In ‘n onderhoud met The Telegraph het Brittanje se poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, haar oor die stand van die digkuns in Engeland, en meer spesifiek die rol wat die jeug te speel het in haar positiewe siening daarvan, die volgende te sê gehad: “We seem to be moving away from a materialistic world. Where we have been in the past has been very consumerist […] Not only have we all got to [move way from that], but I think we all want to move away from that way of being.”
Oor die leeskultuur onder jongmense het sy haar soos volg uitgelaat: “I think young people are very concerned about the environment. Poetry and writing are where they can express those feelings. When we’re children, that’s when we learn to love reading and writers have to be readers first […] I think our imaginary worlds really need feeding as children and in a profound way, words on a page can do that more than say a movie, because the movie is doing the pictures for you. But with reading, you have to use your own imagination and I think children love that. Children also love poetry because they are completely unselfconscious.”
En oor kinders as digters: “”Children are also the best poets because the way they see the world is so fresh. That’s what poetry needs. I’ve worked with children for years as a poet and I have probably written more for children than I have for adults.”
Uiteraard is haar waarnemings grootliks gebaseer op haar eie ervarings as moeder van ‘n 14-jarige dogtertjie. Nogtans kan dit nie ontken word dat sy tydens die eerste jaar van haar termyn as poet laureate reeds heelwat vermag het om die digkuns spesifiek onder die jeug te promoveer nie.
Oor haar eie digterskap het sy die volgende te sê gehad: “My normal day – I get up at half seven, I take my child to school, I walk the dogs, I’ve got the builders in, so it’s a very ordinary, down-to-earth mother’s day, but I’ve also got that part of me which I suppose is open to being inspired by things in my own life, in the country’s life, memories, and then the poem will insist on being written, so of course I do make time for that during the day […] If I start a poem, then it becomes a poem,” het sy gesê en bygevoeg: “It’s not like a diary entry. It is very, very different from diary writing. When we read a Shakespeare sonnet, what we see when we read that sonnet is ourselves. The poems we like are the poems which will speak to us. That’s why people will approach you when they have a bereavement, or a wedding is coming. The best poems are all about all of us and that happens as soon as you start to write. It becomes not you, but the human.”
Inderdaad. En met só ‘n ingesteldheid is dit dan ook glad nie ‘n verrassing dat Duffy na slegs een jaar in die tuig reeds beskou word as ‘n besonder toeganklike en meelewende laureate nie … Eintlik laat dit ‘n mens uitsien na die nege jaar wat nog vir haar voorlê om die landskap van die Britse digkuns volgens haar siening te herdefinieer.
Of wat praat ek nou?
***
Op die webblad kan jy vanoggend Bernard Odendaal se resensie van Hans Pienaar se onlangse bundel, Notas uit die empire, lees. Dan is daar ook ‘n kennisgewing deur Andries Bezuidenhout van ‘n mondwatergeleentheid by Steak & Ale op 19 Junie, Heidi Pienaar wat besin oor die ‘groen’ stem in die digkuns, Bernard Odendaal wat ‘n lieflike vers van Paul Snoek na Afrikaans omskakel en ten slotte Desmond Painter Kubaanse sportstories uit Havana.
Weereens, ‘n oogvol leesstof vir jou plesier.
Mooi bly.
LE