carrying the fire - joan metelerkamp

substancebooks, 2005 123 pages isbn: 0-9584815-1-2 R100.00

For the past fourteen years, Joan Metelerkamp has been writing her way out of the ordinary, the mundane, the complacent, the inert. Nothing short of a total revaluation of poetry, of writing, of creativity, of what it means to be alive.

Combining the classical line with a debilitatingly postmodern destruction of linearity and authorial stability, Carrying The Fire accelerates poetics into the stratosphere whilst never surrendering an almost archaic beauty of expression. Carried by a ferociously passionate and non-linear narrative, never ceasing to question the veracity of its force or the circumstances of its existence, the first part of this long-poem shatters the constraints of its subject (matter), tools, and methods of presentation, making way for the second part which takes all that is left of destruction and mutilation, places them against a wall of compassion and empathy, and fires.

Joan Metelerkamp’s previous book of poems was called requiem. some critics immediately welded the requiem of the title, to the poets suicided mother. some of us however, preferred to see the requiem as being held elsewhere and for others. possibly a requiem – a very personal requiem performed by the poet – for a certain kind of reader. perhaps for a certain perspective of the poets life. perhaps a radically new beginning.

this book then – Carrying The Fire – is about what art costs – the price of making art.

therefore it is about politics, about desire.

but more than that, it is a book about the art of writing poetry and prose.

about how a writer deals with desire when it comes to writing and when it comes to everyday life – and is there a difference and what is the difference?

and that’s the point at which all hell breaks loose.

and the point at which the art of painting becomes the metaphor for understanding the metamorphosis engendered by the desire to make art.

it is also the point at which a foreign narrator gives up on narrative and questions her "foreignness".

Critical Acclaim for Joan Metelerkamp:

"radically subverts conventional poetic discourse" (Rod MacKenzie, Weekly Mail).

"intelligent, argumentative, complex, and intriguing" (Dan Wylie, Mail & Guardian).

"her very authentic writing is meticulous and controlled, painting vivid pictures" (James Mitchell, The Star).

"her words are what they signify/the silence that ties them together, is the metaphor" (Nadine Botha, Wordstock).

"this poet doesn’t write floridly or introspectively; she writes as if her life and death depended on it " (Br. John Forbis, Sunday Independent).

"[Her poems] press me to examine and question some of what I've believed about art, truth-telling, pain, love, and more" (Lionel Abrahams).

"I found myself flinching… gasping. These are poems that do not pretend or dissemble. …they refuse to accept simple consolations." (Kobus Moolman, Fidelities).

Author Statement:

"make me new / words / make me new"