Digters uitgenooi na Tuin van Digters

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Die Breytenbach Sentrum bied op 14 September 2013 die tweede Tuin van Digters op Wellington, waartydens ’n verskeidenheid digters sal kom gesels en van hul nuutste werke voorlees. In een van die sessies word alle digters genooi om te reageer op ’n gedig van Marlene van Niekerk.

Vroeër vanjaar het Van Niekerk die gedig “Mud School” aan die basiese minister van onderwys, Angie Motshekga, geskryf wat in die Mail & Guardian gepubliseer is. Dié gedig volg nadat afgevaardiges - waaronder die skrywer Njabulo Ndebele en die aartsbiskop van die Anglikaanse Kerk, Thabo Makgoba – die haglike omstandighede van die sogenaamde modderskole in die Oos-Kaap beleef het. In die Sunday Independent van 12 Mei 2013 nooi Makgoba die publiek uit om druk te plaas op Motshekga en die regering om dringend aandag te skenk aan die verwaarlosing van ons skole.

Die Breytenbach Sentrum nooi nou alle digters uit om op Van Niekerk se onderstaande gedig te reageer en om dan hul gedigte van saam-protesteer, of dan teenkanting, te kom voorlees. Belangstellendes moet teen 2 September 2013 ’n gedig e-pos na Theo Kemp by theo@breytenbachsentrum.co.za om te kan deelneem.

Die Tuin van Digters sluit nie net voorlesings in van digters soos Wilma Stockenström, Clinton V du Plessis en Tom Gouws nie, maar ook optredes deur Hemelbesem, ’n woordkunsprogram, Die 100 gewildste Afrikaanse gedigte met Stian Bam, Tinarie van Wyk Loots, Nicole Holm, Waldemar Schultz en Kyle Seconna. Die dag sluit af met musiek deur Gert Vlok Nel, Laurinda Hofmeyr, Albert Frost, Schalk Joubert, Nicole Holm en Vernon Swart.

Die volledige program is beskikbaar by 021-8732786 of per e-pos info@breytenbachsentrum.co.za.

Mud school

(For the children of the Eastern Cape, twenty years after Freedom)

Minister Motshekga, your name is mud. Let’s see
what we can do with you. We can fire you and make
of you a brick, and add you to our school, maybe
as the corner stone. In rain you’ll turn into a turd.
We’ll skip over you and laugh. We can smear
you thickly on our walls and watch you crumble
in the summer wind, we’ll use your flakes to learn
subtraction until there is nothing left to reckon with.
We can bake a cake with you and pretend we ‘re eating
lunch, or mould you to a wafer to serve us as a thin,
melting sacrament. We can press you in a frame
to form a wet slate and write this poem on you
with a twig and send the president a truck of sun-
baked tiles to read until he weeps. But maybe he
will only grin and say, why complain? Look where I
have gotten to with only standard six, I hold an honorary
doctorate from Beijing! Mrs Mud, we could erect for you
a headstone in every school and every morning march
around it chanting, till it falls down like the walls of Jericho.
But will it help if the element is air, or song, or pristine hope?
Mud is a multi-purpose substance, Minister, we can fling
it in your face, if you would show it to us, but you rarely come.
A grateful word for rhyming, too, this mud that is your name,
for chewing on, like a dumb beast on its cud, until one day –
having baked, skipped, eaten, written, reckoned,
ruminated, marched, prayed and chanted in its medium,
inhabited its frailty and studied well its force –we mix our blood
in it, and turn it into rock, and fan it into flame and furl
it into smoke and shout and tread under our feet the very buds
of spring, the things you should have nurtured,
the flowers of fresh learning, that we should have been.

Marlene van Niekerk

Besoek in die LitNet-argief: Tuin van Digters 2012

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Litnet

Digters uitgenooi na Tuin van Digters

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