Dansende Digtersfees. Die vel se doringdraad

 

En vandag verras ek jou (hopelik) met die fantastiese nuus dat Antjie Krog se nuwe versameling met die Engelse vertalings van haar gedigte pas afgelewer is … Net mooi betyds vir die Dansende Digtersfees waarby sy volgende week saam met ander Afrikaanse digters soos Breyten Breytenbach, Petra Müller en Marlene van Niekerk betrokke is.

Volgens die outeursbrief, die volgende: “In Skinned, a collection of Antjie Krog’s poems translated into English, this well-known poet selects from her most recent poems and also from the poems that best represent her work from across a long career. Apart from poems about writing, family and love, the collection contains poems from the epic poem based on the life of Lady Anne Barnard and includes re-workings of Bushmen narratives, as well as translations of oral Sepedi, Xhosa and Zulu praise poems. Skinned also contains writing on the political turmoil of South Africa and the divisions within Africa, as well as translations from her most recent collection, Body Bereft. Including new poems alongside previously published ones from across the decades, Skinned confirms the prominence of Krog’s work in South Africa and abroad.”

Hieronder volg ‘n gedig in die Engelse vertaling, plus die boekbesonderhede.

[ISBN: 9781415203859, Sagteband, Umuzi Uitgewers, R190.00]

***

MA WILL BE LATE

 

that I come back to you
tired and without memory
that the kitchen door is open I

shuffle in with suitcases hurriedly bought presents
my family’s distressed dreams
slink down the corridor the windows stained

with their abandoned language in the hard
bathroom light I brush my teeth
put a pill on my tongue: Thur

that I walk past where my daughter sleeps
her sheet neatly folded beneath her chin
on the dressing table silkworms rear in gold

that I can pass my sons
frowning like fists against their pillows
their restless undertones bruise the room

that I can rummage a nightie from the drawer
slip into the dark slit behind your back
that the warmth flows across to me

makes me neither poet nor human
in the ambush of breath
I die into woman

 

© Translation: 2000, Antjie Krog
From: Down to my last skin
Publisher: Random House, South Africa,
ISBN: 0 9584195 5 8