New writing
Fiction and prose by established and emerging authors. Send your poetry or fiction to New Writing at skryfwerk@litnet.co.za to be considered for publication on LitNet.
Please note that work previously published in print or on any online media platform will not be considered for selection.
Hello there, kettle
2013-10-23"Kettle, could you forgive me
if I were to call you black?
You see, in you lies my story
reflected, burning, back"
Should this catharsis contain some portent
2013-10-23"Should this catharsis contain some portent,
purport or potential politick;
should it conform to some shape and indent-
ation to be poetic rhetoric?"
Wind Cathedral
2013-09-18"This place is quiet
silence dominates the days
before sunset, a breeze begins to move the sand"
Chemotherapy
2013-09-11"Go with the flow, he says
Who says? He, he who dishes the dirt,
poison for the pores, the nerve endings, the brain"
The born-frees
2013-09-03"What worth is your bravery?
As I’m surrounded by poverty
What for was all that chivalry?
I’m a born-free, for I stand proudly jobless"
To Whom It May Concern
2013-09-03"A large life should not end ordinarily
quietly during sleep
in isolation or at the turn of a switch"
Stormy weather
2013-08-27"The collecting of clouds, gathering grey matter
behind the blue gum trees
magnifying the bird calls
the rising humidity"
Through a haze of menthol
2013-08-27 "Through a haze of menthol-infusedCigarette smoke
I see his head bobbing back and forth
With the basic rhythms
Of the music in his mind"
Sol Plaatje European Union Award Poetry Award 2013
2013-08-27 Entries for the third Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award for poetry in all 11 South African languages have reopened! Winning poems will form part of a poetry anthology that honours the spirit of Sol Plaatje, the activist, linguist and translator, novelist, journalist and leader. The deadline for submissions is now Monday 9 September 2013.
Expression is Golden
2013-08-13 "InZync poetry sessions are a surprisingly humble space where bras and sisters come together in an intimate cipher, where rappers informally freestyle over self-created beats, a pre-game warm-up rolling together blades of spiritual enlightenment, avoiding the blue lights of the five o’s and sharing a moment while spitting lyrical lines."
A painting grows on your wall
2013-08-06 "How back to back we stood, and tall we stood?How we then read in books the lives we took.
Now a painting grows on you wall"
Early evening
2013-08-06 "Early evening and the great, glowing globeIs half hidden beneath the horizon.
No orange array salutes its passing,
Only the quiet coo of pigeons
And the slow pitter-patter
Of garden irrigation."
The fair
2013-07-31"South Africa’s favourite fairground attraction
Is ninety-five years old
Today."
Test match (Some sessions)
2013-07-31"Leave the referral
Bowler’s got him plumb within a plum
Watchman to the stumps"
Interpreting Nuremberg
2013-07-24 "In my life I craved the words Richard saidto Jewish parents English meant safety
In his time he had Höss plead to the dead"
3 Poems
2013-07-15"It’s because emotion forbids music that silence holds grace
with no background din to ease or disturb the radar of bats"
Night swimming
2013-06-25 Your dreams are shipwreckedpaint-washed, bleached
tossed
boxed in the sea, floating unidentified.
