Haidee Kotze
TIMING
Poetry is mostly written in free verse nowadays, which means that it does not rely on rhyme or traditional forms for its effect. Even so, rhythm and timing remain as important as ever.
This month, The AVBOB Poetry Project features a memorable poem called ‘Twice over’ by poet and academic Haidee Kotze (https://amperband.nl/) from her collection Scrim (Deep South, 2019), which makes brilliant use of timing and line breaks to tell its story.
Read the poem she shared and notice how perfectly placed line breaks heighten its beauty and sharpen its focus.
We baked that cake twice
over. We’ll remember
that. The Friday night. The boy
with his head over egg whites and flour
knotting the yellow light
between us. The winter evening flush
against the house. The slow
showing we save for small
hands. This is how you measure. This is how you whip.
This is how you make your wrist do the tender work
of folding. Between us
we showed him the slow temper of love
while the moon brewed like a fat ball of dough over the city.
Even so, we burnt it. Not much, just
so it wasn’t Right his face said
solemn over the singed crumbs. We looked
at each other over
the kitchen over his bright head. We said
There is more flour. And eggs and sugar. Mandarins. Oil.
It’s early.
And so we baked that cake
again. We’ll remember
that.
Notice how the line breaks emphasise specific words and expressions. By writing “twice / over” across two lines, for instance, she heightens our sense of the time it took to bake this cake. Similarly, writing “remember / that” across two lines, twice, sharpens our awareness that something important has happened here, something worthy of being recorded with care.
By contrast, the lines describing the actual baking are relatively long. So is the line describing the boy leaning over the table, engrossed in what he is learning, “his head over egg whites and flour …”
Kotze has chosen the simplest language to bring the scene home to us. But from the beginning, there are clues about how much is actually at stake. The boy is described as “knotting the yellow light” between whoever is involved in this ritual. The work of folding the dough is “tender.” The practical process of finding the right temperature for the cake becomes “the slow temper of love.” Later, the moon itself is transformed into “a fat ball of dough over the city.” In other words, the adults in the room are now completely absorbed in what they are doing, drawing closer together because of its shared quality.
There is another perfectly timed line break close to the end. The cake has been burnt slightly. The boy is not entirely happy with the result. The adults exchange a look, and we are left wondering how they will respond. Then, in the poem’s longest line, they calculate that they have the capacity to do all of this again: “There is more flour. And eggs and sugar. Mandarins. Oil.”
On the one hand, this is quite simply a list of ingredients. But by stretching it as she has done here, Kotze creates a sense of abundance, of generosity. We feel how effortless it can be to do something repeatedly when we are knotted together by love.
In the next few days, write a poem in which you use line breaks in unusual places to sharpen the focus of what you are saying.
The AVBOB Poetry Competition is open for submissions until 30 November 2026. Visit www.avbobpoetry.co.za today and learn how to enter.