Re-Imagining Love and Intimacy in the Poetry of Gabeba Baderoon, Ingrid De Kok, and Makhosazana Xaba Jenny Bozena Du Preez Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Magister Artium in the Faculty of Arts at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University January 2014 Supervisor: Professor Mary West Contents i. Acknowledgements ii. Abstract I. Introduction 1 1. Chapter One: Gabeba Baderoon – „Silences, Secrets, Fragments‟ 1.1. Introduction 10 1.2. Avoiding Sex as Spectacle in ―The Dream in the Next Body‖ 12 1.3. The Sensual in ―Cinnamon‖ 17 1.4. Traces of Intimacy in ―Finding You‖ 21 1.5. Acknowledging the Ex-Lover in ―Old photographs‖ 25 1.6. Reading Absence in ―Today she is not here‖ 29 1.7. Moments in Marriage: ―The night before we married‖ and ―Primal scene‖ 33 1.8. Conclusion 38 2. Chapter Two: Ingrid de Kok – „The Delicious Fiction, Love‟ 2.1. Introduction 39 2.2. Re-Thinking ‗Lack‘ in ―Woman in the glass‖ 41 2.3. Sex in the Sillier Body in ―To a would-be lover‖ 47 2.4. Critiquing Clichéd ―Words of love‖ 51 2.5. Re-Imagining Photographic Representation in ―Woman, leaning away‖ 55 2.6. Writing the Aging Body in ―After forty‖ 60 2.7. Re-Writing the ―Aubade‖ 64 2.8. An Impression of Intimacy in ―Brush stroke‖ 68 2.9. Conclusion 72 3. Chapter Three: Makhosazana Xaba - „Revolution in Poetic Language‟ 3.1. Introduction 74 3.2. The Stark Reality of Rape in ―The silence of a lifetime‖ 76 3.3. Reclaiming the Gaze in ―Your eyes‖ 82 3.4. Metaphors of Land and Water in ―Solitary cloud‖ 87 3.5. Imagery and Imagination in ―The brown pelican‖ 93 3.6. Re-Writing Romantic Clichés in ―Soul-mating‖ 97 3.7. The Semiotic in ―Love poem for my writing group‖ 102 3.8. Challenging the Symbolic Order in ―Waking up‖ 107 3.9. Conclusion 111 4. Conclusion 112 5. Bibliography 114 6. Addendum 6.1. Gabeba Baderoon ―The Dream in the Next Body‖ i ―The Machine‖ ii ―the country after midnight‖ iii ―True‖ iv ―Cinnamon‖ v ―Finding You‖ v ―Morning like Dusk‖ vi ―Old photographs‖ vii ―Today she is not here‖ viii ―The night before we married‖ ix ―Primal scene‖ ix 6.2. Ingrid de Kok ―Woman in the glass‖ x ―To a would-be lover‖ xi ―Words of love‖ xii ―Woman, leaning away‖ xiii ―After forty‖ xiv ―Aubade‖ xiv ―Brush stroke‖ xv ―Night space‖ xv ―Inner note‖ xvi 6.3. John Donne ―The Sun Rising‖ xvii 6.4. Antjie Krog ―how do you say this‖ xviii 6.5. Makhosazana Xaba ―So‖ xix ―And the game plays on‖ xx ―Dignity spills‖ xxi-xxii ―The silence of a lifetime‖ xxiii-xxv ―Your eyes‖ xxvi ―Solitary cloud‖ xxvii ―While I wait‖ xxviii ―The brown pelican‖ xxix ―Tear essence‖ xxx ―Soul-mating‖ xxx ―Flowering rot‖ xxxi ―Heart surgery‖ xxxii ―these hands‖ xxxiii ―Love poem for my writing group‖ xxxiii ―Waking up‖ xxxiv i. Acknowledgements Thank you to my supervisor, Mary West, for all her guidance and support, and for lending me what must be half her private library. Thanks also to all the lecturers in the English Literature Department for the roles they have played in my education, and special thanks to Sisi Maqagi for introducing me to the poetry of Makhosazana Xaba. To all my friends, thank you for being there to listen, particularly Anne Pabel for commiserating with me and for always believing that I could do this. And, of course, thank you to my family for everything they have done and continue to do. Special thanks to my mother, for always being interested, for listening to my rants and ramblings and for calmly encouraging me to keep on going. ii. Abstract This dissertation explores the ways in which the poetry of Gabeba Baderoon, Ingrid de Kok and Makhosazana Xaba challenge the sexist discourses that allow for the exploitation of women‘s bodies. It will also examine how they re-imagine the script1 of heterosexual romantic love which places women in a submissive position and closes down possibilities for human connections which do not fit within the narrow strictures of this notion of love. The poems selected come from Baderoon‘s two collections, The Dream in the Next Body (2005) and A Hundred Silences (2006), an anthology of Ingrid de Kok‘s poetry spanning all her previous collections entitled Seasonal Fires: New and Selected Poems (2006), and Makhosazana‘s Xaba‘s first poetry collection, These Hands (2005). All three of these contemporary, South African, woman poets present critiques of the sexual exploitation of women and offer explorations of romantic love, relationships and sexual intimacy alternative to contemporary, patriarchal heteronormativity. This analysis will take cognizance of the influence of apartheid and colonial history on the formation of gender politics. It will also examine the representation of women as sexual objects and the spectacularized and graphic depictions