Praise be to the pope of the poets
SOUTH Africa’s season of literary pilgrimage opens this month with Durban’s Time of the Writer. As the festival’s 17-year-old tradition dictates, scribes from around Africa and the world will convene on the hill above the city and elect a new pope. Watch for the plume of white smoke — I won’t say exactly what they burn, but it rhymes with turban moisten — rising from the spire of Howard College Tower.
The literary pope (@ScriptorisRex on Twitter) recites a soliloquy from Hamlet to bless the events, then travels to all the other South African litfests as they sprout up, distributing benedictions in the form of quotations of the greats, from Austen to Achebe, like incense from a thurible.
If only this were real — the office of the pope of letters, I mean. He or she could take the fight to the various literary antipopes, those cretins who have unaccountably acquired the ability to write, but use it to craft great scaffoldings of nonsense, which they swing from, screeching like monkeys. Politicians and religious zealots, for example. The literary pope would be an unpopular person in Uganda.
I can think of many candidates for the first literary papacy, but one stands out. Chirikure Chirikure, the Zimbabwean poet, would be my pope.
Some years back, I organised a literary festival in Cape Town with Antjie Krog, who invited Chirikure to perform, along with mbira musician Chiwoniso Maraire. (Maraire died last July, an event that left writers and musicians and fans bereft.) Their “duet”, as it were — his recital, her melodies — has haunted me like no other reading since.
‘A few snippets of poetry, a few gently ironic gestures, and our souls were pierced’
In their set, they performed Chirikure’s poem “Yes, Yes”, a short, observational piece on the politics of everyday interaction. It was hot in the theatre. The bespectacled Chirikure stood, his bald head glistening, and chanted; the bedoeked Maraire sat, plugged her mbira in, and plucked.
In the work place, the whole day, it’s “yes, yes”. It is the official language of the office! . . . Yes, yes — yes, yes . . . Those political rallies and gatherings, it is “yes, yes”.
To understand politics best use this language.
“Yes, yes,” intoned Chirikure, swaying as Maraire’s thumbs flicked and filled the theatre with music. “Yes, yes.” They were casting out devils. A few snippets of poetry, a few amused glances from the stage into the darkened seats, a few gently ironic gestures in our direction, and our souls were pierced. From a land of yes-men — dangerous yes-men, Mugabe’s yes-men — came words that converted us into righteous naysayers, ready to crusade for the slivers and gleams of our writerly patrimony, that paradise where simply describing base familiar behaviour amounts to an edict against it.
That is why writers need a pope: because our religion is “no, no”, when everyone else is preaching “yes, yes”, and we need reminding of it. Chirikure Chirikure for pope! • Meet all the naysaying writers at The Time of the Writer (March), the Franschhoek Literary Festival (May), the Kingsmead Book Fair (May), the South African Book Fair (June), the Open Book Festival (September) and Book Bedonnerd (October), among others. Catch up on www.bookslive.co.za.