Bird to bird

My heart in hiding, stirred for a bird – Gerard Manley Hopkins

as dreams migrate
the quote of a poet
flits at first ray
to awakening mind.

it wings its way
through the sky
to the heart’s nest.
feeds me beak to beak

the ingested worm of words.
I drink from her
splashed feather breast
dew carried through the air.

in a flutter of breath
on the precipice edge
slaked, I chirp, twitter, coo
the Lauds of first light.

From: McGregor Poetry Anthology 2013

Published by African Sun Press in association with the McGregor Poetry Festival

ISBN number 978-0-620-62302-5

The Poet:

Dorian Haarhoff (1944- ) is a poet, story-teller and mentor, passionate about imaging innate creativity. He believes in the power of metaphor to create new ways of being. A former Professor of English, he has participated at Poetry Africa, SA and at a Poetry Festival in Colombia, South America. He has written seven volumes (Poemegranites the most recent) and recorded a poetry CD. His wordshops are based on his text The Writer’s Voice.

Videopoetry: On the Angel's bench

On the Angel's bench 

The way you wing up 

flaring out two wingspans

rising. On this hard bench

you bid me stay, stay, stay.

But my stoney angel 

I am stonewalling you 

I am a wall of angry sorrow 

for children lost, lost, lost. 

I would stay 

bricked in , bricked up 

but you, agile as air 

drop wings to bend low 

in one sweep remove 

a stone . A finger width 

gap clears and water 

trickles as life does.

I watch this opening. 

A weight of grace dammed 

up behind seeps through: 

I can leave the bench for now.

POET

Viv Stacey

The 2015 McGregor Poetry Festival Programme!

News you have all been waiting for...

The 2015 McGregor Poetry Festival Programme!

Take a look and make your bookings at Computicket!

A separate "fringe programme" is still to come.

What you don’t know

When I left you in the hotel lobby
ordering another coffee, the train
carried me closer and closer
to home and further away
from you – the landscape hidden
under mist and rain. We only talked
about poetry, but the clefts between
the words said more.

No, there is no going back
to say different things and mean them.

The stars will always be there
even on cloudy nights.




From: McGregor Poetry Anthology 2013

Published by African Sun Press in association with the McGregor Poetry Festival
ISBN number 978-0-620-62302-5


The Poet:

Kerry Hammerton lives in Cape Town. Her poetry has been published in various South African and British literary magazines and anthologies and in two collections.

Previously published:

Kerry Hammerton: I’d take more care from her collection These are the lies I told you, Modjaji Books 2010; and What you don’t know from her collection The Weather Report, 2014.

First snowman

I press and pat snow stars
to shape you body cells.
set your shoulders,
six-pack you solar plexus.
you seem so solid in the glow
of pink ice flow and sky.

I feature your face,
pebble you eyes.
cone for nose
bush eyebrows
sprig moustache.

then dress you dapper
in hat with black band
button up a white shirt
and wrap your neck
in a crimson scarf.

I, a boy from the south
far below the snowline
where we make no sunmen,
live a world week of
sky fall and flake

the next day the sun strikes
as you begin to slide
into a puddle-huddle,
losing bone mass
and muscle tone,
discarding dress.

oh snowman you taught
ephemeral slipping away.
yet you still stand
between my boyhood hands
in that narrow gap
of freezing and melting.

unlike a god I could not
despite the artery scarf
breathe life into you
nose to nose, eye to eye.

From: McGregor Poetry Anthology 2013

Published by African Sun Press in association with the McGregor Poetry Festival

ISBN number 978-0-620-62302-5

The Poet:

Dorian Haarhoff (1944- ) is a poet, story-teller and mentor, passionate about imaging innate creativity. He believes in the power of metaphor to create new ways of being. A former Professor of English, he has participated at Poetry Africa, SA and at a Poetry Festival in Colombia, South America. He has written seven volumes (Poemegranites the most recent) and recorded a poetry CD. His wordshops are based on his text The Writer’s Voice.

Poetry Festival interview

On 729 Cape Pulpit Tshego chats to Billy Kennedy about the McGregor Poetry Festival, taking place in August. Click on the following link:

https://soundcloud.com/729capepulpit/billy-kennedy-mcgregor-poetry-festival

Videopoetry: YOUR BLINDED HAND

YOUR BLINDED HAND – TENESEE WILLIAMS

Suppose that

              everything that greens and grows

should blacken in moment, flower and branch.

