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Nova Catengue

A poem for Ashley Kriel*

In dreams I’m always playing my guitar:

its strings coax crosslegged tunes

from my fingers onto the bed.

In dreams you sit with your knees to mine,

your head reaching sideways

to entice the tunes into your ears.

In sleep I hum with the innocence

of the childhood songs I left behind

when I crossed the border at Luiana without you.

In waking my humid fingers are unlearning chords

and redirecting their music to sound like bullets

raining into human flesh.

I’m learning to lead with my trigger-finger.

My voice is forgetting how to sing

and remembers instead the deep silence of stealth

that will boil the blood of our enemy.

Some days I miss the warm air of my mother’s kitchen

so much that the flavour transforms in my mouth

to carry me home on its wings.

In waking, I stand in the strength

of the woman who raised me

to believe in what is right.

In waking, I deconstruct the tones of my own mortality

and manipulate myself to fit as a footnote

on the pages of our struggle.

But in dreams I’m always playing my guitar;

its strings coax crosslegged tunes

from my fingers onto the bed.

In dreams our knees are always touching,

your head always reaching to remind me of the songs

I still want to play before I’m dead.

*Ashley Kriel was killed by South African Security Police in Athlone on 15 July 1987, days before his 21st birthday. He was a United Democratic Front /African National Congress activist in the turbulent 1980’s.

Performance poet and Simon’s Town resident, Lucille Greeff, launches her debut poetry anthology on 5 February 2010. The launch will be hosted at The Novalis Ubuntu Institute, 39 Rosmead Avenue, Wynberg from 18h30 for 19h00 to 20h30.

This unique anthology, entitled Glaskastele / Skylight of the Heart is a collection of Afrikaans and English poems published by Lotsha Publications.

Also performing on the night will be poets Tania van Schalkwyk, Khadija Heeger and Winslow Schalkwyk. Live music by Maxim Starcke, live art by Elaine Millin. For more information please contact Lucille on 021 786 2627 or 083 377 5027.

The evening aims to raise money for Symphonia for South Africa, a not-for profit that aims to strengthen the fabric of South African society.

Entrance R30 / T30 (CES) at the door. Kids u/12 and pensioners free of charge. Books for sale on the evening. Drinks and snacks will be served.

Praise for Glaskastele / Skylight of the Heart:

At the root of Lucille Greeff’s best offerings lies an otherness of perception, an enchanting, quirky linguistic and imaginative bent, which vindicates the search by our publishers to develop new talent, and which is a delight to encounter. It is a search that does not shy away from what is endemic to the South African experience but rather tries to retrieve it with love and care. Lucille skryf om die beurt in Engels en in haar harts-Afrikaans. Ek hoop om hierdie grinterige jong vrouestem in die toekoms weer teë te kom.

Charl-Pierre Naude, poet and critic

Lucille Greeff offers a fresh, resounding voice with extraordinary perception and humour. Her poetry is uniquely bilingual; she seems equally and lyrically at ease in Afrikaans and English, making both languages sing.

Deborah Steinmair, journalist and poet

Biography

Lucille Greeff is an Organisation Development Consultant with a Masters degree in Development Studies and an Honours degree in Psychology. She has extensive experience working in leadership development, strategy and culture change within the retail-, manufacturing-, public-, IT-, food services-, resource-, NGO-, health-, education- and mining sectors. She partners individuals, teams and organisations in their journeys toward greater community and the realisation of their dreams. Her facilitation practice draws on her experience and diverse skills, including laughter therapy, wilderness therapy and vision questing, narrative psychology, system dynamics, assessment centres, strategy, culture change and community building. She is equally comfortable working in boardrooms and rural communities. She is a Director of Treetops Consulting (www.treetops.co.za).

Lucille writes because, as with breathing, it’s not much of a choice. She lives in Simon’s Town with her best friend and partner James and their sons Tariq Phoenix and Björn. Her long term goal is to be as graceful as a jellyfish.

Glaskastele / Skylight of the Heart is her debut anthology.