About

The Ecca logo as designed in November, 2013 by Norman Morrissey and Silke Heiss.
Norman's words on this new emblem: “The letter E on fired clay is incised and painted with copper oxide: the word mediated via plastic art and grounded on raw rock, bathed in the golden light that irradiates all things - a good image of Ecca.”

This organic first creation was the inspiration behind our current logo, designed by the Late Mike Barwood. Mike did many of our recent covers.
While the new logo is clear, and has the advantage of lettering, it still holds onto the mystery of the of the figure 3, flipped make the E, and the logo’s earthy roots

Ecca is an informal group of poets mainly from the Eastern Cape, South Africa; a group of colleagues and friends who get together to work on poetry projects. They have been active for the past 34 years. 

The Ecca Poets' started publishing in July, 1989, when they put a book together for the opening of an exhibition of paintings and sculptures at the Grahamstown National Festival of the Arts. The group was formed while the founding members, Lagan, Somhlahlo, Walter and Morrissey taught on the staff of the University of Fort Hare in Alice. Many of the books have since been launched for readings for the Hogsback Spring Festival. The Rose Theatre, built by the late Anton van der Merwe, is a magical venue, and his widow Gwyneth Lloyd and her staff continue to be a great support hosting these readings at Starways Arts Centre in Hogsback.

The current members of the group are Alvené Appolis-Du Plessis, Ed Burle, Jacques Coetzee, Silke Heiss, Lara Kirsten, Olwethu Mxoli and Brian Walter (and guest poet for 2024 Qhali).

Previous members have been Mariss Everitt, Garth Green, Quentin Hogge, Cathal Lagan and

John van Wyngaard.  Previous members who have passed on we hold and honour in our memories -  Mzi Mahola, Norman Morrissey and Basil Somhlahlo.

The group presents regular readings and runs creative writing workshops in and around their home towns of Port Elizabeth, Knysna, Hermanus and Cape Town and have also worked at WordFest, the National Festival of the Arts in Grahamstown and the McGregor Poetry Festival. 

Interesting to note that the group was originally known as the Echo Poets. This was the period in the group's existence when they collaborated with artists like Hillary Graham, combining word and image to create a remarkable synergy. In the mid-90's only the poets remained dedicated to and active in the group and renamed themselves the ECCA Poets (after the Ecca pass on R67 connecting Fort Beaufort and Grahamstown).

The link with the visual arts made its reappearance in 2009 when a photograph of a quilt by Mariss Everitt (also then part of the Ecca poets) featured on the cover of the Ecca book Spaces. Her quilts subsequently featured on the covers of the books of 2010 and 2011 (Brood and Bookmark). From 2012 Silke Heiss has created artwork in various media for the covers (Unplanned Hour, This Questioning Terrain, Sound Piping, Gold in Spring, This Moment's Marrow, Throw in your Song, Staying Hungry, What It Is, Alles is Anders, This Recurrence of Light and The Salt of Being).

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Ecca's books over the past 34 years:

Echo Poets Alice: The Echo Poets, 1989 

Echo Poets Alice: The Echo Poets, 1993 

Cast Alice: The Ecca Poets, 1996

Timespan Alice: The Ecca Poets, 1997

Scenter Alice: The Ecca Poets, 1998

Holdall Hogsback: The Ecca Poets/Seaberg, 2002

Passover Hogsback: The Ecca Poets, 2003

Dispositions Hogsback: The Ecca Poets, 2004

Threads Hogsback: The Ecca Poets, 2005

The Living Years Vinyl Hogsback: The Ecca Poets, 2006

Amathole Hogsback: The Ecca Poets, 2007

Keynotes Hogsback: The Ecca Poets, 2008

Spaces Hogsback: The Ecca Poets, 2009

Brood Hogsback: The Ecca Poets/Seaberg, 2010

Bookmark Hogsback: The Ecca Poets/Seaberg, 2011

Unplanned Hour Hogsback: The Ecca Poets/Seaberg, 2012

This Questioning Terrain Hogsback: The Ecca Poets, 2014

Sound Piping Hogsback: The Ecca Poets, 2015

Gold in Spring Hogsback: The Ecca Poets, 2016
This Moment's Marrow Hogsback: The Ecca Poets, 2017
Throw in your Song Hogsback: The Ecca Poets, 2018
Staying Hungry Hogsback: The Ecca Poets, 2019

