It’s a funny thing with words — when coupled with evocative music they become personalised poetry in motion

It’s a funny thing with written words. I have, in my life, had a more than usual fondness for words and have written variously and prodigiously, if not always as proficiently as I may have hoped. 

I have written letters — personal and professional, letters of support, appeal and endorsement, of concern, complaint and dispute, letters of legal argument, demand and threat. I have written essays and articles — academic and agitational. I have produced screeds, manifestos and polemics and one or two really lame film scripts (unproduced). 

I have written critically and at long-winded length on artistic and cultural topics — particularly on film and music — for more than three decades. Hell, I started out writing skin-crawlingly pretentious record reviews for student publications and fanzines before getting the chance to indulge my excesses in the late and long lamented music pages of Scope magazine.  

In 2020, on the second night of the Covid lockdown in Johannesburg, I sat down to write a poem. The notion of writing words for their own sake was something I revered in others (in song, film and literature), revered enough to regard as sacrosanct and to be convinced my own would be beyond my reach and — I was certain — be surely laughable. Lame. Ridiculous. Worthy of ridicule and wholly futile.

But, alone and isolated and spooked by the piercing silence from the city in shocked lockdown, the prospect of watching TV suddenly oddly unaccountably absurd and the bottle that kept me company being emptied at a swifter than steady rate, I sat down to amuse (console, distract) myself with assembling words in a ‘creative’ rather than simply cerebral way. I figured I’d try to amuse myself for half an hour before deleting the resultant drivel …

I was surprised to find that no, not that the words weren’t drivel; rather that the process, the act, the exercise of getting them down was satisfying in a way I could not, and didn’t care to try to explain. 

And so it began. And so it continued. 

Without “trying”, I sat down again and again — and again — to capture that curious sensation of wonder and fulfilment. And again and again — and again — I was able to do so. Over the next two years, I scrawled, scribbled and hammered out poems at the rate of two or three or even four a week.

Of even greater surprise to me was that I grew comfortable putting them out into the world, sharing them with those close to me and feeling in no way precious about the responses. A finished poem felt easy to let go, felt more like the property of the reader: if she liked what she read that was great. If not — aside from (marginal) regret at wasting her precious time — that was fine too.

Eventually, I submitted a handful to a few poetry journals and was gratified that some were accepted for publication. As nice as this was, it was still the urge and urgency to complete a new one that was thrilling and increasingly compulsive.

And so one day my friend Neill Solomon — unbidden — sent me a WhatsApp sound recording. Neill had responded positively and encouragingly to words I had sent him; still, I did not take him seriously when he said they could be turned into songs. “Good songs”, he said …

Neill Solomon. Photo: supplied

Jim Neversink. Image: Matthew Fink

Laurie Levine. Photo: Supplied

Jak Tomas. Photo: Supplied

Rocksteady.Dub, Photo: Nic Boulton