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Karavan Press Poetry in McGregor

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POETRY IN McGREGOR

Melissa Sussens
Sipho Banda
Klara du Plessis
Stephen Symons

Melissa Sussens is a queer veterinarian and poet. Her work has appeared in many publications, both locally and internationally, and has been recognised with several accolades. Melissa has performed at the Poetry in McGregor festival, Off The Wall, The Commons and The Red Wheelbarrow, where she also hosts poetry readings. She lives in Cape Town with her wife and their two dogs. Slaughterhouse is her first book.

Sipho Banda was born in Himeville and grew up in Impendle, KwaZulu Natal. He is the author of Vusi’s Visit to Drakensberg Mountain, a children’s book published by Msinsi Press. His first collection of poetry, Ngigabe Ngezakithi, and a drama book, Umoya Wamagagasi, were published in isiZulu by Pelmo Publishers. Most of his poems in A Lonely Crowded Walk, his debut collection in English, reflect his own lonely and crowded walk.

Stephen Symons has published poetry and short-fiction, locally and abroad. His debut collection, Questions for the Sea, received an honourable mention for the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry, and was also shortlisted for the 2017 Ingrid Jonker Prize. He is also the author of Spioenkop, Landscapes of Light and Loss and FOR EVERYTHING THAT IS POINTLESS AND PERFECT. Small Souls is a collection of new and collected poems.

Klara du Plessis is an award-winning Canadian South African writer, scholar, and literary curator. Her debut multilingual poetry collection Ekke, recipient of the 2019 Pat Lowther Memorial Award, was published by Palimpsest Press. She is also the author of poetry and essay collections, Hell Light Flesh, Unfurl, and most recently, Skin and Meat Sky. She is a PhD candidate in English Literature at Concordia University and lives in Montreal, Canada.

Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: Small Souls by Stephen Symons

In Small Souls, words resist the passage of time and provide calm acceptance of that which is inevitable. And thus, the witnessing carries on with elegant care, even if not ease: the poet observes the world around us ‘in a time of sickness’ and the resulting intricacies of homelife put under the pressure of current circumstances and the relentlessness of time. The sun rises and sets, the tides obey their eternal rhythm, we grow old, our children spread their wings, forcing us continuously to find new maps for navigating future skies. Flight – ‘wings dusted / with the ashes of last light’ – is an unmistakable thematic link to Symons’s previous collections.

The path of a lone bird
skimming cloud
after a storm

Soundless,
given its altitude

but music nonetheless
above a scuttled country.

– ‘A short history of love’

Throughout the ages, love triumphs, refusing to be silent. As does poetry. They are inseparable, after all. In these collected and new poems, Symons offers us the greatest of gifts: balm for (sm)all souls.

– Karina M. Szczurek, Introduction, Small Souls

Publication date: November 2022

ISBN: 978-1-7764064-6-3

STEPHEN SYMONS has published poetry and short-fiction in local and international journals, magazines and anthologies. His debut collection, Questions for the Sea (uHlanga, 2016), received an honourable mention for the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry, and was also shortlisted for the 2017 Ingrid Jonker Prize. His unpublished collection Spioenkop was a semi-finalist for the Hudson Prize for Poetry (USA) in 2015. His second collection, Landscapes of Light and Loss (Dryad Press), was published in 2018, and third collection, FOR EVERYTHING THAT IS POINTLESS AND PERFECT (Karavan Press), in 2020. Small Souls includes the winning poem of the 2021 The Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Competition, “Small souls”. Symons holds a PhD in History (University of Pretoria) and an MA in Creative Writing (University of Cape Town). He lives with his family in Oranjezicht, Cape Town.

Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: Slaughterhouse by Melissa Sussens

Cover artwork: Sue Greeff

Cover design: Stephen Symons

“A brave, searing collection. Out of a difficult year of compulsory service at a slaughterhouse, Sussens has forged a plain–spoken, lyrical poetic voice able to ‘gut truth, / exhume the body of memory.’ Whether chronicling the forging of a queer sexual identity, the loss of innocence or its renewal through requited love and poetry itself, these unflinching poems refuse to be forgotten. In response to the inevitable risk of loving, she writes: ‘Sometimes I wish / I never knew the word merge …’ All the more poignant, then, that the collection should bear witness to precisely such points of fraught, perilous contact between self and world. A remarkable body of work that will sustain many rereadings.”

– Jacques Coetzee, author of An Illuminated Darkness

“Blood animates and stains these remarkable poems, but Melissa Sussens asks us not to look away. Slaughterhouse is a hauntingly powerful debut. We get to see a poet grapple with ongoing legacies of vulnerability and violence, death and desire, all while experimenting cleverly with form. Some of these poems dripped off the page and stayed with me for days – I loved them.”

– Maneo Mohale, author of Everything is a Deathly Flower

“‘I watched death’ is the first line of Melissa Sussens’s debut collection. Never have I trusted a poet more to guide me by way of a book than I do Melissa – who has worked both in a veterinary clinic and a slaughterhouse. Fluent in the message that is at the core of art – we die – Sussens’s poetry is a relentless reminder in the utter thrill and sacredness of living. These poems find both the slaughter and the house, the home, in all the scenes of a life: from stalking an ex on Instagram, to coming out to your mother, to biting your nails, to girlhood, to loving in the
face of bigotry. Of course this book will encourage readers to reckon with the humanity of animals, but what’s unexpected is the way it will help us acknowledge both the beast and the fawn, the Grim Reaper and the Angel of Death, within ourselves. Melissa brings her vocational history into these pieces at the line level – with lyricism oscillating between both brutal blade and gentle hand at once. I have never read any book like it.”
– Megan Falley, author of Drive Here and Devastate Me

Publication date: November 2022

ISBN: 978–1–7764064–5–6

Also available on Kindle: Slaughterhouse by Melissa Sussens

MELISSA SUSSENS is a queer veterinarian and poet. Her work has appeared in many publications, both locally and internationally. She placed 2nd in the 2020 New Contrast National Poetry Prize and was amongst the winners of the ClemenGold Writing Competition. She was selected for the Poetry for Human Rights anthology, Between the Silence, in 2021, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. Melissa has performed at the Poetry in McGregor festival, Off The Wall, The Commons and The Red Wheelbarrow, where she also hosts poetry readings. She lives in Cape Town with her wife and their two dogs. Slaughterhouse is her first book. Find her at www.melissasussens.com.

Author photograph: Winston Sussens

Karina Author

Author: Melissa Sussens

MELISSA SUSSENS is a queer veterinarian and poet. Her work has appeared in many publications, both locally and internationally. She placed 2nd in the 2020 New Contrast National Poetry Prize and was amongst the winners of the ClemenGold Writing Competition. She was selected for the Poetry for Human Rights anthology, Between the Silence, in 2021, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. Melissa has performed at the Poetry in McGregor festival, Off The Wall, The Commons and The Red Wheelbarrow, where she also hosts poetry readings. She lives in Cape Town with her wife and their two dogs. Slaughterhouse is her first book. Find her at www.melissasussens.com.

Author photograph: Winston Sussens