What it is Plettenberg Bay: The Ecca Poets, 2020

Alles is anders Knysna: The Ecca Poets, 2021

This Recurrence of Light Sunrise-on-Sea: The Ecca Poets, 2022

The Salt of Being Sunrise-on-Sea: The Ecca Poets, 2023

The poets also have their own personal publications of poetry in print: 

        Cathal Lagan

Sandbird Alice: The Lovedale Press, 1999
A Lark in the Labyrinth (includes a CD of the poet reading selected poems) Port Elizabeth: Seaberg, 2005

        Norman Morrissey

Seasons Alice: The Lovedale Press, 1999
God’s Spies Hogsback: Published for sale by the Wilderness Leadership Foundation, 2001
St. Mark’s Diary (includes a CD of the poet reading selected poems) Port Elizabeth: Seaberg, 2004
Dog Latin Empangeni: The Echoing Green Press, 2006
Triptych Empangeni: The Echoing Green Press, 2008  
Tryst Hogsback: 2012 (with Silke Heiss)
Learn the Dance Hogsback, 2013 (with Silke Heiss) 
Hogsback Hiku Hogsback, 2013 (with Silke Heiss)
Simply in Love Hogsback, 2014 (with Silke Heiss)
To The Far Horizon Hogsback, 2015 (with Silke Heiss)
Love Letters to the Earth Hogsback, 2016 (with Silke Heiss)
A Shell Held To The Ear Hogsback, 2017 (with Silke Heiss)
Strandloop Fish Hoek: The Echoing Green Press, 2016
The Only Altar Hogsback: 2018 (published posthumously with Silke Heiss)
Gripscapes Newly Selected Poems Edited by John van Wyngaard, Echoing Green Press: Fish Hoek: 2021

        Silke Heiss

Love Gyres Simonstown: privately published bundle, 2011 
Birds, Beasts and Flowers Simonstown: privately published bundle, 2011 
Tryst  Hogsback, 2012 (with Norman Morrissey)
Learn the Dance Hogsback, 2013 (with Norman Morrissey)
Hogsback Hiku Hogsback, 2013 (with Norman Morrissey)
Simply in Love Hogsback, 2014 (with Norman Morrissey)
To The Far Horizon Hogsback, 2015 (with Norman Morrissey)
Love Letters to the Earth Hogsback, 2016 (with Norman Morrissey)
A Shell Held To The Ear Hogsback, 2017 (with Norman Morrissey)
The Only Altar Hogsback, 2018 (with a selection of the late Norman Morrissey’s last poems)
Path of Beauty, Love Poems Past and Present, Hogsback, 2019 
Greater Matter A Journey of Poems to Death and Beyond. (In association with Poetree Publications) Johannesburg, 2019

Sweet Nothings (with Notebook), Hogsback, 2020

        Brian Walter

Groundwork: An Introduction to Reading and Writing about Poetry. Written and compiled with with Felicity Wood. Manzini: Macmillan Boleswa, 1997
Tracks Alice: The Lovedale Press, 1999 
Baakens Alice: The Lovedale Press, 2000
Mousebirds Port Elizabeth: Seaberg, 2008
Otherwise and Other Poems Fish Hoek: Echoing Green Press, 2014

       Jacques Coetzee

An Illuminated Darkness Durban: uHlanga, 2020

The poets' poetry can also be found in South African poetry journals, particularly New Contrast (Cape Town), Carapace (Cape Town), New Coin (Grahamstown) and Fidelities (Pietermaritzburg), as well as in the Fort Hare Creative Writing Journal, Tyume, with which members of the group have also been associated.

Lagan and Walter have both won the Eastern Cape Premier’s Arts and Culture awards, Lagan the Philip Stein award and Walter the Pringle Prize for poetry in Journals and the Ingrid Jonker Prize for Tracks. Heiss has won the Ernst van Heerden Creative Writing Award as well as the Chinese Short Story Competition, run by the Confucius Institute and School of Languages at Rhodes University, for her prose; and she won third prize in the 2011 Dalro Awards.

Profiles of the current Ecca poets

Alvené Appollis-du Plessis was born in a rural town in the heart of the Eastern Cape and grew up, bare  feet, along dusty roads. Her journey as poet began with scribbles on the walls of her childhood home and was later recorded in various children's anthologies such as Reënboog Sterretjies and Nocturnal Nuances as well as poetry magazines and journals locally and abroad.She also received an award for excellence from the International Society of Poets.

