I wrote about my experience of the Open Book Festival this year for LitNet. You can read the article here:
Better than ever: Open Book Festival 2023
Better than ever: Open Book Festival 2023
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Category Archives: What I’ve Written
Book review: I Wish I’d Said … Vol. 5
Unless we are suffering through a natural disaster, war, famine or pandemic, grief in the everyday is usually deeply personal. In the last three years, however, the world has been in the throes of grief on a global scale. COVID-19 and the resulting worldwide lockdowns initiated a process of communal mourning that is long from over. Many of us have turned to art for understanding and solace during this time. Art can provide both, on its creative and receiving ends. And perhaps no other art form can capture this wonder as succinctly as poetry.
The AVBOB Poetry Project began in 2017, and since then, in the words of AVBOB’s CEO, Carl van der Riet, “has expanded its reach as an essential archive representing our shared experience”. Many thousands of poems have been received since the inception. A significant number of these have found their way into the AVBOB Poetry Library, which is available online, and into the five volumes of poetry – I wish I’d said … – published as part of the endeavour. The first time I read one of these anthologies, I was surprised how much it meant to me. And now, engaging with the latest, the fifth volume in the series, gave me the renewed feeling of belonging that I’d sensed with the previous reading …
Continue reading: LitNet
Books on the Bay 2023
Like the weather, it was unpredictable. Rain poured down all night long before the first session of the day, but then the sun rose and bathed the Simon’s Town bay in its glorious light. We all sensed that a literary festival in the Far South of the peninsula could have plenty to offer for readers from near and far, but no one could tell for sure. Although, judging by the crowds that attended the opening event, which was held a month in advance in the presence of such literary greats as Antjie Krog, José Eduardo Agualusa and JM Coetzee, we could have counted on friendly skies. And so they were. As were the crowds that descended on the story-rich Simon’s Town like the kind morning light …
LitNet
A few more pictures from Books on the Bay:
Books on the Bay: The literary riches of Simon’s Town
As the poet with “no money in the bank” is driving home, she imagines all the people she cares about living in the “blue clefts ahead”. With the sun and the sea as her companions on one of the most picturesque roads around, she is “embarrassed to be so rich”. Every time I travel towards the Cape Peninsula, I am reminded of Finuala Dowling’s poem “Riches” (Notes from the dementia ward, 2008) and that feeling of wonder and generosity which the mixture of urban and wild landscapes here evokes. It is no surprise that Dowling’s name features on the inaugural programme of the Books on the Bay Festival, a new brainchild of festival impresario extraordinaire Darryl David. After settling in Simon’s Town a few years ago, David realised how many writers lived in the town and its proximity, and when he reconnected with David Attwell, another recent addition to the growing number of local literary residents, the idea for another festival was born …
Continue reading: LitNet
Book review: Madwoman by Louisa Treger
“If Hell existed in the universe, it was right here,” Nellie Bly thinks to herself only a few days into her confinement on Blackwell’s Island. It is 1887, and the asylum, just off the coast of New York, is “a socially acceptable way of disposing with inconvenient women”. The difference between Nellie and the other women locked up in this hell on earth is that she is there of her own free will. Bly faked insanity to be admitted. She is one of the most dangerous of “inconvenient women” — one with a voice. Madwoman is her story.
Continue reading: Sunday Times
Madwoman ★★★★★
Louisa Treger
Bloomsbury, 2022
LitNet: The yumness of the Kingsmead Book Fair 2022
KBF
Even for Capetonians, it is doable in a day, and the access could not be more perfect: you take an early flight to Joburg, get on the Gautrain, arrive at the Rosebank station, and Kingsmead College is right opposite its exit. The college is the venue of the Kingsmead Book Fair (KBF). It is a one-day affair, so in the evening you can go straight home. This year was the first time I decided to attend, and I loved every second of it, despite the journey and the freezing cold and rain that accompanied the event.
LitNet
LitNet: Real Fiction – The revival of the Franschhoek Literary Festival
I wrote about the FLF for LitNet:
“Other people do not walk around with fictional characters and stories occupying the majority of their headspace. Writers do. Tuned into alternative realities, often the most intimate relationships they have are with their Muses. As readers, we are fascinated by them and the beauty, perception, solace and entertainment they can offer through their stories. We attend literary festivals to rub shoulders with these strange creatures and to discover what inspires them, what makes them tick.”
LitNet
FLF
FLF
Interview with a former refugee, Karina Szczurek
LitNet: You were a refugee, fleeing from an oppressive regime. Please share with us what those thousands of women and children who are now seeking refuge must feel like?
Karina Szczurek: I was a child when my parents decided to flee Poland in the 1980s. My brother was six and I was ten at the time. It was very difficult to comprehend what was happening to us, but at least we were secure in the knowledge that our parents were with us at all times and would take care of us, no matter what. Our lives were never in danger. Watching Ukrainian parents evacuate their children to safety while staying behind to fight for their future breaks my heart. I cannot imagine the levels of anxiety and distress this kind of separation causes for a family. These people will never fully recover from this, even if they survive.
LitNet: Do you know Ukraine at all?
Karina Szczurek: A little bit. I spent three weeks in the beautiful Lviv on a student exchange in 1997. We also travelled outside this historic city. It was a formative experience. During these three weeks, I experienced for the first time the real closeness of the two languages – Polish and Ukrainian – met Charlotte, who remains a very dear friend, and discovered my love for opera and ballet at the stunning Ivan Franko Lviv State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet (renamed since then). I specifically remember how friendly and welcoming everyone I met there was, and I will never forget their delicious black bread (I couldn’t get enough of it).
Continue reading: LitNet
Book review: Cosmonauts Do It In Heaven by Keith Gottschalk
Keith Gottschalk’s poem “As the sun sets” ends with the following lines: “as the sun sets/ the astronomers eat breakfast,/ set off, start work.” It is one of the first poems in his recent collection, Cosmonauts do it in heaven. The few simple phrases read like an invitation to follow not only the astronomers, but also the poet, into the night sky in order to accompany the author on his quest to honour the scientists who, throughout the ages, have observed and studied the stars above us, as well as to expose the challenges and prosecutions they have faced along their paths to understanding …
Continue reading: LitNet
Review: Recollections of My Non-Existence by Rebecca Solnit
I cherish the day I discovered Rebecca Solnit’s voice. And so, as a woman and a writer, it was chilling for me to read the words that present her latest book, Recollections of My Non-Existence, to the reader as follows: “An electric portrait of the artist as a young woman that asks how a writer finds her voice in a society that prefers women to be silent.”
Solnit’s voice is a voice of reason, compassion and celebration. She could not be silenced. She is the author of over twenty titles, ranging from books about hope and walking to women’s rights and storytelling. Her oeuvre is a torch that lights the way through the darkness of this world.
Recollections of My Non-Existence tells Solnit’s personal story and weaves the history of feminism into it, empowering readers to follow in her extraordinary footsteps and yet find their own path. With every page you turn, you feel more inspired, and if you are a woman, you feel seen and recognised. The connection allows you to comprehend the ultimate need for “freedom, equality, confidence” that reality all too often denies us, but we must never abandon the desire to seek them out and make them our own.
Recollections of My Non-Existence
Rebecca Solnit
Granta, 2020
Review first published in the Cape Times on 24 December 2020.
Karina Magdalena 