“A WAY OF LIFE – poetry of pilgrimage”
I am putting together a new collection of poetry called “A WAY OF LIFE – poetry of pilgrimage”. I will read poems I’ve written – about the Camino – as well as ones located in the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape where I have walked many kilometers. I will also speak about the three pilgrimages I have undertaken across Spain, on the Camino de Compostela, as well as other walks I take on the peninsula. I will refer to the tradition of walking practice of the great poets.
I will also show some handmade books and journals I have made to document my pilgrimages.Christine Coates is a poet and writer from Cape Town. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. She has an interest in life-writing or memoir, and the recovery of personal history through public and private imagery. She has undertaken the 800km pilgrimage across Spain, on the Camino de Compostela three times, and written an account of it. Her stories and poems have been published in various literary journals. Her poems were selected for the EU Sol Plaatje Poetry anthologies 2011 – 2015, and Best “New” African Poets 2015 Anthology http://pensouthafrica.co.za/best-new-african-poets-2015-anthology-edited-by-tendai-r-mwanaka-and-daniel-da-purifacacao/
Her short stories have been highly commended – “The Cat’s Wife” in ADULTS ONLY, the Short.Sharp.Stories anthology 2014, and “How We Look Now” in WATER, the Short Story Day Africa anthology 2015. Her debut collection, Homegrown, published in 2014 by Modjaji Books received an honourable mention from the Glenna Luschei Prize. Homegrown received an excellent review in Wawa Book Review: http://wawabookreview.com/2015/07/24/christine-coates-homegrown-is-an-alcove-of-memory-and-history-a-review/ and Kobus Moolman said this about her poetry: ‘South African poet Christine Coates takes her relationship with space inward. In her poem "Heritage Site" she asks questions about belonging, belonging to a landscape, questions which ultimately have at the heart notions of identity. Who is an African? Can a white person be African? Her answer is trenchant: "I don't own this land, but I belong here." But in her poem "Kolmanskop" (an abandoned mining town in southern Namibia) she thinks about space and identity through language, language as a home: so I spend days walking sands, and I occupy my body with these words.
I love the way that the body in Coates' poem is both receptacle for language and an active agent in the process of making words; the language of the body and the body as language.’
