Stephanie Saunders
DELIGHT IN FOLLY
How do we maintain our mental well-being as we try to meet the many demands the world makes on our time and energy? Could poetry help us keep our emotional balance?
As we move into the busy festive season, aware that this is a challenging time for many, the AVBOB Poetry Project celebrates the work of Stephanie Saunders, a poet whose work gently makes fun of human beings’ desire for power, love and certainty. Her debut collection, Open Stephanie, was published by Peter Slingsby earlier in 2024.
Its title is a variation on Open Sesame! – the spell that unlocks the enchanted cave in the famous story. It came to her one day while she was trying to open the gate of her house, using a remote with a faulty battery. This gently self-deprecating joke sets the tone for what is to follow.
In ‘In Adoration’, the poem that opens the anthology, high expectations are first created, then collapsed. Someone (maybe Saunders herself, but we cannot be sure) expresses surprise that a man has recently thrown himself at her feet, evidently overcome by love and ardour. It ends:
I have to admit he was
sprinting across a busy road,
defying oncoming traffic
and the forbidding red man,
when the kerbstone tripped him;
also, he did not gaze up
adoringly at me
but sprang up, at once,
cursing, to continue his dash;
but just for a moment,
there was a man, kneeling.
In another poem, ‘Advice My Father Gave Me’, she explains that she has only escaped being an oppressor or tyrant because her father, when he was still alive, cautioned her not to be “too…” She wonders whether he saw something in her that was so alarming that he had no word to describe it, or whether he was simply distracted. In a third, ‘My Private Jet’, she expresses regret at being temporarily unable to visit the world’s great cities until the aircraft in question “gets a new rubber band / and the hooky thing / with which you launch it.”
Saunders feels that her book should probably be called a collection or an assortment rather than an anthology, as she does not stay with any particular theme. But what the poems have in common is precisely this delightful, irreverent way of looking at the world.
Asked when she seriously took up writing poetry, she replies with characteristic modesty,
“I cannot say that I have ever started seriously to write poetry. It has somehow been with me from the beginning. There was a vague idea that I would eventually try and publish my work but never any particularly strong drive to do so.”
Clearly, Saunders’ poems thrive on the suspicion that things are seldom exactly what they seem. However, she is certain of one thing: poetry should not only be about serious, elevated subjects.
“Some are dismissive of light verse, and I think it is often perceived to be somehow less relevant – entertainment as opposed to edification. I obviously do not agree. Maybe I do not elevate or ennoble because I am fascinated by human follies and foibles. I am not deliberately trying to bring people down to earth, but I do feel that nobody should take themselves too seriously. It is probably not a bad practice to observe oneself with the detachment of a mildly interested spectator.”
In the next few days, write an amusing poem on a subject you would normally take very seriously. Find a way to set up expectations in the mind of your reader and then to do something completely different.
The 2026 AVBOB Poetry Competition is opening for submissions on 1 August 2025. Visit the AVBOB Poetry website at www.avbobpoetry.co.za today and read some of the prize-winning poems from previous years as you prepare to find your own best words.