee’s debut poetry collection, An illuminated darkness, contains poems of tuneful, dry humour and a confessional tone that combine in the mouth of a speaker as they relate to the world around them. That Coetzee is a visually impaired poet will probably be the first thing you notice when you pick up the uHlanga Press edition, as it includes a Braille sticker on the black and white cover. The publisher has also partnered with Blind SA with the hope of producing a book for print-disabled readers so that they, too, can read the collection of poems. But beyond the good that this means for visually impaired readers and the South African publishing industry, the collection’s poems are worth their own engagement. To me, the poems’ most interesting elements come from their portrayal of various humans’ attempts to relate to one another earnestly.
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That Coetzee is a visually impaired poet will probably be the first thing you notice when you pick up the uHlanga Press edition, as it includes a Braille sticker on the black and white cover.
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Take a poem like “Morning after”. It’s written in the third person, and speaks of a man waking up with a woman beside him in bed. Its tone is sensuous. The rhetorical question in the third line, “were they really together like that again, last night?” hints at the act that the title refers to, as well as allowing for an indirect entry into the mind of the man slowly waking up in his surroundings. Eight out of the ten lines of the poem centre on this man slowly waking, as he “reached his hands down the whole length of him”, noting that this is “a body he knows he must learn to love again”. Only with these acts complete does the man find “her there, in the bed next to him”. Note how only after he begins to learn to love his body does he reach across the bed to find her body waking next to his.
There are poems of laughter, like “On composition, 1/2: Talking to an actress in Constantia Mall”. The poem recounts a conversation between the poem’s speaker, presumably Coetzee, and an actress he meets, who self-identifies as a poet. The speaker of the poem jokes about not receiving money for the poems that he publishes, but it seems that the actress does not pick up on the joke. The actress warns of some dangers of having one’s poems stolen when they are read aloud, but the speaker notes that they’d have to “steal fast”, considering the length of his poems. It seems that the worst thing for the actress is to have her poems recorded. For Coetzee, it is part of the game. His poems might be stolen, but it is part of being a poet.
The composition is continued with the poem “On composition 2/2: Billy”, where the speaker finds himself talking about The Egyptian book of the dead with a man who is painting his house. The speaker wonders whether this man would be “up early on Monday”, while they, living the life of a poet, would wake “late in the afternoon”. Regardless of all that remains unknown among the different lives that each of these characters live, the speaker – content – notes, “I had stolen all I needed/ to write this poem.” There’s a sense that something more happened than Coetzee gaining material to write a poem, but what exactly this is seems irrelevant, at least to me. What is attained is interactions of understanding, however irregular, around which a poem can be based.
The title of the collection comes from a line found in the poem “The steps”. This poem is told in three parts, with each part describing a different time in the speaker’s life. The young boy of the first section describes a scene at a school hostel. The speaker casts himself as an outcast who had “Paton and Cervantes for companions”. He notes that:
… I would read myself
out of that place, and into another, where hearts and ideas
are exchanges; where you can stand
in an illuminated darkness, having found
a place from which to speak; to write.
While the other school boys engage in school-like shenanigans, he reads. The steps that he would ascend to reach this place are taken fast, and he notes that he would ignore “the rude jokes” thrown around. Note how the boy who casts himself as other because of his books is proud that he never was one of the cool kids, but the attention that he pays to the wonder of what they were doing suggests a longing to be there. It’s the speaker recalling with hindsight how he pretended not to care as a child, despite the happiness he simultaneously found in the darkness.
The next section notes that a decade has passed. The speaker now is “prowling the streets/ of a university town, looking for an unnameable fix”. The angst of searching remains here. But now, instead of avoiding the smokers, he becomes one, “accepting the disgrace that must surely follow”. The speaker joins those from whom he initially wanted to be seen as separate, and his world does not implode from this new community. If anything, it takes his life towards a new path, and gives him material to write about.
The closing section questions where these other boys now are. He notes that the smoking school children could be church deacons, for all he knows, and the poem follows this strand of the unknown:
We know too little about each other, still,
for love or hatred. But
something always almost happens;
somewhere before waking,
something – call it hunger –
becomes familiar to us; is exchanged.
The disgrace of “lowering himself” to others does not seem to occur. Instead, something is made familiar in the various interactions that the poems describe. These small acts in life probably moved him forward and probably helped him at times when human comfort was desired. It seems that a small, minute, even-for-a-second feeling of joy was attained. He might not know what, he might not have a blueprint of how, but he seems to advocate such small happenings of familiarity brought about by attempts of exchange. He was open to accept a disgrace, and when such an event did not occur, he remained to write. If anything, being open to others gave him a poem to name his collection after.
Kommentaar
Magnificent review of clearly exquisite writing. All the more extraordinary given Jacques’ sight restrictions. I personally cannot wait to read it!