I think that I would find your blinded hand.

Suppose that your cry and mine were lost amongst numberless cries

              in a city of fire when the earth is afire,

I must still believe that somehow I would find your blinded hand.

              Through flames everywhere

               consuming earth and air

I must believe that somehow, if only one moment were offered,

I would

         find your hand.

I know as, of course, you know

              the immeasurable wilderness that would exist

              in the moment of fire.

But I would hear your cry and you’d hear mine and each of us

    would find

               the other’s hand.

                             We know

               that it might not be so.

                              But for this quiet moment, if only for this

                                   moment,

and against all reason,

              let us believe, and believe in our hearts,

              that somehow it would be so.

              I’d hear your cry, you mine –

                            And each of us would find a blinded hand.

Julian Redpath live in McGregor

On June 14th McGregor was delighted to welcome Julian Redpath to the village as a fundraiser for the Poetry Festival. Jenny and Martyn Johnson kindly hosted the event at their beautiful home, and made delicious soup to complement the evening.

Julian is an up and coming young guitarist, and is busy promoting his first album, Heavenly Light. His tour started in Nottingham Road, and ends in a week’s time in Julian’s home town, Jo’burg. Accompanied by a cellist, Clare, Julian’s mastery of the guitar and hauntingly beautiful lyrics entertained the happy group of music fans.

His work is fresh and inspiring and was a treat for all of us privileged enough to attend. As the second Live Music in McGregor Concert, Julian was an unqualified success, and we look forward to the next musician to journey to our favourite village.

THE FESTIVAL WITH HEART

The countdown has begun for The Third McGregor Poetry Festival which will take place from August 27th – 30th 2015

We are delighted to be welcoming so many well- known poets and newcomers to our Festival again this year. We have a great line-up of poets who will share their talents with you in one way or another. It is indeed heart-warming for us, as a committee, to feel and experience the support of poets and poetry lovers from near and far.

Our festival once again promises to be a very special event. 

The little village of McGregor in the Cape Winelands is the perfect setting for this gathering of poets and poetry lovers. And winter is the perfect time for a festival such as ours. Our starry skies are legendary, our venues are warm and cosy (many with log fires), and our local red wine is superb.

Come and enjoy the warm intimacy of The McGregor Poetry Festival, meet our friendly locals, enjoy our excellent restaurants and venues – all within walking distance of one another – and come and enrich your mind, your heart and your soul.

Some of our very special venues this year are:

• De Akker – our charming old town hall
• The beautiful NG village church, and The Little Way at Temenos
• Wahnfried – McGregor’s own film and concert hall 
• The D’Amphitheater – set under the stars beside a roaring fire
• The Tree House
• Two Poetry libraries
• The legendary Well 
• The beautiful Edna Fourie Art Gallery
• The brand-new Bemind Winery

Our Festival will include:

• Our programme of Poetry readings
• A Festival lecture
• Music and Poetry presentations
• Book launches
• A Poetry dinner in the company of poets
• Poetry Films
• A lively Fringe
• Late night venues
• Open Mic

McGregor offers a wide range of accommodation from Backpackers to Four Star luxury. There are also self- catering options. If you would like to enjoy the wines of the Breede Valley at the same time as the Festival, Robertson – only 12 minutes from McGregor – also offers a wide variety of excellent accommodation. Please book your accommodation now so you won’t be disappointed. For more details have a look at our Bookings page

Alternatively, McGregor is a 2 hour drive from Cape Town, so plan to take the day out in beautiful McGregor for an unforgettable experience of poetry and entertainment.

VIDEOPOETRY

This year we have also launched VIDEOPOETRY. Take a look on our blog. The sky is the limit and we would welcome your submissions to this exciting form of poetry. Take out your poems, your cameras, your cell phones and get creative!

ANTHOLOGY

We will be launching the McGregor Poetry Anthology 2014 in Cape Town at Hugh Hodge’s Off-The-Wall event in Observatory on Monday 27 July at 8.00pm and at the McGregor Poetry Festival on Saturday 29th August at 6.30pm in Caritas at Temenos. We look forward to welcoming you to one of these events …..or both! 

