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Contents
editorial
KOFI AGAWU
African Art Music and the Challenge of Postcolonial Composition
PAUL ZILUNGISELE TEMBE
China’s Effective Anti-Corruption Campaign
DILIP M. MENON
Changing Theory: Thinking Concepts from the Global South
BEN WATSON
Talking about music
Theme AI in Africa
blk banaana
An (Other) Intelligence
VULANE MTHEMBU
Umshini Uyakhuluma (The Machine Speaks) – Africa and the AI Revolution: Exploring the Rapid Development of Artificial Intelligence on the Continent.
OLORI LOLADE SIYONBOLA
A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence in Africa
CHRIS EMEZUE & IYANUOLUWA SHODE
AI and African Languages: Empowering Cultures and Communities
NOLAN OSWALD DENNIS
Toward Misrecognition. | Project notes for a haunting-ting
SLINDILE MTHEMBU
AI and documenting black women's lived experiences: Creating future awareness through AI-generated sonics and interpretive movement for the future of freeing suffering caused on black bodies.
ALEXANDRA STANG
Artificially Correct? How to combat bias and inequality in language use with AI
BAKARY DIARRASSOUBA
Bambara: The Jeli (Griot) Project
ROY BLUMENTHAL
Artificial Intelligence and the Arcane Art of the Prompt
AI GENERATED
"AI on Artificial Intelligence in Africa" and "Exploring its impact on Art and Creativity"
JULIA SCHNEIDER
AI in a biased world
MBANGISO MABASO
Bana Ba Dinaledi: Telling African Stories using Generative AI Art.
ALEX TSADO & BETTY WAIREGI
African AI today
BOBBY SHABANGU
Using Artificial Intelligence to expand coverage of African content on Wikipedia
DARRYL ACCONE
Welcome to The End of Beauty: AI Rips the Soul Out of Chess
VULANE MTHEMBU & ChatGPT
Hello ChatGPT - A conversation with OpenAI's Assistant
DIMITRI VOUDOURIS
Evolution of Sιήκ
STEFANIE KASTNER
Beyond the fact that most robots are white: Challenges of AI in Africa
MARTIJN PANTLIN
Some notes from herri’s full stack web developer on the AI phenomenon
galleri
THANDIWE MURIU
4 Universal Truths and selected Camo
ZENZI MDA
Four Portals
TIISETSO CLIFFORD MPHUTHI
Litema
NESA FRÖHLICH
Agapanthus artificialis: Biodiversität im digitalen Raum. Vierteilige Serie, Johannesburg 2022.
STEVEN J FOWLER
2 AI collaborations and 9 asemic scribbles
PATRICIA ANN REPAR
Integrating Healing Arts and Health Care
SHERRY MILNER
Fetus & Host
borborygmus
JANNIKE BERGH
BCUC = BANTU CONTINUA UHURU CONSCIOUSNESS
GWEN ANSELL
Jill Richards: Try, try, try...
VULANE MTHEMBU & HEIKKI SOINI
Nguni Machina remixed
AFRICAN NOISE FOUNDATION
Perennial fashion – noise (After Adorno).
RAJAT NEOGY
Do Magazines Culture?
NDUMISO MDAYI
Biko and the Hegelian dialectic
LEHLOHONOLO MAKHELE
The Big Other
frictions
KHAHLISO MATELA
At Virtue’s Zone
DIANA FERRUS
In memory of “Lily” who will never be nameless again
VUYOKAZI NGEMNTU