She studied language and media at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth where she continued writing and publishing alongside renowned poets and writers of which her favourite are her writer friends from the Ecca group and the Helenvale poets borne from a poetry project by Brian Walter and the Southern Africa

Development, Research and Training Institute.

She's a journalist, freelance tutor and writer, an artist and a mother - of which the latter holds first place.

Eduard Burle lives and works in Cape Town. His poems have been published in New Coin, New Contrast, Stanzas, and in Patricia Schonstein's "Africa!" anthologies.

Jacques Coetzee is a musician and a freelance editor. He matriculated from the Pioneer School for the Blind in Worcester, and obtained a B.A. Hons degree at the University of Stellenbosch before completing a master’s degree in creative writing at the University of Cape Town, for which he submitted a manuscript of poems called Singing Through. He worked for several years as a busker at the Cape Town Waterfront, and tutored English literature to first- and second-year students at the Universities of Stellenbosch and Cape Town.

Since 2007 he has been the singer and one of the main songwriters in the band Red Earth & Rust, which will be releasing its fifth album of original material in 2020. He was selected to be a featured poet at the International Spier Poetry Festival in 2008, and has published poems in New Contrast and in Patricia Schonstein’s anthologies Heart of Africa! Poems of Love, Loss and Longing (2014) and Absolute Africa! (2018), both published by African Sun Press. He was the guest poet for the 2017 ECCA anthology This Moment’s Marrow, and has been a permanent member since 2019.

In January 2018 he and Barbara Fairhead launched their joint anthology of poems, The Love Sheet, which was published by Hands On Books, an imprint of Modjaji.

In 2020 his solo debut, An Illuminated Darkness, was published by uHlanga Press. 

Silke Heiss was born in Berlin in 1965 and spent her early childhood in Heidelberg, Germany. She grew up and was schooled in Pretoria, has an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Wits, and an M.A. in Creative Writing from UCT.

She earned a living as an educational writer and editor, freelance teacher, mentor and artist, while publishing reviews, poems, short stories and a verse novel in local journals and anthologies, and on the Avbob online poetry library. She has won awards both for her poetry and prose. She joined Ecca in 2012.

She has published her poems privately, many of them gritty love poems in dialogue with her husband, the late Norman Morrissey, praised for their “honesty”.

She works as an artist in various media, sometimes illustrates her own writing, and has provided cover art for the Ecca publications since 2012. She has exhibited and sold her work to national as well as international buyers.

From July 2015 to June 2019, she produced the monthly newsletter, Give Your Writing The Edge. Back copies of this newsletter are available on request.

From July 2019 to June 2021, Silke published the Give Your Writing The Edge Nuggets. These are available on her website http://www.silkeheiss.co.za/

In October 2019 she published Greater Matter A Journey of Poems to Death and Beyond, a memoir of the love story between herself and Norman Morrissey.

In February 2020, she published Sweet Nothings (with Notebook) - a tribute both to the natural world and to her readers.

She has a number of further manuscripts in store, which she intends to find homes for in the coming year or two.
She has a blog, which she services as the whim takes her https://silkeheiss.blogspot.com/

Lara Kirsten is a pianist, piano teacher and performance poet. After completing her high school career at the National School of the Arts in Johannesburg in 1997, Lara received her BMus and BMus Honours degrees, both cum laude at the University of Pretoria. Joseph Stanford and Wessel van Wyk were her mentors in solo piano and chamber music respectively. In 1999 she was awarded a SAMRO bursary for undergraduate students. In 2002 she received her chamber music licentiate from UNISA. She was appointed junior lecturer at the University of Pretoria where she taught piano from 2003 to 2005.

For the past decade Lara has been active as both a solo and chamber musician performing with musicians such as soprano Linda van Coppenhagen, tenor Sandile Mabaso, clarinetist Morné van Heerden and cellists Wessel Beukes and Francois le Roux. She often performs her poetry within her music recitals. She has performed in venues such as the Sandton Theater on the Square, the Baxter concert hall in Cape Town, the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, the Guy Butler Theater in Grahamstown and the Tatham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg.

Lara has performed at the Wakkerstroom Music Festival, the McGregor Poetry Festival, the AfrikaBurn Festival in the Tankwa Karoo, the Woordfees in Stellenbosch, the Hilton Arts Festival, the Michaelhouse Music Festival in KwaZulu-Natal and the Voorkamer Fest in Darling.

