Karina Author, Book, Event

The Invincible Docs at Blown Away by Books, Fish Hoek Library

Melissa Sussens (Slaughterhouse), Dawn Garisch (Breaking Milk) and Penny Haw (The Invincible Miss Cust) in conversation with Gail Gilbride (Cat Therapy) about women, creativity, the environment and science. Melissa is a vet and a poet, and her poetry is strongly influenced by the two roles she plays in her life. As is the writing of Dawn, who is a doctor and author. Penny’s stories feature remarkable women and illustrate her love for nature and animals. And Gail’s latest work of non-fiction is about a cat who helped her survive a frightening medical diagnosis. The work of these four writers speaks to the interconnectedness of nature, humans, animals, art and science.  

DAWN GARISCH, a medical doctor and writer, has published poetry, novels, non-fiction and a children’s book. She has had a short play and a short film produced and has written for television. She won the 2007 DALRO prize for her poem “Blood Delta”. Her novels, Trespass and Breaking Milk, were shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Prize for Fiction in Africa and the 2021 Sunday Times Fiction Prize respectively. She won the 2011 EU Sol Plaatjie Poetry Award for her poem “Miracle”. In 2013, her short story “What To Do About Ricky” won the Short.Sharp.Story competition. Her second poetry collection, Disturbance, was published in 2020. She is interested in trans-disciplinary work in science and art, and between different art forms and teaches life writing and creative method courses with the Life Righting Collective. 

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.  

PENNY HAW worked as a journalist and columnist for more than three decades, writing for many leading South African newspapers (most notably, Business Day) and magazines before yielding to a lifelong yearning to create fiction. Her stories feature remarkable women, illustrate her love for nature and animals, and explore the interconnectedness of all living things. The Invincible Miss Cust is Penny’s debut historical fiction. It was published by Sourcebooks in 2022 and will be followed by a further work of historical fiction, The Woman at the Wheel, in October 2023. Penny is also the author of The Wilderness Between Us, a contemporary fiction published in 2021 and Nicko, The Tale of a Vervet Monkey on an African Farm (2017), a children’s book. Penny lives in Hout Bay with her husband and three dogs, all of whom are well-walked. 

GAIL GILBRIDE was born in Pretoria. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Rhodes University and a post-graduate teaching diploma from UCT. In a previous life she taught English, Sound Perception and Communication Skills. She also used to dance and mastering the Tango is still on her wish list. Her novel Under the African Sun was published by Cactus Rain in 2016, and it was selected as a top ten finalist in the Author Academy Awards competition (USA). Cat Therapy is her unplanned memoir. Gail lives on the edge of the Hemel en Aarde valley with her human and furry family, where she swims in the sea, writes, gardens and dabbles in painting. 

Karina Author, Book, Event, Interview

Slaughterhouse by Melissa Sussens launched at EB Cavendish

Last night at Exclusive Books Cavendish: a beautiful evening of poetry and celebration. Melissa was in conversation with Jacques Coetzee. Their exchanges about the craft of poetry were inspiring, and Melissa’s reading of her poetry moved all the hearts present.

Thank you to Melissa, Jacques, Linda and the team at EB Cavendish, and all poetry lovers who attended.

A while back, Jacques also interviewed Melissa for AVBOB Poetry. If you missed the launch of Slaughterhouse, please read the interview below.

Jacques Coetzee – Ingrid Jonker, Olive Schreiner & AVBOB Poetry prize winner and author of An Illuminated Darkness (uHlanga Press, 2020) – interviews Melissa Sussens about her debut collection, Slaughterhouse.

JC: Judging from its title, the catalyst for the poems in your upcoming collection was the year you spent working at a slaughterhouse as part of your compulsory community service after qualifying as a veterinarian. Did you consciously set out to complete a body of work in order to deal with this trauma, or did you slowly realise over time that this was what you were doing?

MS: Writing about the slaughterhouse began with the poem which ended up as one of the winners of the 2020 New Contrast National Poetry Prize. Writing that poem unlocked something for me and I realised that I could write about these niche, specific experiences in a way that could be related to a universal human experience. I think I needed to write about that time in order to process it, but I didn’t expect to get a book out of it. 