See you at the festival!

Videopoetry: From The Divine Comedy

From The Divine Comedy 

Midway, this way of life we’re bound upon

I woke to find myself in a dark wood,

Where the right road was wholly lost, and gone.

Aye me, how hard to speak of it,

That rude and rough and stubborn forest,

The mere breath of memory stirs the old fear in the blood.

But when, at last, I stood beneath a steep hillside,

Which closed that valley’s wandering maze,

Whose dread had pierced me to the heart root deep.

Then I looked up, and saw the morning rays

Mantle its shoulder from that planet bright,

Which guides men’s feet aright, on all their ways.

POET

Dante Alighieri

The journey

It was in the train
from Cape Town,
the one to Bellville,
at a quarter past three
It was there I met him
tired and grey.
He looked at me
I did not see his questions
I preferred
to look away.

It was in the train
to Bellville
the one from Cape Town
at a quarter past three
where I saw him looking
through the clear shining window
anxiously clutching
the bag in his hands.

“What’s up with him?”
the schoolboys asked.
“He sure looks nervous,
has he something to hide?”
They all started laughing
and he kept on looking.

It was in the train
to Bellville
the one from Cape Town
at a quarter past three
with the name of the station
in front of our eyes
that he slowly moved forward
and tapped the boy
right next to him.
“What is this station?”
he softly asked.
The answer came
in spurts of laughter,
“He cannot read!”
Continuing their mocking
they got off the train.
Then I understood
the eyes and the questions.

I cannot read
without thinking
of the train to Bellville
the one from Cape Town
at a quarter past three
and the thousands of eyes
looking out of the window
and me never knowing
whether they can see.

From: McGregor Poetry Anthology 2013

Published by African Sun Press in association with the McGregor Poetry Festival

ISBN number 978-0-620-62302-5


The Poet:

Diana Ferrus is a writer, poet, performance poet, story-teller, editor and publisher, best known for her epic poem about the Khoisan woman, Sarah Baartman, whose remains were on display in Paris until 1986. She is a founder member of the Afrikaanse Skrywersvereniging, Bush Poets and Women in Xchains. Her works, in both Afrikaans and English, have been published in various anthologies and a collection, Ons Komvandaan.

Previously published:

Diana Ferrus: I’ve come to take you home; Obsession; and The journey from her collection I’ve come to take you home.

Reservoir Blog June 2015 edition

Welcome Winter! June 1st marked the start of Winter, and McGregor was hit by a deluge for two and a half days. Here at The Reservoir we are still drying out! But the fireplace is going-in our new snug- and the Donkey Sanctuary Book Fair has assured me of a great stock of books to enjoy. Life is good!

Preparations for the third festival are well on the way and there is an exciting and stimulating array of talent arriving at the end of August. Happy days ahead.

With all the hassle and trauma in the world, it is good sometimes to just relax and enjoy life. Poetry is one way of doing so. There is, despite all the sadness around us, much to be happy about. I try to focus and all that is positive. Not always easy, but there is joy for us all. 

Today’s poem is one of my all-time favourites. Enjoy!

Wind

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.


Ted Hughes

Soetwater

Ek woon op Soetwater
waar suur reën uit die hemel val
en fontein Halcyon nie meer deur Pegassus kastei word
om my muse en haar susters te voed nie

Outydse fluitjiesriet moes wyk
voor die Arundo Donax se groen gordyn uit Spanje
waarvan die Houtbosloop al stadiger, vlakker vloei
en seekoei en krokodil lank nie meer hier hou nie –
ook hulle het moed verloor met rommel en afval
uit hutte wat soos vratte kruip deur die vallei

Graslande word ingeneem deur Bonga-bonga en esels-oor
en die mooi rooi lantanablommetjie met sy wroetende wortelsisteem
Vleilande droog op, en in ons aangeplante woude
hardloop duiker en grysbok in geroeste strikke vas

In die perskeboord – wat nou nie meer bestaan nie -
bo-op die berg waar ons hulp vandaan moes kom
het ’n buurman eens met tou aan stok, om sneller
na ’n beter plek gaan soek
Die buurman wat nou daar woon
se voertuie word vir hom ontruim,
Nes die swaar las van besittings
daagliks
vir ons almal ligter gemaak word
deur die wat vat wat hulle wil hê

Die wind het oor my plek gegaan
En ek ken hom nie meer nie
En ek wonder wat ek sal agterlaat vir my kinders
En hulle kinders en nog …

Die suidersterre wat saans oor Waaihoek verrys?
Die geeloogkanarie wat woon op my stoep?
Die Pizzaro’s en Monet’s geraam in my vensters?
Die stilte wat desondanks alles soms in my roep?