Six Poems from the Shadows
SIHLE NTULI
3 Durban Poems
SIBONELO SOLWAZI KA NDLOVU
I’m Writing You A Letter You Will Never read
OMOSEYE BOLAJI
People of the Townships episode 3
claque
SIMON GIKANDI
Introducing Pelong Ya Ka (excerpt)
UNATHI SLASHA
"TO WALK IS TO SEE": Looking Inside the Heart - Sophonia Machabe Mofokeng’s Pelong ya Ka
VANGILE GANTSHO
Ilifa lothando – a Review of Ilifa by Athambile Masola
ZIZIPHO BAM
Barbara Boswell found in The Art of Waiting for Tales
WAMUWI MBAO
Hauntings: the public appearance of what is hidden
CHARL-PIERRE NAUDÉ
Dekonstruksie as gebundelde terrorisme
VUYOKAZI NGEMNTU
Ibuzwa Kwabaphambili - A Review
MPHUTLANE WA BOFELO
Taking radical optimism beyond hope - Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South Africa’s Shack Settlements
PATRIC TARIQ MELLET
WHITE MISCHIEF – Our past (again) filtered through the lens of coloniality: Andrew Smith’s First People – The lost history of the Khoisan
CHANTAL WILLIE-PETERSEN
BHEKI MSELEKU: an infinite source of knowledge to draw from
JEAN MEIRING
SULKE VRIENDE IS SKAARS - a clarion call for the importance of the old and out-of-fashion
GEORGE KING
Kristian Blak String Quartets Neoquartet
ekaya
PAKAMA NCUME
A Conversation with Mantombi Matotiyana 9 April 2019
KYLE SHEPHERD
An Auto-Ethnographic Reflection on Process
PAULA FOURIE
Ghoema
DENIS-CONSTANT MARTIN
The Art of Cape Town Singing: Anwar Gambeno (1949-2022)
ESTHER MARIE PAUW
Something in Return, Act II: The Blavet-Varèse project
STEPHANUS MULLER
Afrikosmos: the keyboard as a Turing machine
MKHULU MNGOMEZULU
Ubizo and Mental Illness: A Personal Reflection
off the record
FRANK MEINTJIES
James Matthews: dissident writer
SABATA-MPHO MOKAE
Platfontein, a place the !Xun and Khwe call home
NEO LEKGOTLA LAGA RAMOUPI
A Culture of Black Consciousness on Robben Island, 1970 - 1980
NELSON MALDONADO-TORRES
Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality*
ARYAN KAGANOF
An interview with Don Laka: Monday 10 February 2003
JONATHAN EATO
Recording and Listening to Jazz and Improvised Music in South Africa
MARKO PHIRI
Bulawayo’s movement of Jah People
STEVEN BROWN
Anger and me
feedback
MUSA NGQUNGWANA
15 May 2020
ARYAN KAGANOF / PONE MASHIANGWAKO
Tuesday 21 July 2020, Monday 27 July, 2020
MARIA HELLSTRÖM REIMER
Monday 26 July 2021
SHANNON LANDERS
22 December 2022
FACEBOOK FEEDBACK
Facebook
the selektah
CHRIS ALBERTYN
Lost, unknown and forgotten: 24 classic South African 78rpm discs from 1951-1965.
hotlynx
shopping
contributors
the back page
CHRIS BRINK
Reflections on Transformation at Stellenbosch University
MARK WIGLEY
Discursive versus Immersive: The Museum is the Massage
© 2023
Archive About Contact Africa Open Institute
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    #08
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ZIZIPHO BAM