JC: One of the most striking qualities in your work is its ability to tell stories. Was storytelling an important part of your life growing up? Is this something you think about while writing, or does it come naturally to you?

MS: I have always loved reading and living myself into stories. Discovering that poems could tell stories the way longer pieces of writing do was a magical realisation for me. I want to be a storyteller first. I hope my poems connect with people in ways that are understandable and grounded. I don’t want readers to leave my work feeling they “don’t get it” or that my poems only exist in the clouds. 

JC: How did poetry enter your life? Do you remember a particular moment when you knew that poetry was something you wanted to pursue seriously?

MS: My earliest memory of writing poetry was creating rhyming treasure hunt clues as a kid for my younger brother’s birthday party. My first taste of being a “published poet” was as a young teen when I had a few poems published in Teen Zone magazine. As a student I sought out that feeling of connection again and started sharing my writing with friends and then at open mic events (shoutout to Spoken Sessions in Pretoria). But it was only after doing a poetry writing and editing course with American poet, Megan Falley (Poems That Don’t Suck) back in 2018 that I started taking my writing, and more importantly my editing, more seriously. 

JC: Another aspect of your work that fascinates me is the attention it pays to form. I am thinking, for instance, of your pantoum about gender-based violence in South Africa, of Slaughterhouse Sestina and Euthanasia Pantoum. Do you enjoy working with difficult forms for their own sake, or is this also partly a way to focus or contain powerful emotions?

MS: I love using forms as tools to unlock my writing. They feel like puzzles to me, especially the sestina, and I love the challenge that provides. I also find it interesting how sometimes a form can allow me to find an angle that I wouldn’t have otherwise found if I was writing free verse.

JC: You write movingly about your work as a vet, risking territory where many writers would become sentimental or cute. I suspect that the success of these poems has something to do with your taking up of alternative personae, like the euthanasia syringe used to dispatch pets who can no longer be treated.

MS: I find persona-type poems very freeing. In writing them I am able to explore or express things in a way that I wouldn’t if I was writing in my own voice. I think they allow me to better imagine a situation from another angle. I am constantly searching for humanity, for connection through my writing.

JC: How easy is it to move between your work as a vet and the space in which your poems arrive?

MS: It varies. When I have a poem prompt or idea in my head I can spend my time at work playing with it in my thoughts or finding inspiration from incidents in my vet life that I can write about. But there are also times when I struggle to switch off my job mindset and focus on my more creative side. I would say I am generally quite elastic though. I spend most of my lunch hours on poetry – writing, editing or reading poems in the middle of my workday.

JC: Slaughterhouse contains piercingly beautiful poems of heartbreak, of innocence lost and regained, and ultimately about domestic happiness. Would you like to say something about the way poetry has helped you to maintain emotional well-being during difficult times? Do you think poetry can provide a kind of exorcism, or be a kind of talisman to help us navigate particularly challenging emotional terrain?

MS: Absolutely. I have experienced loneliness intensely throughout my life. For me poetry is a reminder that I am not alone, a way to connect the outside world with my internal one. Poetry is essential in my emotional processing, both in my personal life and in the hard aspects of my work. By writing these poems I can exorcise some of the negative emotions that would otherwise weigh me down. 

JC: Perhaps surprisingly for a collection called Slaughterhouse, one of the greatest pleasures your poems afford is their flashes of humour. I am thinking of poems like The Drive and Blue, which seem to signal tormentedness but are really (for lack of a better word) tragicomic. Does this ring true? Is this quality in your work recognised enough, or do readers tend to miss it?

MS: Thank you so much for saying this! I have tried to bring some dark humour (I love tragicomic as a description of it) to my poems. I don’t think this is something that is recognised by most people. I think I mostly come across as a very serious person, and my poems probably do too. But I absolutely want people to find the humour or lightness within this collection too, to be able to laugh at life’s ironies alongside me.  

Karina Author, Book, Event, Festival

Karavan Press Poetry in McGregor

Book your tickets here:

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.