God, gee my asseblief genoeg geduld
Om uit te hou tot ek weer vrede vind



From: McGregor Poetry Anthology 2013

Published by African Sun Press in association with the McGregor Poetry Festival

ISBN number 978-0-620-62302-5


The Poet:

Engemi Ferreira is gebore in Bloemfontein, getoë in Namibië en het studeer in Pretoria, o.a. drama, kuns en sang. Haar eerste gedigte is inTydskrif vir Letterkunde gepubliseer toe sy vyftien jaar oud was en haar debuutroman Die jaar toe my ma begin sing het, het verskyn toe sy vyf en vyftig was. Tussenin lê ’n rekenaar vol verse, stories en songs

Videopoetry: Pax

Pax

All that matters is to be at one with the living God

To be a creature in the house of the God of Life.

Like a cat asleep on a chair 

at peace, in peace

and at one with the master of the house,

with the mistress,

at home, at home in the house of the living,

sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire. 

Sleeping on the hearth of the living world

yawning at home before the fire of life

feeling the presence of the living God

like a great reassurance

a deep calm in the heart

a presence

as of the master sitting at the board

in his own and greater being,

in the house of life.

POET

D.H. Lawrence

Obsession

Who do you love
so desperately
that your eyes keep wandering
over the head of the moon
and then speak
to the void in the night?

Who do you love
so needingly
that your voice disappears
into the woods that wait
for your words to make sense
of the dream that you dream
but so fiercely deny?

Who do you love –
is it the wind of the night
that dies at dawn
and with the break of the day
lies scattered about?

Who batters your soul
and possesses your mind?

Is it the heat of the sun
or the frost of the morn
that prepares the grave
for your body torn?

Who do you love
so desperately?

Sing: Who do you love so desperately?
         Who batters your soul and possesses your mind?
         Who batters your soul and possesses your mind?
         Who batters your soul and possesses your mind?

From: McGregor Poetry Anthology 2013

Published by African Sun Press in association with the McGregor Poetry Festival

ISBN number 978-0-620-62302-5


The Poet:

Diana Ferrus is a writer, poet, performance poet, story-teller, editor and publisher, best known for her epic poem about the Khoisan woman, Sarah Baartman, whose remains were on display in Paris until 1986. She is a founder member of the Afrikaanse Skrywersvereniging, Bush Poets and Women in Xchains. Her works, in both Afrikaans and English, have been published in various anthologies and a collection, Ons Komvandaan.

Previously published:

Diana Ferrus: I’ve come to take you home; Obsession; and The journey from her collection I’ve come to take you home.

Credo

ek wat mens is
wil die lewe vier met mense
wil deur die oog tot skrywe gaan
wil verse gebruik as instrument
om pas aan die hart te gee

Ek wat ook gees is
wil die dood tot lewe maak
wil deur die graf tot skrywe bly
wil só vers-in tot testament
gegrif in die firmament

en daagliks op my reis van mens tot ster
moet ek ook woord tot waarheid dwing
om die self se laaste
donker
geheime te ontgin

From: McGregor Poetry Anthology 2013

Published by African Sun Press in association with the McGregor Poetry Festival

ISBN number 978-0-620-62302-5


The Poet:

Engemi Ferreira is gebore in Bloemfontein, getoë in Namibië en het studeer in Pretoria, o.a. drama, kuns en sang. Haar eerste gedigte is inTydskrif vir Letterkunde gepubliseer toe sy vyftien jaar oud was en haar debuutroman Die jaar toe my ma begin sing het, het verskyn toe sy vyf en vyftig was. Tussenin lê ’n rekenaar vol verse, stories en songs