For the last seven years Lara has been based in the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal from where she travels with her concert tours. She also teaches piano from her home. From 2014 to 2018 Lara has been invited to serve as adjudicator for the Pietermaritzburg Eisteddfod of the South African Society of Music Teachers.

As of November 2019 she is relocating to the Western Cape.

Lara's poetry has been published in the South African Literary Journal New Contrast. In 2008 she became part of the Eastern Cape poet-group, Ecca, who presents readings and publishes collectively each year. In 2015, 2016 and 2017 poems by Lara have been selected to feature in the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Anthology. She has compiled and edited three poetry books Poetry @Steampunk Coffee (2017) and Poetry next to the railway (2018 & 2019). 

Lara’s poetry, videos, photos and creative projects can be viewed on her blog at 

http://laraafrika.blogspot.com/

Olwethu Mxoli was born in Port Elizabeth in 1995. She spent most of her childhood travelling between Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage and Kirkwood. She was raised predominately by her grandmother; seeing her parents on weekends and school holidays. It is her grandmother who gave and nurtured her love for reading and later writing.

She was published in three of NMMU’S poetry collections; Beneath the Bridge of Metaphor in 2014 Poetry, piece by piece in 2015 and ‘Carved onto the Page’ in 2017. She has also had one of her poems published in the national poetry textbook ‘Voices of the land’.

Olwethu is also a performance poet and was awarded the Performer of the year in the poetry category at the 2017 NMU Achievers Awards.

Brian Walter’s first collection of poems, Tracks, suggests a preoccupation with the earth, with landscape, and with reading the signs of past experience. This focus is expanded in Baakens, a collection that explores past and present in the Baakens River Valley of Port Elizabeth, with hints of a journey into an underworld. Walter, who has been a lecturer in English literature and currently works in rural teacher development, treads firmly on the soil of his home province, the Eastern Cape, but with suggestive echoes from a wider world. His latest collection is Mousebirds.

Profile of Guest Poet for 2024

Qhali is an Eastern Cape born bilingual writer, editor, sustainable development practitioner, social justice activist and mother of two. She is a 2022 Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity (AFRE), holds an MA degree in Creative Writing obtained with distinction, and qualifications in Public Policy, Development Studies and Economics. She is the founder of Kairos Ark Publishing (Pty)Ltd which in 2023 published Loss-iLahleko, SA's first multilingual anthology and translated book series that explores GBV in all the official SA languages. The eleven books were launched at Exclusive Books November 2023 during the 16 Days of Activism to honour and bring to life the lived experiences of GVB survivors and those who have passed. An educational liberation heritage book series she curated, The Urban Guerrilla Who Danced to Freedom, was launched in Gqeberha on 6th November 2023, marking the deaths of fallen heroes Vuyisile Mini, Wilson Kayingo and Zinakile Mkaba. Her poetry has appeared in Agbowó, The Kalahari Review, The New Contrast Literary Journal, and elsewhere. Her poem “Return to Tsolobeng” won joint third prize in The Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Collective’s poetry competition in 2021. Qhali has performed her poetry locally; in the United States of America, hosted by Chosen Pen Publishing; at Pa Gya! Literary Festival in Accra Ghana and at the Poetas D’Alma Literary Festival in Mozambique. Qhali's debut poetry collection, crying in my mother's tongue (ukulila), will be released in 2024 as part of the New-Generation African Poets, by Akashic Books and the African Poetry Book Fund (Nebraska University). Qhali’s work in literature and development seeks to contribute to the preservation of indigenous culture and heritage, and the safety of children and women.

Profiles of the former Ecca Poets

Cathal Lagan is an Irish/South African poet who has worked and written in South Africa for longer now than he has stayed in his native Ireland. He describes himself as a “habitual writer”, and his varied backgrounds - sailor, lecturer in English literature, priest - all emerge in his verse through his gifted use of word and image. He explores keenly the memories of a childhood in the Ireland of the mid-twentieth century, as well as more recent reflections of South African life and landscape, finding both correspondence and difference in the experiences. He has published collections of his own poems, Sandbird, A Lark in the Labyrinth and - with Quentin Hogge - Borderlines.

