the poet's soup kitchen | die digter se sopkombuis

With creative approaches to research, we illuminate emotional experience behind data.  In my PhD research I ask, “What is the nature of lecturers’ encounters with technological teaching tools?” I use poetic inquiry as methodology.  In the sound poem you are about to hear, Device Detox, data in the form of sound snippets reveal what it is like for an academic to take a break from the screen.  I recorded these snippets during a writing retreat at the Buddhist Retreat Centre in Ixopo, writing in silence alongside others, under the guidance of Dr Dorian Haarhoff.

In this series I share poems from Durban, South Africa that I have been writing during the corona virus outbreak in March 2020.  This series' title is a play on "Love in the Time of Cholera", a favourite novel by Gabriel García Márquez.

READ THE POEM: https://sites.google.com/view/mari-pete/poetry/the-poets-soup-kitchen

TRANSLATED from Afrikaans by the poet

SOUND: Carillon similar to the one in the Martini Tower -- http://www.orangefreesounds.com/

The sound effect is permitted for commercial use under license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

I believe we are celebrating Africa Month – so I heard, when the International Office of the Durban University of Technology where I work, invited me to share a poem in my mothertongue, Afrikaans.

I’m going to use a poem that I wrote first in English sixteen years ago – for my daughter – it is called Turning Six.  This year I tried my hand at translating it into Afrikaans -- and I like the way it turned out.  Before I do the poem, just a little bit about Afrikaans –

It is one of South Africa’s eleven official languages, and was shaped in a melting pot at the Southern-most tip of Africa -- it is considered a creole language. Its strongest roots are Dutch, but also from Western Europe, the likes of Portuguese, French and English. Arabic is one of its lesser-known influences. And of course, local Nguni languages, and the clicks of the Khoi-San also dance in the cadences of Afrikaans.

Here is the poem – I will do it in English first so you can get the meaning, and thereafter in Afrikaans.

In this series I share poems from Durban, South Africa that I have been writing during the corona virus outbreak in March 2020.  This series' title is a play on "Love in the Time of Cholera", a favourite novel by Gabriel García Márquez.

READ THE POEM: https://sites.google.com/view/mari-pete/poetry/the-poets-soup-kitchen 

SOUND: Carillon similar to the one in the Martinitoren -- http://www.orangefreesounds.com/ 

The sound effect is permitted for commercial use under license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

In this series I share poems from Durban, South Africa that I have been writing during the corona virus outbreak in March 2020.  This series' title is a play on "Love in the Time of Cholera", a favourite novel by Gabriel García Márquez.

READ THE POEM: https://sites.google.com/view/mari-pete/poetry/the-poets-soup-kitchen

MUSIC: https://www.johnsonsbabyarabia.com/en/bedtime/lullabies 

Hier gedurende Corona-lockdown sit ek nou en verlang na al die kinders -- Megan my dogter wat daar ver in Europa studeer, maar ek mis ook al die niggies en nefies vir wie ek so lief is, en veral...na Francois Andrew Fourie (Faf!), wat laasmaand gebore is.  Faf se mamma Marina (my sussie se dogter) het ons uitgenooi om vir hierdie nuutste toevoeginkie tot die Greyling-familie, kinderstories op te neem -- en dis 'n lekker verskoning om die Kleuterverseboek nader te trek wat in 1958 verskyn het en in 2000 deur DJ Opperman hersien is.  Lekker luister.

MUSIEK: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

FOTOS: Marí Peté