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The Ecca poets at their newest book Unplanned Hour's launch
in Grahamstown (back row, from left) Cathal Lagan, Silke Heiss, Norman Morrissey and Quentin Hogge. In the foreground Brian Walter (Photo by Ruth Woudstra) |
Article of Ecca's book launch, 9 March 2013 - By Ruth Woudstra
Poets in the audience
Norman Morrissey is not put off by a small audience. Even less by
the fact that the majority are poets. On the contrary, he welcomes the “very
good number of fifteen people” who attended the launch of Unplanned Hour,
the 17th Ecca poetry collection.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had so many poets before,” says
Morrissey of the launch held at Yellow House in Grahamstown on 9 March. As editor of the
collection, he considers the evening to have been a very pleasant experience,
because he felt the audience as inclined to “get what we’ve got to offer.”
But the Ecca poets didn’t start out with the intention of writing
for poets. Named after the pass between Grahamstown and Alice, where founding
members Norman Morrissey, Brian Walter, Cathal Lagan and the late
Basil Somhlahlo were based in the eighties, the group identified an acute need
to make poetry interesting for people who were unfamiliar with it. According to
Morrissey, the four saw that English poetry could and did enrich students at
Fort Hare University who were unfamiliar with the tradition. This sometimes
happened against their own expectations. Walter adds that the poets were
naturally writing for themselves, each other, and for the joy of collectively
developing their own creativity.
Since 1989 they have published nearly one collection of poetry a
year and have read for varied audiences, mostly in the Eastern Cape. The
collective has expanded in number and gender to nine poets, four of whom are
women. Eight of the poets contributed towards the latest collection, with five
of them reading their poetry at the launch.
Environmental and reflective themes were very evident in the poems
that were read, as well as the close relationships between the poets themselves
who are clearly drawn together for the love of the art. Declining to place any
emphasis on selling the collection to the audience, Morrissey closed the
evening by simply thanking those present for “putting this last book of ours
onto the waters.”
He was referring to a poem in Unplanned Hour entitled ‘To the
audience’ by Silke Heiss, who joined the group in 2012. It was written in
response to the audience reaction to an Ecca reading at the Wiles Gallery in
Bathurst in October last year:
Your ears
made the boat,
and they made
the water –
your listening
rocked me,
and I thank you.
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Here the five poets in action at Yellow House in Grahamstown (photos by Ruth Woudstra) >
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Here the five poets in action at Yellow House in Grahamstown (photos by Ruth Woudstra) >
  Brian Walter and Quentin Hogge |
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| Cathal Lagan |
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| Silke Heiss |
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| Norman Morrissey |