Barbara Boswell found in The Art of Waiting for Tales

As the saying goes, “There is an art to everything” and while I excitedly flipped through the initial pages of this well-crafted collection, I was met with the undeniable truth about writing. Poetry finds you therefore one must exercise the art of waiting.

When I was curiously searching for poetry books by women who looked like me in my early teens, I found Mam Makhosazana Xaba’s books for children. This was around the same time I fell in love with Mam Gcina Mhlophe’s Have You Seen Zandile? Later the iconic Myesha Jenkins, to whom this collection is dedicated, lured me in with her jazz poetry voice echoing through my radio and most recently, Khadija Heeger stole my heart with her captivating poetry performances. I mention these powerful women foremost because it is impossible for me to write about “Found Poetry” without shining the light on the black women writers that have contributed to African Literature and helped me find my voice in poetry. It is a relationship I think cannot be divorced from The Art of Waiting for Tales.

The dictionary defines a found poem as:

“a form of poetry that comprises borrowed text from different sources and reframing them by making changes in spacing and lines, or by adding or deleting text, thus imparting new meaning”.

The Art of Waiting for Tales is a collection of found poetry from the novel Grace by Barbara Boswell. Xaba takes us on a poignant journey of self-discovery where the main character, Grace, moves through physical, interpersonal, political and metaphysical landscapes. We witness, through 71 poems, the community of relationships that Grace forms. We also witness time as a concept become subjective and formless while simultaneously quite literal. It is in this space that we learn the art of waiting as life happens to you. We see this in various ways in the collection:

“Home. At 21 Saturn Street.”
‘Grace’s Cross’ (pp. 2)

“Mary and Patrick move to the Cape Flats, a new housing scheme for coloureds.”
‘What was the Use of Vows and Promises?’ (pp. 8)

“Grace thinks about her life and the lives of women like her.”
‘An Invisible Sisterhood’ (pp. 72)

“Grace is staring at Table Mountain through her flat window. She thinks about her future.”
‘Things to Build’ (pp. 78)

These time stamps at the top of the page frame and assist the sequencing of the poems in the way that the novel does. If this collection were to be adapted into a stage play, one would perhaps use these as stage directions or the subtext that motivates the characters. What I enjoyed about this structure is that it also uncovered a new way of reading poetry, where the scene is set for the reader prior to the poem. The poem becomes what cannot be seen, the poem is found in the spaces in between.

Another example of time teaching us a lesson about waiting is Grace’s relationship with her inner child. It is only through the birth of her daughter, Sindi, that her greatest fear and deepest love is revealed:

Grace’s worst fear dissipated
With the first breath her daughter drew.

Grace fell in love, the instant
She laid eyes on Sindi:
The puffy pink face
The chubby curled hand
Sindi was perfect.
‘Sindi was Perfect’ (pp. 39)

Grace’s thoughts turned to Sindi.
She had not seen her daughter for two months.
Was this excruciating pain she felt at Sindi’s absence
Something akin to what Patrick was feeling?
‘Questions & a Single Folded Page’ (pp 64 – 65)

Michele Obama says, “I am, after all, a product of my parents and grandparents, which is to say I am not a leaper or a flier.”[1]The Light We Carry, 2022. This quote reminded me of this predetermined intergenerational story. Mary’s traumas become Grace’s fears and thus Sindi’s destiny.

Perhaps only when Grace reconciles with her abusive father, Patrick, years after herself becoming a parent; or when she gets her perfect nuclear family with David until her older lover, Johnny, finds his way back into her life, is the core message of found poetry to be found. That through the searching, slight tweaking, adding and taking away, and repositioning of a story, a new meaning can be imagined and created. Making healing and reconciliation possible for all the characters, even for the reader.

Patrick broke under the burden of her rage.
A wounded human being: DAMAGED.
‘Swallowed’ (pp. 76)

And then David’s knock on the door; it was time for her to go. She hadn’t even changed Sindi. And that was that. Grace knew it in her bones. Grace couldn’t walk away from Jonny for herself, but she had to do it for her daughter. That day, when he had touched her daughter, Jonny became dead to her.
‘Let the Dead Bury their Dead’ (pp. 77)

I appreciated Xaba’s ability to stay true to the story of these characters’ lives even in her poetic pilgrimage. A poem that was particularly striking for me was ‘Bleeding from the Same Wound’ (pp. 26)

“No Patrick, no”
“Come over here, Mary.”
“Patrick, please, we can work this out.
Put that away, let’s just talk. Please”
“Now you want to talk.
Close the door. Now lock it.”

Although this scene is extremely traumatic, it resembles the surge of violence in many South African domestic homes today, making this moment the epitome of the current state of feminine bodies in our country. The heated two-way conversation between Patrick and Mary in the poem is synonymous with Kendrick Lamar’s song, We Cry Together, however, one hopes for a rather different ending in the poem.

It is worth mentioning that The Art of Waiting for Tales is the first of its kind in South African literature. In all the searching I have done inside libraries and bookshelves, it is empowering to know that poetry truly is everywhere, even woven intricately inside the pages of a novel. One whose story is reminiscent of the play Boesman and Lena by Athol Fugard.

Just like Lena, Grace in the end can perceive a life of freedom where she is no longer tied to the toxic cycle of tragedies her mother experienced until her untimely death. She closes the door on that misery and looks forward to a future where her daughter will not have to fight the same dreams she did.

Grace took in the mountain.
She had no ground to stand on,
But there were still things to build, universes to make.
Grace breathed in that mountain. She knew she was free.
‘Things to Build’ (pp. 78)

Notes
1. ↑ The Light We Carry, 2022.
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