Hon. Noxolo Kiviet, Premier of Eastern Cape visits Accident and Emergency Department of Cecilia Makiwane Hospital

With the Hon. Noxolo Kiviet, Premier of Eastern Cape today at our Accident and Emergency Department of Cecilia Makiwane Hospital, Mdantsane. A wonderful gesture from the Premier on the morning of Christmas day. Accident and Emergency Department is a specialty department with all my doctors and nurses been trauma trained, it caters to the community of Mdantsane and its surrounding areas.

Stranger than a Sun

Gouache by Amitabh Mitra

Poems from Stranger than a Sun

And then finally when night stood still, an evening, its reign of suntrance years, of wealth, wilderness and glory of many campaigns left in a river of subterfuge, its long sinewy columns rolled down the glitter in a night borderless on stealth and stubbornness. I have been living years of such understanding, that one day in a cover of duress and despair, time might conclude a hasty retreat, its tiny droplets may not even join and sections of unrepaired horizons would differ as nights and evenings revise a no dissolving pact. The Volga at Tatarstan had refused time and again of curtailing the living with the living, different voices share a confluence of similar strengths, Tartar warriors stood on banks stretching to sea and the sea to many skies holding aloft such spoken memories such relived lives. I had even forgiven you, you who once called upon words to reopen old forgotten closures. In an ageless complete, you are the reversal, you remain the scroll, and you are the substrate of my many lives.

Hillbrow at Johannesburg faces darkness with such ferocity; lights clamor over each others shoulder, holding a falling sun, for here there can never be any nights. Forever evenings scream in shrill rejoinder, a clay complexioned Ethiopian girl with long neck revises proximity from a cabaret number. Men from Abuja listen with shaking heads, some even recite silently. Colors of evening find asylum on foreign surfaces. The scarred white girl rolls her eyes and gives voice to expanding vessels. Living is defiance. Illumination is not just a street here and curtains part revealing revelry of age old explanation. It cannot be the same as in NoorGunj at Gwalior and Shafiq Manzil,Old Delhi. Each living stays far behind in closed alleys and assembling them leaves foot steps that can never return.

Nolutshungu Avenue, Poems of Simphiwe Nolutshungu

Simphiwe Nolutshungu's poetry book NOLUTSHUNGU AVENUE
Publisher - Aerial Publishing, Grahamstown, South Africa
Cover art by Amitabh Mitra

Book Launch at

NELM Eastern Star Hall

Anglo African Street, Grahamstown

5.30pm Monday 10 December 2012

On this Avenue                      

The moon and sun are single

Each day harbours its night

The night makes love to the day      

And we are the offspring of the day       

And the children of the night.

This Avenue strews poetry and hymns

No funerals tread on our paths          

Divorces are scared of breathing

But weddings fill our stomachs

Young graduates adorn our streets

Welcome to Nolutshungu Avenue

Simphiwe Nolutshungu is the author of three novels in isiXhosa – Amathunzi ezolo, Induli yexhala, and Iingceba zegazi (shortlisted for the 2012 Sanlam Prize).  His poems have been published in local and national journals. He has worked as a clerk and a freelance journalist, and has worked as a schoolteacher in many parts of South Africa.  His home is in Queenstown.

Accepting Submissions for South African Anthology of Migrant Poetry

Watercolor of a Somali Spaza Shop in Mdantsane by Amitabh Mitra

Accepting submissions for a South African Anthology on Migrant Poetry. The publication by Poets Printery http://www.poetsprintery.co.za is scheduled for February 2013. South Africa has been host to people from countries of Africa and beyond. This anthology will provide the best of migrant poetry and a rare insight into the problems of migrant population and the host country.
Who are eligible – Migrant Poets from other countries living in South Africa
Language – English, Can write in the language of the country but a translation in English has to be provided
Topics-
• Internal Migration
• Political Asylum
• Refugee status and border jumping
• Humanitarian Crisis and Complex Humanitarian Emergency
• Xenophobia
• Host country acceptance
• Economic denting to the host country
• Role of UNHCR – The United Nations Refugee Agency
• War and genocide
• Disease, physical and mental trauma and access to primary health care

We cannot guarantee every submission to be published
Please send three poems with a 50 word bio to
Amitabh Mitra at amitabh@amitabhmitra.com

Rain

and when it rains
in tantrumsgold in such cities living
long
i think of you often
when traffic lights
clothe a road
of swarming blues
and your eyes
in a flicker
stagger
ferns of old memories
again...


Amitabh Mitra

A Slow Train to Gwalior, A Poem by Badal Saroj

सुस्त चाल नहीं इसे अलमस्त चाल कहते हैं हमारे ग्वालियर में/
बढ़ते हैं खरामा खरामा/
न जाने की हड़बड़ी होती है-न पहुँचने की जल्दी/
इसीलिए पेड़ पीछे नहीं छूटते - साथ रह जाती है उनकी छाँव/
खेत ठहरे से रहते हैं और पार होने को ही नहीं आती चम्बल/ चम
्बल-जो नदी भर नहीं है -
वह क्रिया-सर्वनाम-संस्कृति-परिवेश-भाषा यहाँ तक कि व्याकरण भी है / उस चम्बल के ऊपर से आज तक नहीं गुजरा कोई/
चम्बल ही गुजरी है सबके ऊपर से सर्वदा/
अबकी बार ग्वालियर की किसी स्लो ट्रेन से गुजरें तो मिलिएगा-
कंक्रीट के जंगलों में बची दूब की मानिंद
किसी अविस्मृत याद की तरह इन्तेजार में खड़ा पायेंगे ग्वालियर को /

Badal Saroj