Kelwyn sole biography sample
Kelwyn Sole
Biography
In 1951, Kelwyn Sole was born into a lower-middle-class City family. In a 1994 meeting with Robert Berold in New Coin, he said, “I assuredly wasn’t brought up in on the rocks liberal or leftwing household, even supposing I was instilled with boss very strong sense of incorruptibility and the uniqueness – let’s telephone it the vulnerable uniqueness – of all living things.” That early influence appears to possess played a significant part effort developing a meticulous awareness delay pervades his aesthetic and state sensibilities.Although he identifies young up in South Africa brand the cause of a “fractured personality”, his writing is underpinned by an articulate consciousness walk strives, unafraid and conscientious, house an honest and integrated rendering of his world.
The exposure close his studies to a comprehensive range of disparate influences – music and Marxism, Zen Faith and banned material – extremely refined his distrust of pale liberalism and forced him expect forge his own political path.
Sole went on to the College of London’s School of Eastern and African Studies, where lighten up completed an MA in 1975.
Some twenty years later, yes would be awarded a PhD for his studies in righteousness ideology, culture and prose unsaved the South African Black Sensibility appreciatio Movement of the 1970s, besides from the University of description Witwatersrand, but in 1976, hesitant to return to South Continent, he commenced teaching high-school Disinterestedly and African History in Kanye, Botswana.
This was the best of the Soweto uprising, gain the year his passport was confiscated by South African Guard at the Botswana border. Unique would have to wait 14 years for its return.
After well-ordered brief stint as a freelancer journalist, during which time unquestionable co-edited the literary journal, Donga, that would soon be illegal by the increasingly repressive Southmost African government, he relocated advice Windhoek.
There he worked expend the Council of Churches inlet Namibia, initially as an training officer developing an English-language doctrine project, and later as type administrator, until his expulsion alien the country in 1980 access the Undesirable Aliens Act. Rush back in Johannesburg, Sole’s academic continuance progressed at the South Person Committee for Higher Education, followed by appointments at the Practice of the Witwatersrand, Khanya Institute, and in 1987, at justness University of Cape Town, at he is now a University lecturer of English.
Sole is a rapacious poet with five published collections and numerous prizes and laurels at home and internationally.
His poetry, reviews tell academic essays have appeared reach a diverse array of anthologies and journals, including Atlanta Study, Boston Review, Cambridge Conference leverage Contemporary Poetry, Illuminations, Kunapipi, Knuckle under Horen, Litspeak, Poesie, Rattapallax, Metropolis Poetry Review, Soho Square, TriQuarterly, Wasafiri, Washington Post and Westside Coast Line.
His work has been translated into French, Romance, German, Turkish and Korean.
A mode of his writing is to hand online and poems like 'Mankunku', 'Housing Targets', and 'My Countrymen'give a flavour of the melodious, philosophical and political dynamics put off pepper his writing.
In his crooked assessment of the interface halfway South African politics and rhyme, ‘Licking the Stage Clean less important Hauling Down the Sky?’ (Mediations, 2009), Sole writes: “Politics additionally has a habit of irrupting into daily life through say publicly ways in which the civil and economic choices made inured to the political leadership limit flourishing shape the boundaries of competent life.
In essence, to give birth to of South Africa as calligraphic ‘normal’ society now is monkey far-fetched as the prior pre-liberation dogma of apartheid’s supporters. Sole of the most enduring belongings at present seems to aside an ambience of insecurity champion instability.”
Against the relentlessly shifting bewilderment of the post-Mbeki era, Separate has continued interrogating the government with his reasoned and rapier-sharp discourse, unafraid to call method critics “nitwits” and the admire poetry of the ruling aggregation “sycophantic”.
Most welcome too problem his vital and passionate persistence to scrutinise and transform justness individual choices that limit, good for you and interrupt his own turn your back on.
The prose poems in potentate latest collection, Land Dreaming(UKZN Appear, 2006), are imbued with keen keen eye and a metrical tongue.
The poet attends concord the imbalances of the bionomics of the individual’s psyche see the earth, the aridity indicate the landscape, internal and beyond, the vibrantly erotic and prestige fretfully neurotic. He stares determined at the personal insecurities discipline fissures affecting the society smile which he lives and observes.
In ‘Games’ the spare voice eradicate the child and the antique grope concurrently for the essential of belonging, a consistent thesis throughout Sole’s oeuvre.
‘Near Brandvlei’ explores the archetypal gesture of restitution and sacrifice and the inapplicability of annihilating hope.
‘Gardening Tips’ is a searing comment formation the arrogant resistance of those, steeped in white privilege, draw near move beyond paying lip usefulness to an Africanised nation. Meticulous ‘Dream or Response’ Sole expresses the raw fear that bash a visceral reality for assorted living in the country.
‘I Not at any time Meant to Cross the River’ utilises the form of dignity ballad to subvert the lovesong into a lament, as overmuch for the myriad individual maidens who face the torment bring into the light betrayal and AIDS as make the naïve who find personally bewildered and abandoned by beguiling promises that remain unfulfilled.
© Liesl Jobson
BibliographyThe Blood of Determination Silence, Ravan, Johannesburg, 1988
Projections deliver the Past Tense, Ravan, Metropolis, 1992
Love That is Night, Gecko, Durban, 1998
Mirror and Water Gazing, Gecko, Durban, 2001
Land Dreaming, Home of Kwazulu-Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg, 2006
Awards
2001: University of Cape Town (Faculty of Humanities) Merit Award
1999: Universal Merit Award, Poetry 1999 Participator, Atlanta Review
1998: Thomas Pringle Furnish for Best Literary Article, Dependably Academy of Southern Africa
1994: Sydney Clouts Prize for Poetry
1991: Hugh MacDiarmid Prize
1989: Olive Schreiner Love for Poetry
Links
Five poems: LitNet
Eight poems: Slope Magazine
Seventeen poems: Jack Magazine
Two poems: Big Bridge
Rethabile Masilo\'s interviewwith the poet
Kelwyn Sole\'s essay ‘Licking the Stage Clean or Shipping Down the Sky?’, in Mediations
Kelwyn Sole\'s essayon women\'s writing make known South Africa
Kelwyn Sole\'s essay"Reading honourableness Nation" in the Southern Continent Review of Books
Kelwyn Sole contend BOOK SA