Joan Metelerkamp's fifth book of poems was written after the suicide of her mother. The book is a sequence of poems, with latin subtitles taken from sections of the Requiem Mass. The relationship between the poem and the mass is often oblique, tangential, ironic, and sometimes also direct. Written in Metelerkamp's distinctive musical voice, the sequence articulates the process of mourning, exploring the issues of life and death. The poems record a layered search for some meaningful explanation of the ambiguous connection between love and destruction.

        running all night, all night without us, without telling us,
        was it always, was it years, stiller and stiller,
        into the bed, into the bed rock -

        little words, little water-tight boat enough
        funeral canoe, dug-out mokoro,
        boat of words, take me to her

Joan Metelerkamp was born in Pretoria in 1956 and grew up in KwaZulu-Natal. She now lives in the Southern Cape. She has worked as an actor and university teacher, and is a wife and mother. She has written articles and reviews about South African poetry, and since 2000 she has been editor of New Coin. She is the author of four previous books of poems: Towing the Line (1992), Stone No More (1995), Into the Day Breaking (2000), and Floating Islands (2001).

seitlhamo motsapi
earthstepper/the ocean is very shallow
deep south publishing 86 pages R90.00

A redesigned second printing of Seitlhamo Motsapi's acclaimed earthstepper/the ocean is very shallow, first published in 1996. Reviewing earthstepper seven years ago in New Coin, Laura Chrisman wrote: "A very far cry from official New South African pietistic discourse of reconciliation, this collection brilliantly fuses pan-Africanist militancy, romantic spirituality, and scathing attack on neo-colonialism in its global and local forms. The political urgency is never compromised by empty rhetorical posturing or aesthetic banality: this is a rich, experimental poetry, raining down fresh imagery, complex conceits carefully patterned to produce a volume of striking originality and stylistic rigour".

        i have one eye full of dreams & hintentions
        the other is full of broken mirrors
        & cracked churchbells

        i have one eye full of rivers & welcomes
        the other is full of flickers & fades

        i have
        a memory full of paths & anointings
        a mouth full of ripe infant suns
        seven legs for the dancing river & the clement abyss
        & a hope that corrodes the convulsions

        we bless the long rough road
        we bless the inscrutable darkness
        where our names are rent into spirit
        we bless the splinters & the air
        full of asphyxiations & amnesia
        we bless our lacerations & our deformities

Seitlhamo Motsapi was born in Bela-Bela/Warmbad in 1966. He has been a university lecturer and technical editor, and currently works in the Office of the President. Poems from this book have been published in many anthologies, including The Lava of this Land (USA), The Heart in Exile, Ten South African Poets (UK), Poemes d'Afrique du Sud (France), A New Century of South African Poetry, and It All Begins, and journals such as West Coast Line (Canada) and Tripwire (USA).

jj machobane and robert berold
drive out hunger : the story of jj machobane of lesotho
jacana media 110 pages R95.00

"An employed man is like a well-fed and chained up dog." JJ Machobane is a farmer, novelist, social visionary, and self-taught scientist. In the 1940s and 1950s, as a young man in Lesotho, he spent 13 years researching an agricultural system which would allow the poorest people to harvest food all year round. Working entirely on his own, he perfected his farming system and then founded a college to teach it -- Mants'a Tlala College, meaning "Drive Out Hunger".

In the 1960s Machobane's system and his charismatic way of teaching it was actively opposed by the outgoing British government of Basutoland and banned by the government of the newly independent Lesotho. Machobane had to go into hiding to avoid harassment, re-emerging in the 1990s to train a new generation of Lesotho farmers.

Now aged 89, he relates the story of his life to Robert Berold with humour, idiom and storytelling skill. He describes how he developed his independent morality, and why he made the decisions he did. The world will only be at peace, Machobane says, if everyone puts their hands into the soil "so that everyone has food and water on their table out of their own sweat and initiative."

lesego rampolokeng
the second chapter
pantolea press, berlin 47 pages R70.00

Lesego Rampolokeng's fourth book marks a new departure in this poet's work. Rampolokeng says he has buried the poet he used to be -- hence the title of this book. These new poems are denser, angrier, more demanding of the reader, and more searching.

        the VICIOUS MATTER is who is getting fatter?
        talk 'education' run by corporation call it transformational technology
        is vatican miscreation
        ( better eaten than suffocation in doo-doo
        crap is sanctuary here not shit association
        open your mouth when in the noo-noo.)
        cut a scar-version on a wounded riddim.
        de-stressing a great sense-ooze
        there/where/who you are
        brought substance to sorry-arse existence here
        talk of presence makes harder the absence situation
        as emptiness where vistas open
        clocking the hours in withdrawal...
        the system wants so the predatorial hunts
        the tower’s tummy grumbles the interr-cue...
        bone´s the clue to race-power rumbles
        show whom the sham in tow with the scam
        hiss till they feast & erase the fist
        all praise the beast-face in the mist

Lesego Rampolokeng was born in Orlando West, Soweto, in 1965. He is a full time writer and performance poet who has performed in many countries, both solo and with musicians such as Julian Bahula, Soulemane Toure, Louis Mhlanga, and Gunther Sommer. He is the author of four poetry collections : Horns for Hondo (1990), Talking Rain (1993), The Bavino Sermons (1999) and The Second Chapter (2003) as well as a play, Fanon's Children, and has collaborated on plays and filmscripts. Three collections of his poems have been published in translation in Germany. He has made a number of recordings of his performance work, most recently The h.a.l.f. Ranthology (2002).