…I’ve changed back to the camels which is cheery (I think) and plan to deal only in happy stuff for a while. Wait, that might mean I have nothing to write about. But we shall take that risk.
Next month I leave for Canterbury where for three months I will be reading, writing, walking about and trying to keep my toes unfrozen. Of course, I’m very excited about all this. Most of all, about the mountains of free time to do nothing but stare at my blank screen and will poetry to come. More seriously, I’m looking forward to traveling England and attending poetry readings and performances in London.
I also seem to have developed an irrational fear of not getting enough spicy-tangy food to eat in those three months. Which would explain why I’ve been hastily eating every kind of chaat, thali, curry, tandoori and biriyani that I can lay my hands on. Maybe I fancy I’m a camel. By the time I get there, I’m going to be a blimp.
Besides eating, I’m looking for a coat and boots to fight the winter there. This means that I have to spend a lot of time trying to get inside shops. Sometimes, I manage this. But often I do not, because of sheer lack of stamina and will power. On Sunday, we drove down Commercial Street and the entire city was doing their Christmas shopping. A sea of people rustling packets with that curiously determined look that shoppers acquire — beady eyes, sweat on the upper lip, steely jaw. We drove down the street in awe. He cursed the shops, the people, the traffic. I slumped in my seat as if I was being led to the torture chamber. Predictably, we didn’t find parking, heaved a sigh of relief and quickly left to get a drink instead.
I decided to go back on a weekday morning, and am now convinced that this is the only way to do it without getting stampeded. People who have to go to offices will have to take the morning off, but what’s half a day’s pay for health, sanity — and who knows — life? Of course, if everyone does this, then Monday mornings will be as bad as weekends. So on second thoughts, strike that suggestion.
Anyway, I did some shopping that I liked. Goobe’s Book Republic on Church Street has expanded their collection and I bought two poetry books: Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf and Margaret Atwood’s Selected Poems II. Quite pleased. For the uninitiated, Goobe is a bookshop and a library so you can rent or buy, or first rent and then buy if you like the book. I think it’s totally cool.
The year end is full of ‘best of’ and Rob Mackenzie’s holding a poll over at Magma Poetry on what was the best poetry collection of 2009. Of course, most (none?) of these books are available here but I like to look at the lists so that when I buy online, it’s easier to choose what to go broke on. The usual votes for Alice Oswald and Don Paterson but another name that cropped up quite often is Orphaned Latitudes by Gerard Rudolf.
Lastly, I’m not very fond of having to choose what I liked best in a year mainly because I tend to like too many different things at the same time but here are the poetry books I bought / got in 2009 roughly in order of acquisition (not all of them were published this year):
- Bearings by Karthika Nair
- Boki by Nitoo Das
- Night River by Keki N. Daruwalla
- Nights and Days by James Merill
- Isla Negra by Pablo Neruda
- Human Dark with Sugar by Brenda O’ Shaughnessy
- View From An Escalator by Liesl Jobson
- Bantu Ghost by Lesego Rampolokeng
- Poems by Mongane Wally Serote
- The Poet Lied by Odia Ofeimun
- The Boiling Caracas by Odia Ofeimun
- Glumlazi by Pravasan Pillay
- Romancing the Dead by Gary Cummiskey
- Beowulf by Seamus Heaney
- Selected Poems II by Margaret Atwood
