STANZAS

STANZAS, now in its third year (No 10 has just been published, four numbers a year) is a literary magazine devoted almost entirely to poetry.  Although it is based in Cape Town, the magazine publishes poems from anywhere in the world, including translations.  An international sub. costs less than £30 a year (SAR 452) and may be obtained from www.stanzas.co.za

The editors are Douglas Reid Skinner (who gave an excellent talk to the Winchelsea Literary S ociety last year) and  Patricia Schonstein. Both are working hard to extend the range of the contributions, and are beginning to attract work from younger black writers such as Tshepiso Mabula  and Medzani Musandiwa, as well as publishing the poems of more established writers like Tony Voss, Fiona Zerbst and John Eppel. The latest editorial says that “the editorial team have always viewed Stanzas as a kind of co-operative and we are grateful to everyone whose contributions of ideas, skills and writing have enabled us to reach the first bend, get around it and as far down the road as the first milestone.”

 

Here, with the permission of the editors, are a couple of "tasters":

 

 

This Turning (by Athol Williams)

My mother kisses me

on the lips,

leaf to leaf.

My sister wraps her head in a scarf

wherever she goes, like a meatball

wrapped in cabbage.

My father crushes and rolls

dried leaves, then adds a flame

to make smoke, to make merry.

My neighbour abducts worms

from their homes on leaves

for his dinner—the worms, not the leaves.

I don’t eat worms or meatballs

but my diet is more than leaves—

pumpkin, mango, tofu, pasta.

I am almost fifty, yet still

my mother kisses me

on the lips, leaf to leaf;

I wish she wouldn’t

but the earth turns

and the wind blows

and the leaves come and go

and I am part of this turning

my mother, sister, father, neighbour,

all of us, part of this turning.

RHYMES for a friend in trouble (by C J Driver)

We seldom get what we deserve:

luck, like light, travels in a curve.

Yet how we wish this were the norm:

to promise what we then perform.

The world’s a complicated place,

where grief walks hand in hand with grace,

a paradigm of love unearned,

revenge reserved, reward returned,

a kind of chaos thickly sprayed

to thwart the best plans ever made

and all advice the old can give

subsumed in  this:  you learn to live.