Norman Morrissey started publishing poems in 1979, in South Africa, the UK, and in the USA. He published 13 books in his lifetime, a 14th was published posthumously. He was the only South African poet to have his selected poems – Strandloop - published while still alive, containing poems from 1979 to the present.

He taught English Literature, Language Skills and Creative Writing for thirty years in various South African universities; and was the Education Officer for the then Natal Parks Board in the early 1980s: writing Eco Educational materials, running Eco Education training programmes for student-and in-service teachers, and setting up self-guided educational trails in various Reserves that teachers could use to create Outdoor Classroom contexts to enhance the actualities of syllabus work in many subjects normally taught only in the sterilities of the classroom.

He lived for many years in a remote mountain village, sharing 5 acres with thousands of trees, a troop of Samango monkeys, eighty-odd species of birds, a few Bushbuck and Grey Duikers and, in the last six years of his life, his wife, Silke Heiss. He wrote and self-edited his work every day as an extension of mere breathing.

He died in July 2017, leaving behind a large library and hundreds of handwritten poems in ring-bound notebooks. A selection made by his old friend and colleague, John van Wyngaard, of hitherto obscurely or unpublished work, was published by Echoing Green Press in 2021. Those of his scattered manuscripts not still in personal possession are housed in the archives of Amazwi (previously NELM) in Grahamstown.

Quentin Hogge is a school teacher of 35 years experience at present at Kingsridge High School in King William's Town. He has been involved with the Ecca Group since 2002, becoming the fourth member at that time. In 2002 he published, with Cathal Lagan, a book of poetry entitled BORDERLINES which was launched at the Wordfest in Grahamstown that year.

Last year he published a short story called Of birds and a dream in poem form which was richly illustrated by Graeme Arnott, the world famous bird artist from Kenton on Sea.

  

Mzi Mahola started experimenting with poetry writing while still doing matric. His first manuscript was confiscated by the Security police in August 1975. After this setback he lost interest in writing for fourteen years and only took up pen again in 1989. He has been writing consistently ever since.

He has contributed his work in writing to various poetry journals and magazines, both at home and internationally, and has featured jointly with other writers of the world in 23 poetry anthologies. Sections of his work have been translated into Danish, German, Turkish and Malayalam languages.

Mzi’s personal efforts are in the form of three poetry volumes titled Strange Things by Snail Press in 1994 and which was selected to represent South Africa in the World Book Fair in Geneva in 1995; When Rains Come by Carapace in 2000 which won the Olive Schreiner literary award for the period 2000-01 and Dancing in the Rain by KZN University Press in 2006. He has completed writing his next poetry volume but is waiting for its title before it goes to editors and possible publishing. Mzi has also completed writing his semi-fictitious biographical novel titled Dancing with Hyenas. The manuscript is being evaluated at Rhodes University for possible publishing.

As a playwright he has written four plays. The first one won first place at the Metro script writing competition. It is titled Not in My Room and was performed at the Barn. The second one was performed at the Grahamstown Arts Festival in 2007 and at the Opera House. It is titled Something Must Break. The third one titled Fear was written for the Delta Schools drama festival and was performed by Lwandlekazi High School. He has also written a short play for his rural school project. It is titled uMpendulo.

In 2004 Mzi was invited at the University of Glasgow to participate in a writers' symposium between writers of South Africa and Scotland. In 2008 he was invited in Athens to take part in his country's Heritage week celebrations. He has also taken part at international poetry festivals, including Africa Poetry Festival in 2006. He has conducted poetry workshops in KZN in places like Illovo, Umbumbulu, Claremont and Greenwood. Occasionally he shares his writing experience with other writers at the Wordfest in Grahamstown. He has adjudicated several times in the Nelson Mandela Metro poetry competitions.

He runs a voluntary poetry project at the Zwide Library. In 2007 he adopted two rural schools in Lushington near Seymour. Twice a year he conducts creative writing and drama workshops for the Junior Secondary School here and gives its learners lessons on eco-systems.

Mzi translates his own work into his mother tongue and his ambition is to have it published.

His name is also inscribed at the New Brighton Library Wall of Fame for his contribution in community building.

John van Wyngaard spent his working life teaching English Literature, especially poetry, at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. This made, and makes, it difficult enough to believe too much in the value of his own efforts, so he was very pleased and proud to be invited in as guest poet with Ecca, in 2016. Even if he felt a bit like a roadie or groupie asked up on the big stage...Ecca rocks!