of sex and how these poets can be seen to re- present women and re-script sex. Whilst Baderoon and De Kok are concerned with re-imagining heterosexual romantic love and sexual intimacy, their rethinking of love can also be read as useful in engaging with ‗queer‘2 sexuality and romantic love outside of the heterosexual norm along with Xaba, who is concerned with lesbian desire. Finally, all three poets experiment with traditional poetic form and techniques and it is through this experimentation with poetic language, and the employment of what Julia Kristeva calls the semiotic, that these poets are able to re-imagine love and intimacy. Thus they might be said, to use Kristeva‘s phrase, to stage a ‗revolution in poetic language‘. 1 A script is generally known as the ―text of [a] play, film, etc.‖ (Sykes 1977) and is used by gender theorists to describe the discourses surrounding romantic love in order to imply that, like a play or film, heterosexual romantic love is always-already written for us and comes with certain expectations, actions, dialogue (‗I love you‘) and compulsory plots (marriage) that must be adhered to if our ‗love‘ is to be considered acceptable by society. 2 I use ‗queer‘ here in the same way as Ninna Edgardh does in her article ―Difference and Desire – a Queer Reading‖ (2009), that is, to stand ―primarily for that which is different and breaks away from the norm‖ as well as ―highlighting the deviation from the norm itself‖ (2009: 43). Thus, while ‗queer‘ sexuality or ‗queer‘ gender usually refers to homosexuality or any kind of identification outside of heterosexuality, ‗queer‘ also encompasses heterosexuality that is lived out in ways that defy the norm. Keywords Gabeba Baderoon Ingrid de Kok Makhosazana Xaba Romantic love Sexual intimacy Heteronormativity Patriarchal imaginary 1 I. Introduction Pumla Gqola, in her article ―‗Pushing out from the centre‘: (Black) feminist imagination, redefined politics and emergent trends in South African poetry‖ (2009), identifies a ―creative flourishing‖ (1) in South Africa after 2003, one in which poetry, and particularly poetry written and performed by women, is at the forefront. Since women have historically been excluded from the genre of poetry this phenomenon is noteworthy. This exclusion is also apparent in South Africa where, despite there having always been ―women poets writing and/or performing in English even under apartheid, these were rarely well known‖ (2009: 1). However, this burgeoning of women‘s voices in poetry is not reflected in the critical responses of literary theorists, as illustrated by this anecdote related to me via email by Makhosazana Xaba, one of these poets of whom Gqola speaks: Imagine this scenario in 2007: I approached Pumla angrily asking her why there are no reviews of Black women‘s poetry when there was evidence that Black women were writing poetry like at no other time in our history. Pumla: Who do you think is interested in it? Me: You and others like you. Pumla: Who are those others? Me: I only know you and Sisi [VM Maqagi]. Pumla: That’s it. This dissertation takes as its subject the poetry of three South African women: Gabeba Baderoon, Ingrid de Kok and Makhosazana Xaba. Both Baderoon and Xaba are identified as forerunners of the movement Gqola describes in her article, while De Kok has been publishing her poetry for quite a bit longer. Both Baderoon and Xaba have not been given the critical attention they deserve and, while De Kok‘s work has been examined in some depth, most of the articles have focused on her overtly political poems about the TRC. Thus, the thematic examined in this dissertation – the representation romantic love and sexual intimacy – has not been analysed in- depth with regards to any of these three poets‘ work. Although there is a dearth of critical work on Baderoon‘s poetry, both her collections have been quite widely reviewed. Harry Garuba notes that Baderoon ―transform[s] the ordinary and the mundane into sources of profound insight‖ (2005: 1) and suggests that she often ―lays claim to tenderness, the joy of physical merging and sensual celebration that extends beyond orthodox or patriarchal narratives of sex, romance and partnership‖ (2005: 3). This is particularly apparent, as I will argue, in her poems ―The Dream in the Next Body‖3 (2005: 33) and 3 For poem titles I have used the same punctuation employed in the poetry collections. 2 ―Cinnamon‖ (2005: 17). Kay Benno also finds that, in Baderoon‘s poetry, ―[t]he mundane and the profound are indistinguishable‖ (2005: 61) and Dan Wylie, like Gqola, notes a concern ―with the tenuousness of personal relationships‖ (2007: 164) rather than the overtly political aspects of South African life.