I survived the PhD!

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literature, PhD, poetry, South Africa, wildlife

Yes, folks, I’ve finally submitted my manuscript and thesis (DLitt in Creative Writing). It’s a strange feeling. I spent three years working every single weekend, my head full of animal studies, ecocriticism, poetry (my topic is the representation of predators in South African English-language poetry). I gained a new appreciation of Douglas Livingstone’s poems (although he’s not unproblematic).

I still have the viva to get through, but I’m hoping that won’t be too tricky. “A nice chat,” my supervisor calls it.

I finally submitted 50 poems for appraisal. Honestly, it’s taken me about ten years to write those 50 poems. So you could say the process kicked off a decade ago! Once the PhD’s out of the way, I can focus on bringing out my ‘New and Selected Poems’, which my editor, Douglas Reid Skinner, is already thinking about. Very exciting.

 

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Haiku on Zambia

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haiku, Kafue National Park, poetry, wildlife, Zambia

Zambia’s oldest, largest park, Kafue National Park, is one of the stillest places I have ever been to. There is no traffic (you may see one other car if you drive through the park, but then again, you may not). There are very few people (if you stay at one of the remote lodges you may bump into a handful of people … or you may not, depending on the time of year). The animals move slowly. Time itself moves slowly.

When I sat down to write about Kafue, I realised haiku was probably the most perfect form in which to distill that stillness, that sense of being quite literally out of touch with everyone and everything – I was well out of cellphone range.

Kafue, Zambia

Grass shifts, with slight clicks,
murmurs. Living language. A
breeze across the vlei.

*

Waterbuck approach
the outpost of my silence.
Freeze, or look away.

*

Breeze through the tent-mesh.
Song of painted reed-frogs lost
for just a moment.

For the love of wildlife

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Khaya Ndlovu Manor House, Limpopo, Moholoholo, Thornybush Game Reserve, wildlife

Last month, I had the chance to spend two nights at a lodge in Limpopo. Khaya Ndlovu Manor House also happens to be one of the homes of property developer Trevor Jordan, who is doing so much to develop and promote the area – this includes having a hand in the fight against rhino poaching.

If you love the bushveld and wildlife, this corner of Limpopo is the place to visit. Nudging Kruger National Park, it has its own Big Five game reserves that are well worth visiting.

Fellow journalist Kerry Simpson and I had a great game-watching experience in Thornybush Game Reserve – we were taken to see a lioness with a wildebeest kill.

Her cubs, about a year old, still young enough to have some spots on them, had already eaten and their mother was feasting as we arrived. The cubs were either lazy or simply in a stupour.

The lioness nervously let us photograph her for about half an hour, then she got annoyed and pulled the wildebeest carcass deep into the bush.

On my last day in Limpopo, Mike Lawrie took me to Moholoholo, a wildlife rehabilitation centre. For various reasons, the animals here cannot be released into the wild immediately – or, in some cases, at all. The non-profit organisation is ‘home’ to lions from a Mozambique circus, a gorgeous leopard, restless cheetahs (they love to pace), caracal, serval, vultures, crowned and martial eagles and a black rhino calf that was trapped in a mud wallow in Kruger and was unable to get out. Abandoned by its mother, it might have died had it not been for its rescuers, who took it to Moholoholo.

Orphaned, poisoned or injured wildlife rely on visitors to keep them alive, so donations are very welcome. Moholoholo has its own blog here: http://moholoholo.blogspot.com

To my mind, the leopard is the most arresting cat – perhaps not the most beautiful, aesthetically, but form and function have given it a completeness, a self-sufficiency, that inspires not a little bit of terror.

Here I am with the rhino calf and one of the vultures. I had a wonderful day and I only wish I could work with animals every day of my life.