Launch: Other Signs It s not necessary for me to say that Ingrid de Kok is the best poet writing in South

Africa today. We all know that. It s not necessary for me to say that Ingrid wrote some poems which became classics in our literature. We all know that too. It s superfluous to tell you about this superb poet s international impact and status. You can google that on the internet. I m trying to do something else this afternoon: to use one poem, not to analyse, but to explore in such a way that it exposes another kind of network a network that I call the Poetic IQ , that intangible something operating with a different kind of logic during the creative process. Look at the poem. Don t read, just look at it: four four-line stanzas and a last one with eight. The first stanza has a full stop after every line while the last stanza seems highly irregular. Look at the title: Today I do not love my country. The eye picks up the overfamiliar clich I love my country but it is encrusted by not and Today . The word Today is not only prominent, the ear experiences the normal word order as well: I do not love my country today. READ THE POEM The title is also the first line. It has a fullstop. No argument: Today I do not love my country , an arresting line; a statement; a fact. It looks like a simple line, something that you and I could also have come up with. But here is where the genius begins:

Look at the line: do you see the o s? Do you see the equal distribution of dentals and a guttural in between? Do you notice the solitary liquid L in the word love? Scan down: second stanza: today becomes Tomorrow ; third stanza: Wednesday ; fourth stanza: Thursday . Why Wednesday and not Friday? Of course there is an echo: Wednesday s child is full of woe In other words: long before we reach the stanza of the terrible death of a child, the very first word of the poem, the word Today , has laid down its lines throughout the poem to knot them tightly, repeating today, today as a wail, a lament. Now look at thatfirst L . It immediately betrays it s liquidness in line 2in venal and cruel . Also a statement: My country is venal, it is cruel. Beautiful the move from venal to the curled in cruel ! So why venal and not rapacious, corrupt or crooked all of them fitting well with the sound and content of the word cruel . Ah, but it s here where the genius counts. A poet has the whole dictionary to choose from. The range can always be honed down by a good poet to two or three words, but how is the final choice made? I believe that it is the enterprise of that Poetic IQ. Many threads are working simultaneously during the creative process and the text evolves organically with content and sound in tandem as it is eventually determining form. All three words: corrupt, crooked or rapacious has the letter c but only venal has the determining letter of the word love. Let your eyes go down: Lies, walls, in the next stanza the word feral performs

another internal rhyme with venal, sink down more, combining ecstatic s s when exquisite stars fall into my lap, the airs golden ghee, smelling the sea s salt cellar. In fact the third stanza is one breathless soundscape of internal and half rhymes: stars, fingers; morning/ghee; the assonance of air, along and arm. The fourth stanza suddenly has the thudding sound of u, the sound you make in the back of your throat: Thursday and hurt. We will return to that, but it is important to note that the first stanza suggests that it is the susceptibility of corruption, the presence of lies and cruelty that are the beginning of these attacksxenophobia. A quick overview: The first and the last stanzas are about the immediate response to the xenophobic attacks, the betrayal of the concept of hospitality. The stanzas in between make us aware of the Other Signs : our grievous inheritance responsible for the violence, the beauty of the landscape always linked to human activity, the humanity of ordinary people caring for children and neighbours. In stanza 4, line 15 something astonishing appears: the famous forgiving man. The risk taken by the poet here is immense: millions of words had been written about Nelson Mandela, to write about him is to be overwhelmed and throttled by clichs, to use only three words which had not already been used to death, is simply not possible. And yet Ingrid does it. And it works! The miracle is brought about by that other network in which what wants to be said, finds the right sound. Mandela is turned from an icon into a forgiving man,

a man like many other forgiving men in this country. He also finds himself in a stanza with ordinary good people. The fact that he has forgotten who are friends and who enemies, is eloquently double layered: it carries a tinge of irony for the failure of forgetting. At the same time the forgiving man isthe opposite of those who brutally killed those whom they branded as enemies. We are at the last stanza. But. The poem turns here. Today, today, I CANNOT love my country. In the opening line the I made a decision, I do not. Now the I is helpless: I cannot. The country that has become land, with winded stars and caring neighbours has become a rising monster: It staggers in the dark, lurches in a ditch. Through the technique so effectively used by Yeats, with its comma pause in the middle, It is venal, it is cruel and feral shadows, short sharp knives one hears how the short vicious menacing sounds now turn into desperate and dull flesh sounds in the last stanza. It staggers in the dark, it lurches in a ditch. Note here the contained a s like groans, the many gutturals like being strangled, the rolling r s the hissing s s of fire. But, just like the first line, it also has the lonely L in lurching . Then, the time has come. In one long tumbling sentence the mad image of cruel killings is drawn with the accompanying sounds of violence and fire. This is an equally dangerous moment in the poem for the poet. One brilliant diphthong within the poetic mastery of Ingrid can tip the scales into beautifying violence and subtly destroying what the poem suggests. But with iron control the poet does not allow the line to even breathe a single syllable of surrender to beauty or imagery, while at the same time unflinchingly draws the

horror with strong visceral strokes. The mob drives, brands, holds, press in the fire, string firecrackers, burns and burns, hands, livelihoods and homes. The sentence builds itself through haunting progressions and intensifications until the last line. The word burns is used twice. For me, thinking brand in Afrikaans, burns is supposed to be somewhat weak as a concluding sound, but because it had been so expertly prepared by words like Thursday, hurt, lurch, curdle, one feels how the whole poem flushes out into this word. But of course the word burn has to swirl William Blake s tiger, burning bright into the mix. But in contrast to Blake, the poet is not asking how both the terrible tiger and the lamb could be produced, but how one can love a country which produces care as well as such unredeeming, unremitting violence. The word love in the first line has finally anchored its sound: the u from love sinks its way right through the poem towards the final word burns . We are privileged that talent of this exquisite calibre has chosen to write about us.