"I’ve been writing poetry ever since I learnt to write," says Carol Leff. An anthology of her latest poems, Flashes, was launched on Friday. "This book is compiled with poems that I have written in the past 10 years."
"I’ve been writing poetry ever since I learnt to write," says Carol Leff. An anthology of her latest poems, Flashes, was launched on Friday. "This book is compiled with poems that I have written in the past 10 years."
Leff was born in South Africa and schooled in England and Brazil for a few years. "My father worked for an airline, so we moved around when I was young," she said.
Flashes follows a chronological order with poems describing the different countries where she lived as a child. She recalls how a day after she obtained her BA degree from Wits University the security police raided her flat.
"It was happening to lots of people at the time," she said. Although she was writing poetry at the time, she admits that she was scared of writing anything political. "Wits was known to be a liberal university and the police were actually looking for friends of mine."
Leff currently works at the Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA) at Rhodes University so she is immersed in literature. She completed a six month short course in Creative Writing at ISEA.
Over 30 students completed the course this year and two had their manuscripts selected for publication – Leff and Sonwabo Meyi who wrote Rage against the Beast.
"We are both a direct result of the creative writing course," said Leff. "The students attending the course are very diverse – from 9 to 90 years old, all races, religions and nationalities."
The next course starts in February 2010 and anyone interested is invited to contact the ISEA at Rhodes University.
"The creative writing short course has been running for 11 years now and we have had eight books published now," said Robert Berold who teaches the course.
"Our aim is to promote local poetry," he added. Speaking about his anthology, Sonwabo Meyi said, "I wrote this book to give a voice to the voiceless youth.
Youth want to challenge the system because policies have been put in place that are to our disadvantage," he added. Meyi was born and brought up in Grahamstown.
"He is a local township guy who has ambitious ideas about his poetry," said Berold. "He believes that politicians are going to be woken up by his poetry." Meyi worked for mechanic for a while but left because he "couldn’t handle it".
"The poem that the book is named after gives the gist of the book. It is the voice to all the other poems in the book," Meyi said.
Leff comments how Meyi’s poems are best appreciated when "he reads them out aloud". Both collections will be available at local bookshops at the price of R45 each.
